puzzle 8:21; meta 5 minutes (Matt)
Welcome to Season 2, Episode 3 of the Muller Monthly Music Meta, entitled “Say Again?”
This month our meta-maestro asks us to find a well-known band lurking somewhere in his puzzle. The theme entries appeared to be clear, since there’s a 12-14-14-12 pattern among the long acrosses and the closest thing to that is a couple of 9’s on the downs. So let’s look at that quartet:
20-a [Blue, say] = PRIMARY COLOR.
32-a [Scintillating, say] = VERY ATTRACTIVE.
39-a [Curry, say] = SLOW-COOKED FOOD.
53-a [Mushrooms, say] = PIZZA TOPPING.
I’m slightly red (another PRIMARY COLOR) in the face here since it’s only now as I’m typing the entries in that I realize they all take the [something, say] pattern, referencing the “Say Again?” title.
My first thought upon analyzing these four theme entries is that ZZ Top lurks inside PiZZa TOPping, which can’t be just a coincidence. Hey, do you know the name of the only member of ZZ Top without a beard? Frank Beard, an irony even Alanis Morissette could appreciate.
Anyway, so clearly ZZ Top is the band in question and I only need to figure out how the other three entries relate, right? A few minutes of perusing convince me that this is a false path and I’d better look elsewhere…when I realize that — yes, “red” is indeed another PRIMARY COLOR besides blue, and “hot” is another word for VERY ATTRACTIVE besides scintillating, and “chili” is another SLOW-COOKED FOOD besides curry, and that “peppers” are another PIZZA TOPPING besides mushrooms. Which means that if we “Say again?” those four themers we’ve got L.A.’s own RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, April’s meta answer.
Their wiki page tells me they were founded in 1983, which is 30 years ago which means that I am old and so are you if you knew them back in the day. Never got into them much since I’m not a fan of Anthony Kiedis’s voice, but my brother had all their albums and that one song sure was beautiful.
Highlights:
***4-down alone bumps this puzzle’s rating up .1 stars, a famous music name spanning three theme entries (and with a famous father). And you’ve got to dig that CVCCCCCVC pattern.
***The author sneaks his own name in at 2-d.
***Good music fill: CECILIA, the O’JAYS, LUKA, ADAM Yauch and EBONY.
***Good non-music fill: TOOK APART, ON TOPIC, SHIATSU and DRY ICE.
We’re three months in, so getting around the time someone might take a reasonable stab at the mega-meta. Any guesses? I’m keeping my powder dry but we’ll see what happens, and see you back here in a month for MMMMM (May’s Monthly Muller Music Meta). 4.00 stars from me for April.
Thanks Matt
183 correct this month…I am going a little slower in raising the difficulty level this year, so happy to still be in triple digits.
Not only am I old enough to have known them back in the day, I have a lot a friends from LA of the same age, some of who went to Fairfax High and told me stories about the pre-Chili Peppers bands such as Anthym and What Is This? Nonetheless took longer than Matt to get the meta, for a while I had some interference from the Red House Painters who obviously weren’t going to work.
Wow — never noticed ZZ Top hiding in there. Glad I didn’t, as it would surely have sent me down the wrong avenue.
I pursued a different red herring (blue cod?) for a while: it seemed to me that the clues were much wordier than usual this month, although perhaps it was my imagination. I spent perhaps fifteen minutes trying to find some pattern to the longer clues, but then the correct approach leapt out at me.