Drink You Under The Table (Meta)

I usually don't love forced grid fill, but I literally laughed out loud at 6D :-)

Elementary, my dear benchen71. At least you DID warn us about the grid! lol

At first I was like, what the heck? But now, I really like this meta, despite the horrid fill. (Maybe I like it because I got it?)

It occurred to me while solving that I am not bothered by 2-letter entries anymore. I kinda like the wacky clueing, too. Evolution is the slow grinding away of rigidity…….or a lowering of standards. Glass half full imo.

Look! No grid needed.

Love me a clever Periodic Table puzzle! Thank you, Ben!

Stumbled a bit on this since I thought Rutherfordium was RU, giving me IOS WINE which is a wine that does exist out there - but only if you have the internet to search for it. Regrouped and crorf’ed my way to the finish line

Very nice! Thanks

This is my kind of grid! -- literally, the kind I tend to make because of my inadequacies. But I think they can be plenty fun! Thanks, Ben!

As a former chemistry professor, I always enjoy a good periodic puzzle. After finding the "cocktail" answer, I'll admit it I had to let things sit for awhile before seeing the path to the real answer. Thanks Ben!

Such a fun solve, even if it DID take me a while. On to Happy Hour, with the swagger of success.

Faked me out for a bit, then I finally caught on. Nice one, Ben.

Great puzzle even though I fell into the trap. You led us there but clearly told us not to submit that cocktail.

I tried hightlighting every single element symbol, and when that was too confusing to figure out every two-letter symbol. I even tried highlighting just the symbols in the themers. I finally considered the title more literally.

Very nice.

I loved finding both answers. Make mine a double!

I has no problem with the grid and I loved your clues. It did take me a bit to get the meta, though. Nice one, Ben!!

N’ice! (Sorry, I was really staring for a pun there.) I was in RED ‘ERRING land for quite some time before getting the aha. Thanks, Ben!

DOH - VERY clever misdirection. I looked all over the place for letters and finally it hit me - look where he told you. I had a problem because of the fact that I know about CHERRY HEERING a liquor, RED HERRING BEER and of course the RED HERRING COCKTAIL. I did not find the H for HERRING because I was trying to use the black square as a space. Why I did not tumble to the fact that you were literally telling us that the answer we got was wrong I'll never know, obviously too task oriented. Thanks for the workout.

I identified early on two possible mechanisms based on the title phrase "Under The [Periodic] Table". The in-grid mechanism led to the RED HERRING. The second mechanism worked after I got a technical update from the author to fill in the hole in my solution.

I enjoyed the cluing, especially 22A, which reminded me of the classic prize question: "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?"

Including in a separate comment because it's a slightly long anecdote. Your RED HERRING gave me a flashback to when I was working on a digital treasure hunt puzzle. Toward the end was a crude bitmap image with some riddles. I noticed under one of the pieces of clipart that the pixels were weirdly asymmetric. After flipping the image and interpreting it as Morse code, I got "rubeum allec" - latin for red herring. :/ I was much more annoyed with that one.

So glad you decided not to just leave this as an idea. The theme entries were clever. I was so proud of myself for thinking of the mechanism only to get RED HERRING. But, I was convinced and loved that mechanism so much that I couldn't let go. After a while it finally dawned on me to actually use the periodic table. Normally, I wouldn't like metas that don't rely much at all on the grid. But in this case the RED HERRING was actually more of a clue I was in the right direction, so I found this to be a really rewarding meta. I feel like you have a knack for creating metas that gently lead one's cognition in the right direction.

Ice wine? is that a thing? I was of course stuck on the red herring RED HERRING for days . The idea of looking up the actual table came to me in my sleep I think. That was pretty clever, Ben!

Thanks, Ben - I finally got it with a pointer to a particular periodic table

4th times a charm... We were doing everything right except someone was really careless looking at the periodic table and came up with iOS wine ... Apple wine that's a thing... Right? Thanks for the fun puzzle.

LOL. I needed the nudges to find the REAL answer. But loved the RED HERRING. I had no idea that was actually a cocktail! Thanks Ben

No fair. I never heard of the thing I was supposed to fall for! :)

I usually use this periodic table: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/periodic-table/

So ILA WINE, anyone?

I needed the last nudge. I saw the five elements and looked at the elements numerically below (and above), but failed to look at the actual table - doh.

So, a meta that can be solved without filling in one item on the grid. Not a fan. I don't think that this really meets the definition of a meta puzzle as the answer does not come from within. However, brilliant puzzle!