It is always important to make a good first impression. That initial encounter can leave people with a lasting opinion of you (or of a perfectly delightful puzzle!).
Hopefully, that is exactly what this little MEOW does. I am going to go out on a limb and ascribe KITTEN/CALICO status to it because my tester (the indefatigable whimsy) had no trouble with it and even had me toughen it up a bit.
There will Friday nudges of course and the reveal will be posted on the 16th.
Nudges:
Nudge 1] There meta answer is 10 letters
Nudge 2] The theme answers are symmetrically placed
Nudge 3] All the relevant answers have the same characteristic
Nudge 4] The first title of this puzzle was "Initial Impressions"
The Reveal:
There were 10 initialisms in the puzzle. There were other abbreviations but they were not initialisms. The ten were symmetric throughout the grid and the first letter of the 10 spelled out SIGNET RING, certainly something that makes quite an impression and the answer to the meta.
STP
ING
GTO
NRA
ETO
TBA
RCA
IPA
NPR
GED
Easter eggs, well there were a couple. The intro talks about an initial encounter leaving a lasting opinion (or impression of course) and prominently on the hand of the gentleman holding the sign is a signet ring! There may have been others but those were the intended ones.
For a graphic representation of the solve go to: