So I still haven't gotten the WSJ Meta Contest of 4/14/23 (I'll take a nudge) so this one is based on a rabbit hole I knew there was no point going down.
The metanism would be quite hard but I put in a lot of meta-meta suggestions to point you in the right direction. I think the grid works very well. As usual my clues run the gamut. I tried to be straightforward, but I can't help but get punchy.