Will Pfadenhauer joined the MMMM team for May’s puzzle, which challenged solvers to find a hit single that has been certified gold (or higher) in eight countries. The puzzle’s title, “Gold-Plated Record,” provides a solid hint to the solution. The grid contains six AU “sandwiches,” three-by-two blocks each containing a pair of letters.

These letter pairs, in order, are MR-BR-IG-HT-SI-DE, and concatenating them gives the 2004 hit by the Killers, Mr. Brightside, this month’s solution.

One of the trickier parts of the meta is that the first four letters you find sandwiched (MR-BR) don’t look like they are leading anywhere.

Meta Song:

We slowed down “Mr. Brightside” for this duet with my friend Cassandra Kubinski and the extended Kindred Souls. Enjoy!

Selected Solver Comments:

Jambone22   My first one!   Welcome!

Mlessie   I like how the answer is also surrounded by “bright” (golden) sides.

Shawn P   Was thrown off a bit by the vertical “AU”s.   A fair nit to pick. It would have been damaging to the fill to completely eliminate the vertical ones.

syoustra   I REALLY kept wanting to make it be Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” 😉   

Naptown Kid   My daughter got married on Friday and the band at her wedding played this killer Killers tune… Coincidence, or fate?    Definitely fate. Congratulations!

Alternative Music Clues:

Zoltar suggests cluing PORTUGUESE as [Language of the greeting “Paz e felicidade a todos” on two Golden Records].

Evan suggests cluing TAURUS as [Sign for Adele or Cher], SPA as [Icona Pop & Sofi Tukker song with the lyric “I wanna feel the sweat / From the steam room and the sauna”], and SKIER as [John Denver, in the music video for “Dancing With the Mountains”].

Redhead64 suggests cluing STU as [Cook who played bass for Creedence Clearwater Revival].

pbfrommn suggests cluing DISMAL as [“___ Day” (lead track on Bread’s debut album)].

shirk suggests cluing TAURUS as [Spirit track with an introduction similar to “Stairway to Heaven”].

EasyNow suggests cluing OMG as [2010 Usher hit featuring will.i.am] and ONE MAN as [“___ come in the name of love, ___ come and go” (lyric from a U2 song)].

Groaners:

bodhipepper   This puzzle was approved by our AU-endoodles.

Jeneric   Somebody Told Me you were The Man when it came to puzzles. I’ve gone Out Of My Mind solving them. But this puzzle was Wonderful, Wonderful. And the Meta was Killer. 

BlindPursuit   i’m just going to go ahead and say “killer puzzle” even though 800 other people probably already did!  Not quite 800, but there were quite a few.

BrainBoggler   Didn’t see the layered gold at first but didn’t have to dig much deeper to find it!

rvkal   Ausome!

DIS   Audacious

AxelPlays   No cAUse to pAUse cAUtiously, becAUse I cAUght the AUdacious clue AUtomatically. I applAUd this meta!

Baschoon   i was worried this month would be au-ful but it turns out I’ve been doing just fine…

Bird Lives   Always look on the Mr.Brightside of life, but only if you have Lexapro.

Mikey G   Coming out of my puzz
And I’ve been doing just fine
Gotta gotta solve down
After I solve across
It started out with a grid
How did it end up like this
It was only a grid
It was only a grid

Totals this month:

439 correct, 30 incorrect

Rating: 4.34 out of 5 stars

Difficulty: 2.29 out of 5

Monthly mug winner: Deepak Bal from Verona, NJ

Thanks to Matt Gaffney for blogging the puzzle at Crossword Fiend, where you can rate the puzzle (thanks!) and/or leave a comment.

Thanks to Tamara Brenner for the graphic.

Thanks for playing and see you next month!