Muller Monthly Music Meta, Mega Meta Reveal

Title: “Mamma Mia!” by Pete Muller, Mack Meller, and Andrew White
Prompt: The meta is this year’s mega-meta, a hit from the early 2000s
Answer: LOSE YOURSELF

Puzzle & meta: approx. 32 mins (benchen71)

It’s benchen71 here, filling in for Matt Gaffney. I’m writing this up with 4 hours to go until closing time. There are currently 149 correct answers of which mine was number 81.

I have to say that this mega meta was extremely clever, but oh so subtle. Well done to those of you who solved the mega meta before this reveal puzzle! I know I tried. I got the red herring in April or May (I forget which). But that didn’t help me with the mega. In hindsight, I can see that it could have!

Let’s start with the red herring, since the answer is given in the grid: 41A {When repeated, a hit from 1966, and the 2024 red herring} MONDAY. If you recall, the clue for the red herring was: The 2024 red herring is song from the ‘60s that should be mentioned in the clues to the July puzzle, but isn’t. If you go back to January’s puzzle, you will find 6D { Number of times “Tuesday” occurs in the lyrics of the Moody Blues’ “Tuesday Afternoon”}. In February, 3D {Wednesday played by Jenna Ortega on Netflix’s “Wednesday”}. This pattern continues through to June, with the days of the week preceding as expected. But there was no repeated “Monday” in the July clues!

Back to the mega meta reveal puzzle, it is intriguing that symmetrical to MONDAY is 39A {Rapper whose name sounds like a candy} EMINEM. The clue draws our attention to M&Ms, which, in concert with the puzzle title “Mamma mia!” (the lyrics of this ABBA song continue “Here I go again”) got me looking for M and M in the clues. It turns out there are 12 “M*** m***” clues:

• 1A {Monkees’ Micky} DOLENZ
• 7A {“My mistake!”} OOPS
• 11A {Masked man?} UMP
• 17A {Milk man?} BORDEN
• 18A {Midback muscles} LATS
• 19A {Model Mendes} EVA
• 36A {Mnemosyne’s M’s?} MUS
• 58A {Minos’ milieu} CRETE
• 60A {Makes moos} LOWS
• 61A {Mysterious mover} UFO
• 67A {More! More!} ENCORE
• 68A {“Mayday! Mayday!”} SOS

The first letters of these entries spell DOUBLE M CLUES. Wait a minute!?! Isn’t that what we have right here? Well, it turns out there is another way to interpret that hint: “**MM**” clues, that is, clues that include the bigram “MM”, of which, it turns out, there are 12:

• 3D {“Slow” mammal} LORIS
• 8D {Brimming with excitement} ONAHIGH
• 10D {Summer and Winter in Boston, say} STS
• 23D {Tummy-tucked?} EATEN
• 25D {Dammaj residents} YEMENIS
• 34D {Sharif who played Jethro in “The Ten Commandments”} OMAR
• 48D {Paris-based humanities gp. with about 200 commisions} UNESCO
• 53D {Yummy caramel treats} ROLOS
• 54D {Reacted to a hammered thumb, perhaps} SWORE
• 55D {Children’s author Eleanor who wrote “The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee} ESTES
• 56D {Dummies} LUGS
• 62D {Beau Brummell, famously} FOP

The first letters of these entries spells the answer to the mega meta: LOSE YOURSELF by 39A EMINEM.

This is exceedingly clever. So much meta material in one 15×15 grid! And of course, if you trawl back through all of the 2024 puzzles, you will find one “M*** m***” clue in each (for example, January: 86A {Monopoly multitude} DEEDS) with the first letters of those entries spelling DOUBLE M CLUES. (The red herring is an additional pointer to this mechanism, since MONDAY MONDAY is of the form “M*** m***”.) However, most importantly you will also find one “**MM**” clue in each (for example, January: 42A {Summer grazing spot} LEA) with the first letters of those entries spelling LOSE YOURSELF. (Note that the constructors had to ensure that there was only ever one of these MM bigrams in the clues each month!)

Thanks to the MMMM team of Pete Muller, Mack Meller, and Andrew White for a great year of puzzles. I very much look forward to 2025!