May’s MMMM challenged solvers to find two answers: a hit song from 1970 and a different hit song from 1999. The grid contains four obvious theme entries:

JUST FRIENDS
BIG YELLOW TAXI
BIRD ON THE WIRE
MONSTER MASH

Each of these song titles ends with the name of a popular TV show. In addition, there are six grid entries whose clues start with “TV actor” or “TV actress”: ROYO, DANZA, PERRY, ALDA, ROLLE, and BRAFF. Is there a connection? Yes!

Andre ROYO was on “The Wire,” Tony DANZA starred on “Taxi,” Matthew PERRY was on “Friends,” and Alan Alda starred on “M*A*S*H.” That leaves Esther ROLLE, who starred on “Good Times,” and Zach BRAFF of “Scrubs” unpaired.

Following the pattern of the other theme entries, can we find two songs from the appropriate years whose titles end with these shows? Yes!

This month’s meta answers are Kris Kristofferson’s song For the Good Times, a 1970 hit for Ray Price, and TLC’s iconic 1999 hit No Scrubs.

Meta Song:

We were brave and decided to try mashing up these two songs. I’m pretty sure no one has ever done it before!

Selected Solver Comments:

David Crossley   My first one since signing up. Great fun!   Welcome!

the professor   I loved Taxi and M*A*S*H when I was growing up. Thanks for bringing back some fond memories of watching them with my family. 🙂   Back when there were far fewer shows to choose from!

ant   Too bad there wasn’t a song called Missing the Good Times (to go along with No Scrubs). Where Have All the Good Times Gone by the Kinks almost works…    “No” turned out to be a bit of an unintentional red herring. A few other solvers commented similarly.

Chris Popp   I like that the actors from the two ‘missing’ shows are symmetrical.   Thanks for noticing!

Jwaan   Now that I’ve heard it I’ve gotta ask…will the Kindred Souls be doing a medley of these two songs?   Funny you should ask!

Alternative Music Clues:

Steve Blais and jagoandlitefoot suggest cluing SOCIAL as [Broken ___ Scene (Toronto-based indie rock collective)].

Pete Mitchell suggests the same for SOCIAL and also suggests cluing GRADUAL as [Hymn often sung after the Epistle] and LED as [___ Zeppelin].

Evan suggests cluing LYONS as [Alto saxophonist Jimmy].

Groaners:

Blind Pursuit   Let the good times roll(e)!   BenChen71 shared the same sentiment.

Joe Ross   Hello Google, my good friend, I’ve come to search on you, again.

A total of 342 solvers found their way to at least one correct answer this month, and 301 solvers found them both. The average rating for the puzzle was 4.06 stars out of 5, and the average difficulty rating was 2.94. This month’s randomly chosen winner of an MMMM coffee mug is Brian Kulman from Los Gatos, CA. 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!