puzzle untimed minutes; meta about 20 minutes (Matt)
Season 3, Episode 8 of the Muller Meta asks us to find a ’70s blues-rock song.
There are five theme entries, the first two of which are linked:
16-A [With 22-Across, appropriate sentiment for this puzzle] = OH BOY, DO I / NEED A DRINK.
The last three are also tied together:
35-A [1985 Billy Idol hit (1)] = REBEL YELL.
51-A [2008 Taylor Swift hit (2)] = WHITE HORSE.
60-A [1961 Marcels hit (3)] = BLUE MOON.
Free-scanning the grid after solving I noticed a number of things that seemed too odd to be total coincidence, but simultaneously felt like they could be completely irrelevant:
*** 1-A references a drink
*** LATTE is in SPLATTER, and symmetrically BUD is in ABU DHABI
*** There are no O’s in the NE quadrant, and only two in the entire right half of the grid, and those two are double in a theme entry
*** the three lower theme entries are one letter away from starting with RED, WHITE and BLUE, and REDS is underneath BLUE
*** REBUSES and TXT FILE (great entry, took me a minute) are symmetrical and could mean something. Isn’t that Across Lite notepad a .txt file? I think it is.
*** The first four letters of REBEL YELL anagram to BEER.
In the end, all of these were indeed completely irrelevant to the meta. I saw that WHITE HORSE would become an alcoholic drink if you change its second word to RUSSIAN, so I wondered if there were a two-word drink starting with the word REBEL. Googling REBEL + ALCOHOLIC DRINK hipped me to the existence of Rebel Yell brand Kentucky Bourbon, and I was off to the races. “Blue Moon” is the name of a prominent beer, so I guessed that there would be a brand of Scotch called “White Horse,” and indeed there is.
Meta solved: the song in question is George Thorogood’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer.”
This was an enjoyable meta, though it takes a little bit of Googling time/luck if you’re not up on your whiskey and bourbon brands. But there were enough hints given that it was doable even without a lot of booze knowledge.
4.15 stars.
Hmmm, semi-confirmation for me. I answered “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” without the “and” in there but wasn’t given credit. Wikipedia seems to also think the Thorogood song from the 70s doesn’t have the “and” (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Bourbon,_One_Scotch,_One_Beer) so I thought for sure I must have stumbled upon a hidden incorrect meta until seeing Matt’s write-up. Oh well – I’ve done horrendously in the MMMM so it’s not a huge deal one way or the other. Just happy that I continue to catch on to this meta business – whether I’m given credit or not!
Thanks Matt
130 correct this month…
Jim, you should have gotten credit…no need for an AND…email me separately and we can sort it out…
I enjoyed this one. Clever puzzle as always. Thanks Pete.
Thought it was great – much easier than recent months though. This will probably be the only time I ever finish a meta faster than Matt… Thanks, Pete!