Give Me 5!

Loved it!!!!!!!!! Thanks, Mikey!!!!!!!!! :D

SO EXCITED it is indeed A TREAT how this meta ties everything together. Thanks so much Mikey for another year of punny goodness.

Loved it - especially the 5! tie in to your 120th meta. Great work!

Just deduced from the title and puzzle number. Is there a more involved mechanism to be found?

Answer: FACTORIAL

Explanation: Per the central entry and the title, exclamation marks will be central to this meta - note the 9 of them in the center entry's clue as well, solidifying the prompt. Nine of the entries' clues contain entities that should include an exclamation mark: SPOOF ("Airplane!"), DIANA ("Stop! In the Name of Love"), SEARCH (Yahoo!), CRUST (Yum! Brands, Inc.), SOMEONE ("Help!"), REVERSE (Uno Attack!), BRITISH (Westward Ho!), WILLA ("O Pioneers!"), DOUBLE ("Jeopardy!"). Per the title, the fifth letters of these entries spell FACTORIAL, fitting since 5! ("5 factorial") is equal to 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120, our puzzle's number!

That was a fun solve!!

I got a bang out of it!

It took longer than it should have, but it was a good one.

Counting those tiny exclamation points took a magnifying glass!!!!!!!!! Thanks, Mikey.

Being a math guy and knowing that your themes are often puzzle number related helped me get this one quickly.

120 is both a factorial and triangular (1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 = 1+2+3+...14+15), as are 1 and 6. Apparently it is an open question whether there are any larger numbers with this property.

Don’t even need the math headache… enjoyed the puzzle without following that part of the explanation (just need to be able to count and spell!!!!!!!!!). ( : I wasted a lot of time trying to reverse things, since that clue was so flag-wavy. Each of the 9 sections (NW, N, NE, etc and the center) of the puzzle has a vowel-consonant-same vowel pattern somewhere in it. OLO, EWE, ANA, EVE, ACA, etc. Figured those were “reversible” so something was to be done with that. Needed the published nudge about the exclamation points. First one I thought of was O Pioneers! (Then it made sense why that weird stuff about Yum foods was there for 32A… that was highlighted from the beginning).

That was very cool!

Punctuation and math! Mikey does it all!

I'm not up on my factorials, but I did notice that 5 gazinta 120 (two-thousand) and twenty-four times, which possibly amounts to the same thing.

I had such a twisted journey to the answer (complete with having to stop for directions). I will explain a bit later, but once again a superb puzzle that ties everything together and even gives us the answer in the title...though we did not know it.

Hoping for another year of Mikey puzzling puzzles!

ETTA's "At Last!" in the clues also needed an exclamation point and had me spinning my wheels! Was that a little Easter Egg?????????

Tried ONETWENTY and ONE TWENTY first, since those are nine-letter term, but alas, that was a step too far. Thanks for the puzzle, Mikey!!

Oh, for .....

It really was only of my first thoughts. (Taking fifth letters). I just had to be shoved face down into the mud with Dr. Tom's "Connections" nudge. And then I had to stare dejectedly for two hours saying "But 9 and 5 are relatively prime" before it occurred to me "should I go back to the fifth letter idea?"

And excellent. High five for 5! = 120. Good job. And what a number streak you have going!

Bang! You nailed it!