Going to Extremes

Good one! (Any specific reason why the clue for EQUINOX had an asterisk?)

The meta answer is OVEREXTEND (Hint: Find a 10-letter verb). Five symmetrically placed Across clues are involved in solving the meta:

17A. Jeep Wrangler or Toyota 4Runner, e.g.: OFFROADSUV

29A. Kristin Bell's "The Good Place" role: ELEANOR

38A. March 21st occurrence: EQUINOX

47A. Program lister since 1953: TVGUIDE

64A. Place for your book or glasses, say: NIGHTSTAND

The puzzle was called "Going to Extremes." What happens if you "go to the extremes" of those five answers (in other words, their first and last letters)? From top to bottom, you get the letters in the word OVEREXTEND, a 10-letter verb associated with going to extremes that also satisfies the puzzle's hint.

Nice one! Was there a way to narrow down which long entries to use? I'll admit, I figured we'd use first and last letters and then started from the obvious long ones and the central one and intuited the other letters from there. Was there a step I missed that ruled out the other 7- or 8- letter across entries?

Knowing your style a little more, the title was enough of a foothold that I immediately looked to the end of words. The middle one I figured had to be part of it (symmetry usually places one of the answers in the middle with any five multiple and since this was 10 I knew I had to get two letters from each using the ends). Therefore it was probably 1st and last long and middle, which left me with only 4 more possibilities really and once I had OV??EX??ND it was an easy back solve to find the right ones (by then I knew what they had to be). Still great mechanism, especially if you are not used to solving these a lot, and some fantastic fill and cluing (some I fully intend on stealing!!!)