45 Degrees Clockwise (Meta)

Wow. Quite the challenge. Very clever construction, Ben.

Too clever by half.

LMAO. So I finished the grid on the computer, noticed RIGHT HALF in normal puzzle directions, and decided that I needed to print it, fill it out in pencil, and then examine the puzzle with letters written in at a 45 degree angle, and THEN I could evaluate the RIGHT HALF of the puzzle for clues to the meta answer...

I did ALL THAT only to be, like... oh, look at that, neat, HALF RIGHT is a really nice 2 word phrase that fits the puzzle. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Huh, that's a phrase I think I've never encountered. Online, I see that drill sergeants use it. Is that the reference, or does it have other uses down under?

HOLY MOLY!!! This is definitely a meta in the spirit of Josh's MEOW! I was completely baffled at how to fill until I noticed 13,14, 15 etc had down as well as across definitions. But I humbly beg to differ - I'm very glad you didn't leave this one in the ideas book. A VERY novel concept and a fantastic aha moment on how to fill the grid! As a non-constructor, I'm curious how hard it was to construct a grid like this?

I hope you had dramamine available when you were creating this just for the nausea that had to arise from trying to keep it all straight. Impressive construction. I had to take a "picture" of it and rotate it 45 degrees (half right) to see if I was fully correct instead of half fast.

You did MEOW proud young man!!!

I found my way in by entering the expected answer in the grid (even though the lengths were obviously not right) and then hitting "Check Grid." The initial letters but not many of the rest passed. I think it was when I saw F, E, T in the NW that I saw FETA and caught on. I was looking forward to puzzling out the rest but I somehow hit "Reveal". I saw THGIR HALF and began to look for something in the right half of the grid; but then realized that HALF THGIR not only described the puzzle but the answer too -- How meta! Thanks for this "throwback", Ben!

Clever construction, Ben! I puzzled out the grid and then saw HALF and MOST... So had to ponder for a (long) minute... before I noticed what was crawling up the side! :D

I was puzzled by the fact that the entries had to be made in a 45 degree counter clockwise direction. I finally turned the grid 45 degrees clockwise and HALF RIGHT jumped out. And of course 45 degrees is half of a right angle was the clincher.