The meta answer is a young athlete who has been locking down major accomplishments in their sport.
This is probably on the difficult side. Apologies to those who don't follow this particular sport; google is your friend. Hit me up if you'd like a nudge at hectorpefo at gmail.
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FrankieHeck solved 2023-10-30T19:29:03.280Z
kurtalert solved 2023-11-06T16:59:25.457Z
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Hector constructor · 2023-10-29T16:29:37.486Z
[spoiler]The themers conceal famous prisons minus one letter each: [J]OLIET, ATTIC[A], SINGSIN[G], RIKER[S]. 64A tells us the answer lacks a T. There aren't THAT many famous prisons, and one with a T is ALCATRAZ, which, applying the mechanism again, becomes (Carlos) ALCARAZ, who is a break-out tennis star. Thanks to Cap'n Rick for grid design help. Let me know how you found this one!
FrankieHeck 22:28 · 2023-10-30T19:36:36.996Z
Is this your first meta, Hector? Your first puzzle? I was so excited to stumble upon it! I got hung up on a couple squares, but enjoyed the grid/clues a lot. I didn't get anywhere with the themers, so I stared at the title and the "NOT" for a long time and then googled "Alcaraz," based on the only prison I could think of. Seeing the result was almost as satisfying as solving the right way! Thanks for the puzzle!
Ooh, nicely done, and you have the distinction of being the first and perhaps only ever solver of my first puzzle! When I saw the buzz around Alcaraz at the US Open (he was #1 at the time, but didn't win), I thought there was a meta possible if other prisons (minus one letter) could fit in themers, and it luckily was pretty easy to do that. No one seems to have found the prisons yet. I'd hoped "slammer" and "locked down" would have done it, but that seems not to have been enough. Or possibly some have found that the missing letters spell JAGS, which is unfortunately a sports team that has nothing to do with the meta.
FrankieHeck 22:28 · 2023-10-31T13:10:00.637Z
Oh man, I didn't even make the "locked down" connection! I think you left lots of good hints, I just was so convinced that there were sports references I wouldn't get that I didn't look for other references. Another thing I considered was that "No T" might be referring to no testosterone, and I did a brief search of rising transgender athletes. Way off there! I was also working on little sleep after a whirlwind weekend during which my son got married (on a week 4 Gaffney weekend, no less). I really do hope to see more Hector puzzles. I have mad respect for your meta skills.
kudos on the first puzzle! i should have went down the prison route more... but the jails didn't immediately jumped out at me (in your list of prisons I only heard of sing sing and rikers)... since i didn't see them i just assumed "slammer" was a nickname for something in a sport i had no clue about... i incorrectly interpreted "No T" as "no testosterone" and the usage of the pronoun "their" in the meta prompt led me to google "young nonbinary athlete that doesn't take testosterone" so submitted a completely random guess of Quinn, Olympic gold medalist in women's soccer (so the fourth themer ball striker sort of made sense)