Too Much (Meta)

Nice Aha! moments!

Thanks Ben!

I had to look at this one from a lot of angles to finish it up. It wasn’t a clean solve but it still felt rewarding.

I started by getting IMPLY just as a guess, saw the corroboration in the grid. Then tried to form two five letter words going across (my own fault for not looking at the meta prompt) and it took three more grid-inspired prefixes til I saw the answer. Thanks for the morning challenge!

Silly me, I kept thinking”how am I going to determine which two letters to add” I got the last “hint” IMPLY but since I was solving on Crosshare I could not see all the clues (doing on a phone) and the it hit me excessively sad MAROSE nice one Ben

Ditto Meg below. I loved the aha. Thanks, Ben!

Nice one, Ben! Very neat idea and execution. And, as usual, always enjoy learning new Aussie trivia.

Super superposition. (FWIW, I'm at one degree of separation. I have been at small gatherings with Mama Gaga and Papa Gaga but alas never Stefani.)

Appreciate the signals in the clues to let us know which ones would define the new answers. Very fun stuff, thanks.

But there's no such thing as too much puzzling!

Cute the second step was just enough to make this not as obvious as it seems.

The clue for tutor seemed really weird but not enough that I didn't readily see the hints for extremes in the four others right away. (The reference to a meta very nicely hid it in HINT)

Enjoyed it!

Outrageously good puzzle!

Well done, Ben! Great construction and a most fun solve. But not TOO MUCH fun ;)

Well done, with a nice trail of breadcrumbs to follow.

Nicely done. It took me longer than it should have because my old eyes mistakenly saw 2 quotation marks as asterisks. Once I got it narrowed down to 5 words it went much smoother. I always enjoy learning something new from your puzzles. Thanks, Ben!

That was fun and well- constructed! For a good laugh, check out Weird Al's "Perform This Way". Lady Gaga actually loved the parody!

Couldn’t figure out how to find the 2 letters until I realized TE-ACHING was in Train Extravagantly (duh), which was the first one I solved out of the air. Having figured out the three that had the needed initial letters in the “-ly” phrase (Trains Extravagantly TE, Ridiculously Absurd RA, Disproportionately Expect DE), I kept trying to apply IU (Inordinately Unwanted) or EO (Extraordinarily Opaque) to the other two, until I realized it was just the initial letters of the first 2 WORDS of the clue (not the -ly phrase) that furnished the two letters. This was a fun chase! I did more googling on the costumes than I needed to… which itself was an education. (Kept thinking BUBBLES and MEAT had to be in the grid somehow!)

Immensely delightful! Thanks, Ben!

I was matching RABID to 68A rather than 52D. It didn't really matter since I didn't notice those breadcrumbs to begin with. Great puzzle