Popular Numbers

A puzzle that, like several before, have come to me on a "road trip". It was considerably harder to construct that I thought it might be and therefore may have some crunchy fill. It might also require a little Mr. G depending on your familiarity with the subject, but everything should fall into place.

I had some expert help from three testers; Al Sisti, whimsy and rjy without these individuals who suffer through the early editions of sometimes REALLY flawed puzzles this whole thing would not be possible.

If forced to rate it I would say:

Kitten

Calico

*PERSIAN

Puma

Lion

Nudges will be Saturday or of course earlier by PM if needed.

Apparently "earlier" is the operative word, this is playing much harder than I thought it would (of course):

NUDGES:

Nudge 1] Quick, sing the first line of almost any of the themers

Nudge 2] Given the Title of the meta what part of that do you think is important

Nudge 3] Now you have some bits of information that point you to something

Nudge 4] How do you usually resolve that conundrum

Nudge 5] I know, I know the earworms abound, but you are unlikely to forget what day it was in the park or the day you heard about Billie Joe McAlister and his leap. I mean it was, after all, a sleepy, dusty delta day...

Well unless there is a massive rush to complete tomorrow, it looks like 40 will be the count for this one. I'll toss out one more nudge, well actually more of a "Here's how you solve" for those on the verge:

BLATANT PUSH "September"has the line "Do you remember the 21st night of September" and "Ode to Billie Joe" has "It was the third of June another dusty, sleepy delata day". With the 3 other songs can you see how you might get 10 letters out of those?

The Reveal:

For a graphic representation of the solve go to: