Title: “???” by Pete Muller
Prompt:
Answer:
I (Matt) am not able to blog this tonight, so we’re going to Frankenblog this with perhaps several bloggers/commenters adding to provide a full picture of this year-ending meta from Pete. Hopefully a grid and further info to come!
From solver Hector Pefo:
Just a quick post — I hope others can add details and reflections in the comments.
This Mega Meta Reveal puzzle tells us to NAME THAT TUNE by asking, MAY I HAVE A WORD (it also spells out the Red Herring answer of APPLE RECORDS).
The mechanism that hides the Mega Meta answers (two song titles from 1973) is the same that Pete used to hide lines from the lyrics of those songs in the regular monthly meta puzzles this year. Some entries are clued as being part of a “lyric from a 2022 song,” and others as part of a “song lyric from 1967.” Looking up and listing the song titles in both groups, we see that taking a word from each title, in grid order, produces AMERICAN PIE on the one hand, and I’D LOVE TO CHANGE THE WORLD, on the other. These Don Maclean and Ten Years After hits are the Mega Meta answers. Knowing which words to pick from the titles was down to your ability to spot the familiar titles and lyrics — so it was a big help that I’d grown up playing these songs on the guitar. That was a long, long time ago, but “I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.”
Thanks to Pete for another great year of puzzles! Solvers, maybe you’d love to change the world, but don’t know what to do; if so, I’ll leave it up to you to please go over to Pete’s site for instructions on how to contribute financially to the MMMM’s supporting a worthy charity. If enough of us do that, he’s willing to provide another year of this wonderful series of puzzles and accompanying music videos of his own band’s performances (they are really good).