All the Time

Answer: TWENTY-FOUR SEVEN

Explanation: This is a SAD meta. Per the title, highlight all the instances of T, I, M, and E in the grid. You will see the three shapes of the numbers 2, 4, and 7 from left to right, indicating TWENTY-FOUR SEVEN, which certainly means "all the time" and is the answer to the meta! The explanation is a lot shorter than the creation; this probably took about 8 hours or so? The hardest part was the 4 region, especially the top: OCA and NAA are horrendous fill, but not being allowed to use, say, the "E" and the "T" limited things considerably. I did the meta analyzer on this, and the largest side-effect was that we had way more As in the grid than usual! Hopefully, you got an A in solving this!

Cool; thank you! I was trying to think of a comment that used only letters in TIME, but (if Litscape is to be trusted) it turns out there are few such words, none longer than four letters.

whoa!!!! Brilliant! And yep the first thing I saw was all the A's. but then I remembered that wasn't the title. Mechapuzzle definitely helped here. 6-As for you Mikey, this was fun. Great clues, too!

So well done! For whatever reason, I keyed right into it. If I'd done it next week, I'd probably flounder. We that do metas. Our brains are weird.

Nice one! Appreciated the nudge in the prompt about the meta being visually depicted, as I'm normally pretty bad at exploring those mechanisms unprompted!

I saw those As and despaired. A nudge helped me not get my clock wiped. Thanks Mikey.

wow!! awesome construction - it's so damn hard getting letters to fall in specific places - first thing i noticed was that grid symmetry was violated in the middle under salem so i focused near that area more... thought of time-related phrases that could be synonymous with the title including "around the clock" and "24/7" which was gonna be my first WAG guess before all the letter clusters jumped out at me. When I was first playing with "around the clock" idea, i tried to make words in round shapes around the black squares and i saw "anal sex" going clockwise where genoa and emeet meet... thought i was really onto something there

Really awesome puzzle, I needed a nudge though because I was trying to make something out of the entire grid...it looks like a double helix....kinda :P

Me: Tite!

I caved and asked someone for a nudge! Not sure I would have made the required leap without it, though.

I highlighted all the T’s and got nowhere. Saw the one square asymmetry at SNAX / TOOWN, and the odd 10D - and re-read the title. Shaded in a few more squares and “aha, a 2!”. Feverishly shaded the rest like a young Ralphie Parker with his decoder, and… voila. Thanks, Mikey!

Brilliant, and very timely

Went down the A path before the alarm went off, then I got the picture! Thank you, Mikey -- nicely depicted!

So cool! I literally gasped when I saw it. After tugging my hair for so long (I knew NIMIETIES was important... thought it was the letters from MINUTES? NINETIES?) and finally thought, huh it's a lot of letters from TIME, what if I just see where else those are... Definitely didn't expect that to in fact be the mechanism!

Lol. Just what I wanted the answer to be! I'm a visual person, so this was perfect. I just need to print screen and draw on the filled grid to see what I needed to see. ;) Thanks, Mikey.

This one was pretty darn cool. I had the right idea at first, but needed to take it a bit further, which I finally did. Will also say that the nudges didn't really help, because I honestly didn't understand them (par for the course). Thanks for the puzzle, Mikey!

Needed the latest nudge, then I made the pretty pattern to get the answer...

Ingenious! Turns out I kinda had the right idea to start with, but dismissed it because NAA, who would do such a thing?!

Talk about rabbit holes!!! This was a zen rabbit. I looked at all the possibilities and completely discounted filling in all of the TIME squares because, well because it seemed to be just soooo unlikely. I guess I should have known immediately that was the Mx. When I finally did, thanks to nudges, I used my grid which was incorrect because I had ILLUSIONS instead of ALLUSIONS which meant I had 2.47. Now interestingly the question of Karma arises because 2.47 is a Bhagavad Gita verse and verse 2.47 alludes to the "you do not get your reward here you get it in "heaven" so I thought AHA, Eternal Life, which you gotta admit fits the concept of ALL THE TIME. Then, using the Crosshare reveal, I went back and saw 2 4 7 and figured it was the FAR more common 24/7 (and yes I looked for 365). Difficult one, and lots more difficult because of the way I did it, but still quite entertaining.

Finally got it with nudge #3. Amazing construction!

Had to reveal for PLANA and CPO. I had reversed the top and bottom letter: POANA is a grass used in golf courses in the spring sometimes because it’s quick growing and greens up quickly… so it could be the “first course” ?? I had CPL for the USN rank (because what to I know about military ranks?). That made OIFL as the accounting acronym (no idea… was just guessing… I hates all things accounting, and most maths for that matter). ANYhoo… I had actually thought to guess 24-7 as a good answer to the title, and wondered if there were perhaps 24 7-letter words (no, but good try, right?). The nudges made me focus on the grid fill related to T-I-M-E, and coloring those in was like kindergarten days — great fun!

Excellent job, Mike! I really love this type of metanism!