Once Upon a Time

The funny thing is that I was looking for clues that match the words with 'time' prepended to them, even though I'd seen 'upon' while trying to find the first step.

Perfect Sssunday puzzle.

Apparently, Mwoychick utilized TIME TRAVEL in order to solve this 5 days ago!

Nicely done Cap’n. And congrats on that 60 lb. striped bass! Hey wait a minute, wasn’t it 40 lbs. the last time you told that story?

Enjoyed this one, Cap'n! Thanks!

Fun, Cap’n! Thanks!

After 15 minutes—OK no alternates! Thanks, Capn Rick!

What Eric Porter said. We tried to make it way harder than it was.

Honored to have solved your metas, Cap’n. Time and time again!

Perfect Sunday starter. Once I'd found the themers (symmetry is such a big help), I was like a quarterback in the pocket going through the rotations. The first and obvious one (initial letters) isn't there. The second one (parallel clues) also goes nowhere. A second look at the title led to the next logical target, and bingo.

Nice and smooth!!! I must admit I spent wwwaaayyy too much TIMElooking for synonyms for the compound words, despite the hint from the title. Thanks Capn!

Wow. Okay, I figured it was you look for Time in the grid and look above them but all I could find were PERIOD, IDES, and NOW. Took nudge two to realize there had to be seven (gasp) of them so I had to look elsewhere.

Thanks Capn Rick! No hints needed...another fun SSS meta!

Nice!

Late getting to this, but finally solved. Saw the TIME words pretty quickly, but then like others, I tried to make it too hard. Thanks for the puzzle, Rick!

Here's an idea for a meta I don't really think I'm going to get around to create. The title is "Scramble Eggs on top" (Is that a phrase? A title of a book? I dunno, sounds familiar). You have 3 or 4 themers with with the letters E,G,G as a group but not in order, and the letters beneath the E the G then the other G... oh, darn, but won't work as the two Gs are indistinguishable. Okay some other word... The idea here was I thought maybe the "votENO" had ONE (as in once) so below you have DOP and so on. The HONORED above OWEDTO could make WOT... it obviously it wasn't that.

So nice to be able to end the weekend on a win. Thanks.

I didn't get it immediately; wnet looking for VACATION, HOUR, WORMHOLE FEATURE, etc. WHen that didn't work I tired the letters of the TIME words and thought I was going to get something to do with glasses. Then tried the letters of the clues (a ls some other constructor I know), then figured the ONCE probably HAD to mean something and it sure did. Great CR meta.

Late start, but insta solve, since it was more or less what I expected from the title. I didn't even remember to read the prompt lol. Nice aha when I realized why the themers started at 2A instead of 1A. Very spiffy, as usual. Thanks. :)

I'm solving from a different time zone. It's Galactic Time where I am, of course... and on a planet far, far away! ;) A super fun puzzle and masterfully constructed... Thanks, Cap'n.