It's a Breeze

WINDerful job as always!

Very nice second step!

Nice one. Thanks

Blown away.

Answer: ZEPHYR

Explanation: Per the echo of the title in 1-D, the word "wind" must be relevant, and that word appears embedded as part of other words in 6 entries' clues: NFL, ONES, TOY, YONDER, ENGLISH, TIDY). Maybe that's the whole mechanism! But the initial letters spell out NOT YET, implying there's at least one other step. (I didn't have to spell out anything here - but this reminds me of an old puzzle in GAMES magazine once. It was a simple matching exercise, where you matched up things in a standard way, and it spelled out something like NOT CORRECT. You then had to think of a more lateral way to pair them, and the final message was I FOOLED YOU or something similar.

lol nice trap... so evil but knew it couldn't be the answer since it was two words

That would have been my wild guess, but so nice to figure it out! Excellent puzzle.

True confession: I saw a Z in the top of the puzzle and couldn’t stop thinking ZEPHYR the whole time. So it was a guess… should have made myself work harder, because that was so clever!

Really nice puzzle on the whole. I really like the freshness of the jocular/punny tone that you go for with your cluing but personally found it challenging to make inroads in the NE owed to it.

Fantastic metanism and puzzle as usual! I found the trap almost immediately but it took me ages to figure out what else to do with those clues.

Loved this one! It would have been easier if I did not have RED for 7D unntil I figured out what I needed it to be.

Great job, Mikey! Like HeadinHome, I was thinking ZEPHYR from the start, which did help to spot the correct mechanism.

Lol. My little rabbit connected WIND and CUBS WIN, so tried to think of how the "Windy City", especially with your "It's a meta!" cluing for METROPOLIS. (Chicago?... Nope, only 7 letters!). Trying to parse 1D as WIN "D" and scouring the grid and clues also leads to... well, 8 words! I found the first secret message, which I then followed with another secret message: If you remove WIN from "winnow" and "wintry" clues, it reads TRY NOW! Hmm... I realize I'm now having a conversation with a rabbit! Maybe I should type in HARVEY just for fun?

Thanks for the whirlwind adventure, Mikey! =)

I too surmised zephyr and was right, but without looking at any hints or comments here I went back to the grid determined to backsolve. But all the rest of the evening it was a case of success being NOT YET. Finally figured it out after heading up to bed, sometime around midnight. Quoting Dr Seuss: PUP is UP! Thanks, Mikey for this super trickster!

Me gusta!

MAN was I overcomplicating this lovely puzzle which I made a 5 or 6 despite MikeyG's difficulty rating. I got soooo down a rabbit hole with WIND TRAP and a DUNE reference. WIth DROPLET right there and people winnowing water out of DEW condensed from CLOUDS with the METROPOLIS clue containing the word meta and Zendaya's armor a visual reference to the robot in the film Metropolis...how could I be wrong. I did see the "WINDS" but there were only 4 (dummy, look closer). But when I said WOOD wind and WOODY and then saw WINDEX and REX I knew it had to be somehting. I got the PHYR so knew what it had to be and then finally backtracked since there were not that many Z's and REWIND seemed to be a natural (though I did not see it until I went back). The "dwindles" was so well hidden I would never have seen it. I spent a lot of time trying to use WINtry, WINnow. A great puzzle and lovely AHA! Mikey you blew my mind.

So, how does 92 relate to Zephyr? The Lincoln Zephyr was certainly out of production by then, it doesn't seem to tie to Harry Caray, enlighten me please. (OK, just read and see that the puzzle number has no relevance this time)

The English horn clue had me thinking about wind instruments, and then seeing KAZUO, one letter off from kazoo, got me totally fixated on that path.

Stepped back enough to see the other wind clues and get "not yet" but then was stuck there for a day until nudged to keep looking at those clues.

Love it! Very nice touch with the NOT YET!

This was a brilliant puzzle, and I wonder what triggered the idea. I followed the red herring, and it took me a while rethink the windy clues. Now if only I could save this word for Scrabble.

Had all but given up on this, waiting for nudges, but whistled through the MMM quickly and had the rest of my 3 hour flight ahead of me so gave it another look. Lots of turbulence maybe helped me see all the wind in the clues. I fell face first in the trap, but started writing all those windy clue words out and WOOD and EX jumped out! Great Aha moment - hopefully the pilot will find some smooth air so I can celebrate with a mid-morning coffee!

Was stuck in the trap forever, but gave it a fresh look today and finally saw WOODY and REX (nice double up on the Toy Story names, by the way) and was off to the races. Like many others, I had fixated on ZEPHYR but could not find a way to make it work until now. Thanks for the puzzle, Mikey!

Terrific. And I love the "NOT YET" step.

Lucky guess; now to try and back-solve before seeing any spoilers in the comments here.

This was actually the first 6LW I thought of way back when I first saw the prompt before I ever looked at the puzzle!

It took me 5 nudges to get me out of that trap. Definitely an ingenious puzzle!

Five star rating.