X-Word Friendly (Meta)

Nice work, Peter. Got the meta solved before I could complete the grid. :D Have an X-cellent New Year!

It was my WAG, but I figured it out. Thanks, Peter.

I thought of Utica right away, but it took a minute to back solve for it

Staring, Nothing, Nothing. . . HAH! There it is.

Loved it...great title...thanks Peter!

My original hunches were OCALA, which seems to be in about half the crosswords I do. But no, it was the city deeply involved in pharmaceuticals. I found the grid to be a bit challenging, though my inner 12-year old loved the clue at 42A.

Could have been nothing else! I remembered the answer to the last puzzle but not the mechanism, so I spent a LOT of time trying to retrofit. At one point I got lured by the dark-side and saw TEM N E along with a reference to ASU (that is just diabolical!!!) but luckily I knew well enough that it was UTICA that I resisted the shiny object.

Thanks for a bit of nostalgia (I suppose 4+ years ago was nostalgic for many reasons) and here is hoping for many more years of solves.

Tom

Took a minute, but finally found my way. And yes, what else could it have been? Thanks for the puzzle, Peter!

Nice one Peter. My wife grew up in Utica and we visit family there often. I want to meet up with Al Sisti for lunch one of these days. Thank you for all the time and effort you put in editing the MMM puzzles. You published my very first one (Muscle Contraction). Looking forward to many more. Happy New Year!

I thought fersure it was gonna be TEMPE, until the grid decided it would have to be TEMNE. DOH!

Nice! I did try ERIE first before even looking for the mechanism. But then I got the U and the C and knew it just with those.

Loved the timely appearance from J Lo

Late start due to travel. Needed to check a couple things in the SE corner before I could finish it, but turns out what I had was right. Mechanism jumped to mind almost immediately. Very clever, and lots of fun clues. Fun stuff, thanks. And thanks for all your efforts editing the MMM!!!

How cool... and what a perfect title! Thanks for the home-age...

I felt sure this would involve adding X or CROSS to the final words, based on the title and the wording of the prompt. So SPANx (the shapewear), crossBONEs (skin and bone becomes skull and cross bones). When that led no where I just thought of cities that are often used. TEMPE was one (and was almost there), and the next one I tried was UTICA, which of course worked, THEN I figured out how you were supposed to get it! Thanks for a year of good puzzles and kind words.

Doh! Shoulda got this one without nudges, but alas... Nice job, Peter!

I saw the 4LW at the end of each themer, but I needed nudge #2 to tell me to try prepending a letter instead of a whole word.

I spent too much time trying to use the crossword-friendly words: BOA, ONE, (Aunt) BEA, SPA, and X? to get somewhere. Wasn't happenin' ! Thanks for this and for marvelous Monday management, Peter!

First thought was Rouen, when saw ROE in same row as BOAT. Plenty of rabbits in there, especially if one goes astray shortening almost all of those ENDings to three-letter words. Thanks for the nudges and the MMM master class, Peter. Happy 2025!

Argh! Needed nudge 2.

Fun puzzle.

Through the peculiarities of Crosshare all my letters in my grid were blue except for the single X. The result was very distracting.

Needed the 2nd nudge to get there. Not seeing the Easter egg nudge though?