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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Admixture”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a decade of the 20th century.
Answer: The 1980s
Correct entries: 157 overall, of which 52 were solo solves

Was this a SAD (Simple and Difficult) meta? Let’s see if we can describe the mechanism in two sentences of reasonable length:

Six grid entries are anagrams of their clue number + A/D direction + one extra letter. Those extra letters spell THEADS in order, suggesting the contest answer (“the A-D’s”).

Yep, SAD it is. The big hint was at 86-D, where the clue was [Number of entries whose locations in this grid were deliberately chosen] for SIX. A solver would naturally look at the longest entries first, which turned out to be YEAR OF THE RAT at 43-A and END OF STORY at 41-D. It’s sitting right there but so hard to see since clue numbers are numerals, but 10 of 12 letters in YEAR OF THE RAT are its clue number FORTY-THREE and one of the leftover letters is the A of its direction. Similarly, 8 of the 10 letters in END OF STORY are FORTY-ONE, and then a D from its direction. There were four others:

2-D a.k.a TWO-D: [Brought into the garage] = TOWED, yielding the extra E
4-A a.k.a. FOUR-A: [Super-cool, dude] = FAR OUT, yielding the extra T
10-A a.k.a. TEN-A: [Title for Macbeth] = THANE, yielding the extra H
41-D a.k.a. FORTY-ONE-D: [“That’s all she wrote”] = END OF STORY, yielding the extra S
43-A a.k.a. FORTY-THREE-A: [1972 or 2020, say] = YEAR OF THE RAT, yielding the extra A
90-A a.k.a. NINETY-A: [2008 #3 hit for Kid Cudi] = DAY ‘N’ NITE, yielding the extra D

Taken in the usual grid order (top-to-bottom + left-to-right), that yields THEADS, which parses to THE A.D.’s, key letters in this meta and a homophone for “the 80s”. Unless you’re British, where they pronounce that T:

Evan writes:

Oh my, this was maybe the hardest meta I’ve ever encountered during my streak. Never would have gotten this one solo. But I appreciate that you released a puzzle with [Celebrate many birthdays] (GET OLD) at 38A the day before I celebrated my 39th and that the meta answer was the decade of my birth!

Huge thanks to Consigliere for his work on this puzzle’s wild-sized grid. Yes, this wacky shape was required just to get DAY N’ NITE, END OF STORY, and YEAR OF THE RAT in their proper spots! He declined a co-author credit but I couldn’t have brought this one home without him. Also: Supertester fine-tuned the clue at 86-D for me, and thanks to Gridmaster T. for the solution grid above. Truly a group effort…

THIS WEEK’S PUZZLE:

Well we’re not doing another Week 5 after that, but to be honest I have no idea how tough this one is. So let’s try something: with your entry, please submit a comment telling me what level difficulty you think this week’s meta is. Has to be between Week 1 and 5, but you can submit half-weeks (Week 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, or 4.5) as well as full weeks (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5). Then I’ll tabulate the results and perhaps it will be interesting.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a well-known number 3.

 
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.