ACL Grid: 6 mins; Meta: first thing I thought of
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Greetings from Downunder! It’s Ben with another release from Ariadne’s Crossword Library. This month we have another guest constructor, Heather Gearan, with her second Ariadne puzzle. The title is “No One Can Divide Them”, and the meta answer is a novel.

Before starting, I noticed that it’s a smaller grid than normal (13×13). Then, as I was filling in the grid, I realised the following just had to be a meta clue, given its similarity to the puzzle title wording:
- 32A. {You can’t divide them (except by one and themselves)} PRIMES
So after finishing the grid, the first thing I thought to do was look at all the prime numbered entries:
- 2D WISP
- 3D URSA
- 5A/D TBH/TRI
- 7D HIDEF
At this point, I guessed that the answer was WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Yes, indeed:
- 11D EONS
- 13A ROI
- 17D INFOTECH
- 19D NICEIDEA
- 23A/D GREECE/GPA
- 29D HAD
- 31D EDY
- 37D ILLBE
- 41D GELT
- 43A HABIT
- 47D TADS
- 53A SLED
As a meta constructor myself, I thought 19D was eminently apropos: NICE IDEA, indeed! Well done, to Heather, and to Emma for editing this fun series.
Same thing happened to me. Altho it did cross my mind earlier that it might be The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but that was a novella, I think.