The June MMMM challenged solvers to find a song from the ’60s. Six circled letters in the completed grid spell out A-R-O-U-N-D, pointing to one of many ’60s songs with “Around” in the title. But which one? “Runaround Sue” by Dion? “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys? “4th Time Around” by Dylan? Or one of the many others?

The trick is to notice the repeated triplet letter strings that go around the grid, each surrounding the black-square “fingers” that originate from one of the four grid sides: LOV, EIS, ALL, THE, TRO, and GGS. These triplets are hinted at by the puzzle title, “Triple Feature.” Putting them together gives you Love Is All Around by the Troggs, this month’s meta answer.

Quite a few (42!) solvers saw AROUND and the puzzle title and submitted “Turn! Turn! Turn!” That answer, unfortunately, is for the Byrds!

Meta Song:

My band (The Kindred Souls) was quarantining with me to do a few streaming shows, so we all learned this one together. Hope you like it!

Selected Solver Comments:

Hollie   Love is all around, although some days you have to work harder to find it.  That’s true! Although I’ve noticed a lot of compassion and love happening these days along with the craziness.

thanman2   Oh, that’s a lovely mechanism! It was the UGGS/SKAGGS pair that made me notice it.   Thanks!

Maggie W.   It’s a very nice song that I unfortunately associate all too strongly with the movie Love Actually.

Jared Dashoff   I like the version in Love Actually best!   Couldn’t resist including these two comments together.

Rocklouder2424   I thought the nod to the Wet Wet Wet cover in the title “Triple Feature” was a nice touch.   Complete coincidence! I confess to not having heard their version (not bad!) until now.

hazmat   1st MMMM puz!   Welcome! Also to MMMM first-timer MinionVale…

HiJack   I feel for the poor souls who succumb to the temptation to submit “I Get Around”, as was my first inclination.

Pink   Wait, the Troggs had more than one song?! 😉

Alternative Music Clues:

jagoandlitefoot suggests cluing PUP as [Canadian punk band with the 2019 album “Morbid Stuff”].

DIS  suggests cluing SAUL as [Zaentz who was the subject of John Fogerty’s “Vanz Kant Danz”].

Evan suggests cluing ATOM as [“___ Bomb Baby” (1957 song by the Five Stars with the lyric “Boy she can start / One of those chain reactions in my heart”].

Groaners:

Abide   Love the construction of this all the way around!

Darrell   Now I’m sure: I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes.

Laurabrarian   There’s no beginning, there’ll be no end, cause on the MMMM I can depend.

Redhead64   I was THIS close to submitting “I Get Around” by The Beach Boys instead! I guess you could say that until I saw the ACTUAL answer, “my mind was made up by the way that I feel.”

A total of 254 solvers found their way to the correct answer this month. The average rating for the puzzle was 4.23 stars out of 5, the highest of the year so far, and the average difficulty rating was 2.90. This month’s randomly chosen winner of an MMMM coffee mug is Brian Smith from Lookout! WV. Thanks to Matt Gaffney for blogging the puzzle at Crossword Fiend, where you can rate the puzzle (thanks!) and/or leave a comment.

Thanks for playing and see you next month!