Here's a "week one" meta for you; it includes 5 clues with a leading asterisk which should hopefully bring the difficulty down a bit! I had some fun putting this one together. I trust you will enjoy solving it and seeking the answer to the meta, which is a girl's name. Answer & explanation: https://www.xword-muggles.com/viewtopic.php?p=141509#p141509
Check out "The MOAT Mini Pack of Marching Bands" here: https://www.ephesusscroll.com/about/interest4.html. US$5 gets you 7 Marching Bands which, hard enough on their own, now contain metas too. And once again there's a mega-meta!
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Comments
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My blurb specified "leading asterisks" deliberately! ;)
HeadinHome 🤓15:33 · over 1 year ago
Whew - that was a google workout! Once I got the alternate “El-“ words, I tried the correct method, but since I had Eliezar for the third part, I gave up on the (correct) mechanism (Eleaior??). Just started guessing El-names for girls and got lucky on Eleanor. Now I see I should have read a little further in the Ezra verse!
Carolyn 2s · over 1 year ago
Cute!
MatthewL 🤓5:29 · over 1 year ago
Uggh. Got stuck on ELP too. Took a while. And that's with both my mother in law and sister in law being named Eleanor. Cannot believe I didn't see it sooner. Oh well, lovely puzzle, Ben! Thanks.
JM 10:54 · over 1 year ago
Nice one! Some day I would like to see Ingrid Bergman from Casa Blanca clued as “La Ilsa Bonita.”
Very fun puzzle thanks you! Sagittarius A* threw me off! I had ?EANO for a while before scanning the clues again and realized I missed the LOTR asterisked clue… whoops … btw I think 67A is a typo?
Yes, I corrected the clue when someone suggested the original clue ("Mrs. Sacha Baron Cohen") was wrong. Trouble is, the replacement clue ("La ___ Bonita") was also wrong. I've since edited it again!
I K Snamhcok 🤓11:56 · over 1 year ago
I also had ELP at first. And i had hoped to see my own personal fictional hero — Kal-El, aka Clark Kent, aka Superman — here, but I’m very pleased to have found ELEANOR, which is my dear daughter-in-law’s middle name. Very nice!
Shortcut it a bit since it was advertised as a week 1, so once I caught on to the EL start and had the five replacements I just jumped to Eleanor. Didn't notice until I came here that the first letters spelled out the rest for me (which would have been useful, since I had to look up the spelling ). Lack of knowledge and less than easy google path made getting the 40A replacement tricky, but eventually I got literal and just typed the clue into google, which produced the correct answer. Neat and tidy in the end, but yeah maybe more week 2 than 1. :) Fun stuff, thanks.
No relation, at least not unless you go back many generations. The name is Cornish, btw.
whimsy 12:36 · over 1 year ago
Happy Birthday, Eleanor! (Aren't you glad they didn't name you Wilhelmina -- my first off-the-wall guess!)
Thanks for a somewhat challenging but fun puzzle!
ReB 5s · over 1 year ago
Unfortunately, other than for 39A, I had to look up/google all the other themers as the themers were not in my knowledge base. Even still, I needed one more nudge to get me out of my 42A rabbit hole (ELK), after which the answer came immediately. Not one of my more successful weeks.
Cindy Heisler 2s · over 1 year ago
Happy Birthday to your daughter! Thanks for the puzzle.