What lies beneath

Totally missed the heavy hints in your blurb. Thank you for the puzzle, and have a great academic year.

Nice one, Alan! Needed the *s and the nudges, but I finally SSSolved!

I did notice overarching to go with beneath but needed your asterisks to find the bridges I needed to look under. Thanks for a neat puzzle.

Was looking under from the onset, but didn't think to just look at the middle until the nudges. Don't know about the middle being the safest locale in case of a bridge collapse, but it's certainly the roomiest.

I think I might have solved this without the asterisks… with TRUSS and PONTOON right there together.

I was expecting to see bridges (names of, or types of) in arch shapes in the grid, and the letter below each arch spelling out something (troll is a great option!). Was that your original idea?

Nice one! If I didn't know better, I might say you were, ahem, trolling us by not putting the asterisks in at first. Thanks for the puzzle!

Thanks for the puzzle, Alan - a fun Sunday diversion. My semester begins tomorrow, too - back to the grind!

Thanks, Alan! Liked the puzzle and the answer. I collected the cute little ones back during the '60's fad; now my daughter lives 2 minutes from the Fremont Troll.

Needed one nudge, probably because there were no billy goats in sight.

Nice puzzle!! Civil engineering background came in useful for once! Once I hit the first themer with “truss” and had the hint “mythical AND modern” creature I had a good idea where you were going :)

Nice! I needed the first hint, I totally missed the bridge theme until that.

No lies, despite fear of heights, took this one out for a nice SSStroll. Thanks Alan! Hope you have great students this year.

I had kind of figured that the words you mentioned were the "themers" but I was looking for something in the spaces they were arched over (taking the end of one word and going to the start of the next, essentially the empty "plus sign" squares) and trying to fill in letters that would make words. So yes I complicated the heck out of it. I saw letters PHO and was sure I could make PHOENIX out of it somehow to fit the prompt. Troll is a much better word and, unfortunately they are probably more now than during the Grimm days of Fairytales. Nice one Alan, thanks for the prayer help on Sunday because I definitely called on the Lord a few times...well in a roundabout way. Have a great year in the classroom, I hope they appreciate you as much as we do.

Thanks for another great puzzle, I definitely needed the nudges as I would never have thought that those could be clued by the same word on my own, asterisks or not... I was looking for mythical creatures, thinking SETI corresponded with yeti and PHO with phoenix... Anyway thanks for the nudges and making me the answer to your puzzle

Here's what I should have remembered: Take the five themers and throw them into a single Google search. Somewhere near the top of the list of links will be the magic word.

Thanks! I solved without nudges by realizing the themers are bridges, and then from the prompt and title I figured it must be troll. I completely missed that troll was spelled out under the bridges. Very cool!

got to the puzzle late...needed the asterisks, but not the nudges....thanks for the fun SSS meta!