Head Out on the Road

Answer: WAY TO GO

Explanation: As per the clue to ABBR, this puzzle deals with thoroughfare abbreviations. Seven common ones are concealed in across entries in the grid: LN, CIR, DR, RTE, ST, AVE, CT. These do not occur anywhere else in the grid, and I used the USPS directory of common abbreviations to ensure others didn't make it in, but things like BR, TER, and UN still did, hence the qualifier on the ABBR clue. (I have a feeling a "terrace" might be more common in street addresses than a "circle" is! If anyone can find any data on this, I'd love to see it!). Per the directive "Head Out on the Road," we take the first letter (head) atop (on) each of these abbreviations. These spell WAY TO GO in grid order - my message to you for solving it, apropos since roads definitely are a way to go!

Oh, and I almost forgot, this puzzle was clearly crafted in honor of ROUTE 66!

Nice. Solid 2 I think.

beautifully constructed!

Nice one thanks.

And the same message back at you, Mikey. Very nice!

Great job Mikey!

this felt like a solid week 32... tbh after puzzling this for several hours i made a desperate guess and only saw the metanism after confirmation... sorry for the constant refrain, but i want so bad it hurts to see what you geniuses see and i just cant i guess

part of what held me up was that in looking for usps abbreviations i found IS in both 44a and 54a... but i guess an island isnt really a thoroughfare is it... sry for being dumb

all in all thanks for the puzzle... and thanks for including meta enumeration in 31d, that really helped :) (for real, that was my only in, intentional or not)

Had to remind myself: We no need no stinkin' Terrace, Branch, or Union! Head out on the road took some deciphering. Nice work, Mikey -- my only issue is that you couldn't get MEWS in there! :-)

Took me a while, and tried every rabbit hole out there before finally reading the title again and seeing "on the road". Doh. Sometimes I outsmart myself. Thanks for the puzzle, Mikey!

Nice one!! Haha, you were tempting me. I just had time to solve the grid and see what the metanism was going to be before I had to leave for a matinee theater performance. Was thinking of possible street abbreviations all through the music of MJ. And I thought of a few too many... I also tried ALLofit for Alley (which is pretty lame and not really an abbreviation). I also tried decapitating the abbreviations, or the letters above, before it occurred to me to try the reverse. And ditch the ALLEY-OOP. An apt road-themed meta for puzzle #66 - I got my kicks! Thanks, Mikey!

Nice

Cool! I spent my summer just down the Pacific Coastal Hwy from Santa Monica, end of the trail for Route 66.

This morning I was 3 places down to oldjudge on the leaderboard. I beat him by 10 places. Now I'm 20 places down. I get that it's not really a leaderboard, because test solvers are allowed to enter despite having already solved puzzles before they're posted and they get bonus leaderboard points as well. But, whah?!

I live on a Circle too!!! Took me way too long to get this, but finally cracked it. Way to go Mikey!

Got distracted by ALL (was thinking alley). But made it with a nudge (or two). Great, as always!

Nice.

Needed the nudges finally to pull me up after tripping over step 2, though I was close to the solution, having tried looking at the letters above the street abbreviations. But this is where the title and my acquaintance with cryptic puzzle clues totally misdirected me. I read the title as "Head out..." - which cryptically would mean to drop the first [head] letter, not to selectively use the first letters. Oh well, a well constructed puzzle even if I found an unintended red herring.

Also I would note that there was a glitch - second word with an RT: 44A aRTesian. I marked that in my mind with as question mark as a possible oversight duplicate since 39A had to be valid as the central grid entry and none of the other street abbreviations were duplicates. And as it turns out, since this R has a black square over it, doesn't fit your metanism.

I’ve been in a cul-de-sac for two days chopping heads off things. Happy for the green light !

Thanks Mikey! I had the mechanism but had used a couple of wrong abbreviations (TER and CR) and missed LN and ST...doh! Your nudges helped get me on the correct route to the finish line.

Very nice! I was on the right track with the abbreviations but was somehow completely overlooking LN, even though I specifically looked for LN, for a while. Oy. But I was oblivious to the "Head On" part of this until your nudge. Great puzzle, thanks Mikey!