Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Definitely a week 4/5 puzzle. I thought it was very well done. Nice job Mikey! Oh, and thanks for Anthony Rizzo.

Thanks for setting the puzzle! I'm enjoying all the puns and dad jokes.

Maybe I just haven't quite figured out the final pattern, but it felt like the "BAD MOOD" part of the solution worked different from the others. I thought what I was doing was "start from the beginning of the entry, move once cell to the right right for each word of the phrase until you're on the rainbow color word; then go up one cell." But clearly, that doesn't work with a BAD MOOD that has three empty cells above it at the beginning and only two words in the phrase. Yet empty cells do count, or "Once in a BLUE moon" wouldn't index to A. So, that was weird, but apparently not weird enough to throw off everybody!

It took me a while to get "ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK" right, because New York was briefly named New Orange (and I didn't understand what the numbers meant).

I was amused by the reference to Gaffney's "IN-B", which seems rather apropos.

Excellent puzzle! And I feel slightly better about not getting the MGWCC after managing to solve this one :-)

Needed help. Nothing shiny for me.

Loved this one, Mikey! Even with needing some help, it was very fun!

Very nice. Anyone else get stuck on Green New Deal? I used the nudges, and would rate this very difficult, so 5.

Excellent! Although I was experiencing woozy's first step of it "just sitting there..." -- and needed nudge #6 to kick in for me. And as soon as I got the first 2 or 3 letters I was calling out what I wanted the next ones to be!

Got the first step without too much trouble; needed the nudges to move on. Thanks for the challenge!

I had the right idea, but needed some of the nudges to narrow it down. Very nice, Mikey. And again, I love your clues!

This one really took my mind off the Gaffney meta this week! Needed nudge 7 to finish it. Some of my rabbit holes as I waited for nudges: Reading the poem being referenced in the clue for 23D...lots of colors mentioned in that poem! And reading about all the color phrases. "Painting the town red" originated from a MARQUIS, Mood Indigo is by DUKE Ellington, and Once in a Blue Moon was performed by EARL Thomas. I also found the letters to spell most of the colors in intriguing clusters in the grid. In the end, I knew I'd just have to wait for help on that final step. Fun as always.

Whew! Even with all the nudges this was a week 5 for me. I can't believe how long it took me to think of the ORANGE phrase LOL

Ingenious, but way over my head and out of my league.