Okay... because the straightforward and not that difficult meta was being completely obfuscated by complex and convoluted grid clues I have added simply grid clues in the majority of clues that have nothing to do with the meta. I'm not kidding. The actual meta was not meat to be hard per se. Weird, and I was getting punchy with the non-meta clues. But it wasn't meant to be hard.
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Wow! Not a single attempt at the meta! Well, I've only got myself to blame for two reasons. 1) I played it up as a weird off the wall and bad meta. It's actually very straightforward and simple and 2) I chose to get punchy with the clues and have some quirky clues. With so many oddball clues its obscures and hides the legitimate meta clues.
So.... pretend all the weird convoluted clues are... straightforward and simple clues. All those weird clues about Hamlet? Irrelevant. Those strange cryptic clues? Immaterial. The only clues that pertain to the meta are those that follow the idea of the title and prompt In other words only the clues that talk about what a bad meta this is
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Despite the self-deprecating nature of this puzzle, it should have a straight-forward mechanism with a recognizable AHA moment.
This was conceived when I was struggling with Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest #722 so there are a few reference to it in here.