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“Let’s Get the Band Back Together”by Pete Muller, Mack Meller, and Andrew White (Matt G.)
Prompt: The meta for this puzzle is a rock band with numerous hits in the ’80s.
Answer: STRAY CATS, found by 230 solvers
Took an unfortunate wrong turn on this one before course-correcting. Was I the only one or were there scores of us?
Wrong turn was: noticing that the five long theme entries share a connection with each other. (voice-over: “hmm, well…sort of…”)
Our five themers appeared to be (and in fact, were):
18-A: [Comedic actor who sings “Steve’s Lava Chicken” in the new Minecraft film] = JACK BLACK
26-A: [“Nights in White Satin” band, with “the”] = MOODY BLUES
38-A: [“Rihanna album featuring “Umbrella”] = GOOD GIRL GONE BAD
53-A: [Beatles album featuring “Michelle”] = RUBBER SOUL
62-A: [R&B superduo with the hit “Leave the Door Open”] = SILK SONIC
Here I had the misfortune to notice that one word in each of these entries can (well, sort of) precede the word “band” to form a phrase, and our title is “Getting the Band Back Together”. So we’ve got:
Black band — as in a black armband worn for mourning. The weakest of the five, but keep going…
Blues band
Girl band
Rubber band
Silk band — also a little weak, but the middle three are all strong, so I thought: “probably the right path.”
Well, it wasn’t, and after conceding the weakness of “black band” and “silk band” I went back to the drawing board. Then I noticed that if you put the word “Asylum” after SOUL from RUBBER SOUL, you got the band Soul Asylum. Aha! This is the way. Take the first word of a clue, tack it on to the last word in each of the five theme entries, et voila — you get the name of a band. They are:
BLACK Sabbath (from 57-A)
BLUES Traveler (from 58-A)
BAD Religion (from 35-A)
SOUL Asylum (from 24-A)
SONIC Youth (from 65-A)
The first letters of those spell STRAY, a hint that Stray Cats (no definite article in the band name, important!) might well be our answer. Following the pattern: is there a clue that begins with the word “Cats”? Lo and behold, there is: [Cats opener] at 64 down.
So STRAY CATS our meta answer is, but there is one more flourish: look, in grid order, at the answers of the five clues whose first words are referenced above:
24-A: SYMS
35-A: TAO
57-A: REST
58-A: UTE
65-A: TEENS
That spells STRUT, as in “Stray Cat Strut,” the Stray Cats’ biggest hit and signature song. Nicely done.
4.35 stars. OK, maybe 4.40 for getting AOXOMOXOA in there.
Thanks Matt!
And Happy Mother’s Day all!
230 correct this month, which means difficulty is increasing.
Fun cover this month which will be published Tuesday…
Pete
I also went down the ____BAND path but soon realized that it was not getting me anywhere.
I also got distracted by the neighboring BLACK/BLUES and RUBBER/SILK, which also didn’t get me anywhere. I was nowhere close to getting the right answer, which seemed way harder than I would have expected for May. Last year, the first month that had fewer than 300 solvers was August. I’ll try again next month!
I did exactly the same thing – looking for something about “band” and then “black/blue[s]” and “rubber/silk” but went nowhere. So after staring at the grid for about a half hour, I saw “TEENS” right after “SONIC” and remembered the clue – “Youth.” After that everything started falling into place, with Sabbath and Asylum first, and then figuring Traveler had to be there somewhere. Then I looked for [Bad] Company but didn’t see it anywhere, but then remembered [Bad] Religion.
Figuring this was like most metas, I looked for the corresponding first letters of the answers and found STRUT and, voila – The Struts! But wait – Pete and the gang wouldn’t have left off the last letter of the band’s name, and besides, they weren’t around until the 2010s. So after staring at it about another 15 minutes, I saw it was the first letter of the clues that was the key.
Puzzle: Muller; Rating: 1 star
Way too esoteric for me. How in the world are you supposed to know to connect the last word of a clue with the first word of some other random clue, and by the way that gives you the name of a band? And not knowing Blues Traveler or Bad Religion made it impossible.
I can’t say for sure, or for everyone but …
1) the title hints at getting pieces together
2) we are looking for a band
3) looking at the theme (longer) answers, we probably want the first words, or the last words (or the middle bits together, if there are any words created?), to combine and make bands
For me the key was “Silk Sonic” *immediately* followed by “Youth” (hmm. in the Clues? that’s unexpected)
I know there is a group named Sonic Youth, but I have no idea what they do (offhand)
So I looked for the others, even if you only know of Black Sabbath, it is easy to look up what other Blues, Bad and Soul bands exist that we already have the second word of.
I initially (pun intended) missed “take the initials of the new second words, and repeat the previous process, to find the band name”, and went straight to “take the initials of new Answers and get … STRUT ???”. But still I got there in the end
Very good and clever.
Thank you for the explanation, that does help me make some sense of how to look at these kinds of puzzles.
Hi James
Thanks for being open-minded.
There’s a large range of difficulty in meta puzzles, and once folks get a taste of that really fun “aha” moment, they get addicted and then want an increase of difficulty.
The MMMM tries to address this by starting off on the easy side at the beginning of the year and then getting progressively harder.
Difficulty is pretty subjective, though!
One thing we do is publish a hint on Sunday night at 11pmET on the website (right after contest close) that aims to transform the meta into an easier solve. That gives newer solvers a chance to solve the harder puzzles too.
Happy solving!
Pete