Change Your Tune

One of Mikey's best ever!

Answer: PEPPER

Explanation, Part 1: Four down-clues have a bizarre, and seemingly unnecessary, "in song" appended to them. They are, in order, THEN ISM SILTY TOUR. When a certain letter of each is changed (per the title) with the clue's first character (respectively, W, ', X, F), the iconic Beatles tune "When I'm Sixty-Four" appears. Makes sense with the number of the puzzle as well.

Explanation, Part 2: Note 67-A, the only clue referencing a "tune" and, along with the "words" in the clue and the fact the entry is LYRIC, that signals we have to go off the grid for this one! The lyrics to the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four" are needed to continue.

Explanation, Part 3: Seven (I know, not six!) symmetrically placed entries in the grid are words found in the lyrics to "When I'm Sixty-Four" with one letter changed. The entries, from top to bottom: HARDY, BATTLE, STARING, BUMMER, SWEETER, NIGHTS, SPILL. Each of these words is one letter away from a word in the lyrics to the Beatles song: HANDY, BOTTLE, STATING, SUMMER, SWEATER, LIGHTS, STILL. (Two slight inelegances: 1. These are not the only words in the grid for which this applies; however, they are the only ones that also end with a word found in the lyrics as well! The symmetry should help. 2. STILL is found in STILLIRISE; I didn't catch this until the eve of the puzzle, and it was too much to attempt to uproot everything then.

Explanation, Part 4: The new letters in these words, as gleaned from the lyrics, spell the phrase NOT SALT. That, of course, is not 6 letters - but what on a table isn't salt? PEPPER! This is the answer to the meta and a fitting one, since "When I'm Sixty-Four" appears on "Sgt. PEPPER's Lonely Hearts Club Band." If you missed the center entry, you would've gotten NOTALT, which definitely looks cryptic! Not sure if that will throw anybody or not.

Drat i keep forgetting to time my metas... Anyway, great puzzle as always

puntastic as usual!! phil collins... you see LA!... stereo-types are you really from EARTH?

i'm STARING back at this and this really is a stroke of genius... discovered the "word, 'tis, etc." easter egg i missed out on earlier

Cool! Thanks, Mike.

Wow! That was quite a feat of construction!

Nice one. Thanks

Loved it! Agree with oldjudge, below. This is one of your best, Mikey. Thanks!

Great googly moogly. Needed some guidance on this one. Level 5 indeed.

Dang! Was still tracking down all the words when your hints dropped. Quite a puzzle!

Loved it!

I found 5 of the letters, but OTSAL just wasn’t making any sense. Where was that pesky 6th letter?? Oh - there are 2 more letters??? Not so much an Aha moment as an Ahhh (slap head) moment

Chalk me up for NOTALT! Needed a nudge to take another look at BUMMER!

Whew. Finally made it, with a mixture of bewildered perseverance and the guiding light from a trailblazing solver. I originally had eight letters, including the near/dear combo, but was gently nudged toward the grid's symmetry. Funny how the pieces come together if you simply think about nothing else for the first day and a half of the work week! Another brilliant creation of young Mikey, whose talents (and puns) are matched only by his musical taste.

Wow. I got all of them except STARING/STATING. So I was left with "No Salt" and even then I needed help! This was amazing, Mikey.

Wow that was a challenge even WITH the nudges! My answer makes sense with the letters I got, but I feel I’ve missed a beat?

Ah - just read the explanation. My guess was that this hit was the flip side of sgt pepper (45), so I was close!

I could have had No Salt but instead I had Not Sal -- (Why not poor Sal?) -- because for a long time I missed SPILL as meaningful. My eye was fooled into thinking that HARDY was symmetric with LYRIC, and, silly me, I stopped at 6 entries, thinking that was enough to jive with the prompt, and also believing LYRIC balanced out the symmetry the way FRUITLESSLY did for last week's WSJ. (So I guess that means I can blame my long, drawn out solve on the other MG!) This was terrific -- Thanks, Mikey!

Whew! I don't think I'd have ever gotten it without hints (through #6). Excellent puzzle!

Yikes. School = UCLA + ism anagrams to musical. Yay! Keep going. Great idea. Transition = peal + then is elephant hmm - thought it’d be like musical. Interesting, let’s keep going. Plants (ryes, gourds and algae) nope. Grown in = Earth. Bingo! We get hairstyle. Tour doesn’t seem to have a match, but we’ve come this far - heck just anagram all the entries. Okay. Do it. Well, look at that Santa + tour is astronaut. Hairstyle and astronaut can be buzz. Bummer across the middle. Change that to buzzer. Why? What about musical and elephant. How do I know? I didn’t make this puzzle.

Wow, a three-step meta. I needed that final shrouded "nudgelet" response to my despairing PM ("What a 42A!") to find the seventh and last letter that gave me the final AHA moment! A most exhausting and exhilarating meta. Thanks

OK, that was absolutely crazy! Needed all the hints and then found my way. Amazing!

What a fun touch to use apostrophe as a letter. That turned a clue that almost would have rhymed with its solution into something I could only get past with a major nudge, yet it's so weird that it almost gives itself away.

Rabbit hole parade -- I wonder how many of these others visited, too...

Well this one perplexed me and I wanted to quit but I just could not Let It Be. For several days I would Twist and Shout at the grid as if it were All I Got To Do, but in the end needed some big hints before I could say Here Comes The Sun and watch everything Come Together. I knew there was Something there, and I invoked my meta powers saying Don't Let me Down, but they did, so Yesterday I had to ask for Help. Thankfully Mike made good on his promise to Get Back to me and then With A Little Help From My Friends I was able to find The Word. I'm not saying this was the hardest meta ever but Oh Darlin it was A Long And Winding Road and I spent A Hard Day's Night or two on it. With talent like this around I may just have to give up meta constructing and become a Paperback Writer. I guess I had better take this opportunity to Drive My Car to the store since much of the rest of my time is spent solving, I mean it seems like we have metas Eight Days A Week!

GREAT week 5 puzzle Mike, I wish I had been up to it but I Should Have Known Better.

The steps all fell into place until the last step, when I tried to order the 7 words. I started with lyrical order, which produced TON LAST, -- didn't make sense but made me think of other configurations, such as NOT LAST! So that was a bit of a rabbit trail ...until I finally put them in GRID ORDER! Well, of course!

Needed all your nudges to get to the answer, but happy to have made it...thanks Mikey!