We've Got Leftovers

Answer: I'M STUFFED

Explanation: Per the title, we'll be looking for leftovers - more specifically, "left"s and "over"s! There are four words on the left part of the grid that can be preceded by LEFT to get another phrase: ALONE, OUT, FIELD, and TOWN. Similarly, five words on the upper part of the grid can be preceded by OVER (so you can imagine the "left"s and "over"s dotting the outside of the grid): LAP, PASS, CAST, ACT, and DUE. Play alternate entries with these new phrases (for instance, LEFT ALONE fits the clue for IGNORED, and so forth). The initial letters of these nine entries corresponding in clock-wise order from ALONE to DUE spell out I'M STUFFED, the fitting answer to this Thanksgiving meta (and I had to stuff a lot in this grid also!).

Beautiful, and a nice chewy challenge for a Gaffneyless Friday!

Fun, happy thanksgiving!

The middle part of a Venn diagram is the intersection, not the UNION.

Thanks for the early puzzle. Fun one for the day after Thanksgiving!

Great puzzle! I submitted my answer in lowercase and it came back incorrect. Good thing I tried with all caps.

So am I. Good one. Thanks(giving), Mikey!

Thanks Mikey. Happy Thanksgiving

My first submission, with the apostrophe in I’m, was rejected. Since it had to be right, I tried again with no punctuation and it was accepted.

Fun puzzle! I got the down overs quickly and knew what it had to be, but more fun to find the full solution. Spent a while looking unsuccessfully for synonyms of over par and oversteer before finally letting that go and seeing the lefts.

ended up randogramming... it took me quite a while to find the ordering, not knowing it was RIGHT UNDER my nose :p

thankful for your neverending cleverness, even if i could never hope to match it to return in kind

Waiting to see if there’s a 75 connection. My early guess was bingo balls and FREE SPACE. There’s not much of that left after Thanksgiving!

Very clever puzzle. I got the “U-F-F-E-D” and figured ‘I-gnored’ and ‘M-issing’ had to be used. I even looked up “overfield” hoping it was an archaic/obscure baseball position - Doh! Also couldn’t get “I’m” to be accepted but “im “ went through. Phew! Thanks Mikey!

Well I guessed it but didn't solve it. Now I have to go back and see how to get there. I know it is going to be clever so I am awaiting the "OK, that's funny!" moment. Not going to peek just yet.

Well that was one of the most difficult backsolves. Turns out there are 9 words that could be paired with OVER, including OVER STEER and OVER PAR. Needelss to say trying to find the alternate answers was lengthy and futile. There is also at least one more LEFT (I admit LEFT did not dawn on me until I looked at the nudges) in that LEFT OFF could certainly be a possibility. Took me forever to get to the letters i needed and then I did not know to do it clockwise, but since I knew what the letters had to be that was of little consequence. Good job stuffing in all that content!

Wow I found that challenging! The grid was both long and tough, and the meta took a while too. I saw multiple opportunities for OVER to be added: over.BRED, ASKED.over, over.PLAN, and over.ICE-POPS.over had two, and SHORTSTOP could have both words left.SHORT STOP.over. Finally saw the clustering around the perimeter (left side, and over top, of course!) and when I focused there I noticed the companion clues/words in the grid (LEFT TOWN was the first one that popped out, because it made me think of O Brother Where Art Thou (“she done R-U-N-N-O-F-T”) which was already in my head from the TOOK OFF entry. All in all, a fabulous feast of a meta!

Nice one, Mikey! Grateful for you. ;)

Was using “EFF-OVER” for a while

Finally got it. This was an extremely Mikey puzzle -- very punny and clever. Thanks for the stuffing!

Very nice! I was on a completely wrong track until the nudges; in retrospect it should have been obvious, but that's how these things go...

I really struggled with this one, but with nudges I finally got it.

Wow what a fantastic meta and puzzle - as always. Very elegant to put the LEFTs on the LEFT and the OVERs on TOP. I needed remedial nudges to see it- I must still be in a Thanksgiving food coma myself.

In a prior life, worked in a restaurant where leftovers were referred to as LO’s - didn’t know if this was otherwise a common thing, but I fixated on it got nowhere. Especially with exactly 9 clues that had “lo” in them. Couldn’t be a coincidence, right??? I guess not… But quite fun, Mikey!

Finally got it after 9 nudges. Then I had to anagram, but that's because I had to use my fire tablet instead of my computer. Fun challenge!

Clever puzzle, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving !

Fantastic meta. I got nudged to the answer, but even after I saw what answer the letters had to spell, it took me a while to realize how they were ordred.

i really enjoyed this one... it had so many layers! I got "UFFED" right off the bat and guessed that "i'm stuffed" had to be the answer but kept trying to attach OVER to all the words with no further progress... then reread the title and i was like what about LEFT? after realizing i had completely IGNORED that part, everything else fell into place. thank you for your puzzles! i am thankful for all the work you put into each and every one of them