The third MMMM of 2025 challenged solvers to find a famous singer and actress. The seven “pitches” of the solfège scale — DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, TI — are hidden throughout the grid, only appearing in a symmetric set of Across entries, as indicated by the blue shading in the adjacent image.

As suggested by the puzzle’s title, taking the scale notes “out” of these entries leaves the letters shaded in pink in the image. These remaining letters, spelled out in order of appearance in the grid, yield this month’s meta answer, Julie Andrews, who is known for her rendition of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Do-Re-Mi.”

Meta Song:

I gathered an all-star band together in New York City, including my friends Marcus Miller and Nicole Zuraitis, to record a jazz-inspired (thank you John Coltrane) version of a Julie Andrews classic. Enjoy!

When we record these, we always make our last take a funky one. I thought it was worth sharing – check it out below:

Selected Solver Comments:

ky-mike   Perfect pairing of song and artist!

TMart    Pitch perfect!

DelphiRune   Great job not having spurious notes elsewhere!

EliSelzer   Even though I guessed the answer based on just the title, it was a very elegant execution.

PaddyMacQ   I have never been able to understand these puzzles before, this was the first where I had the “aha” moment. Keep them coming!

strybner   Nice one! I was trying endlessly to make some sort of melody from the solfège before I realized that I needed to throw those pitches out!

KayW   DO(h)! Thanks for a fantastic meta. Now to get rid of that earworm…

Alternative Music Clues:

NickF suggests cluing OZONE as [Eurodance group behind “Dragostea Din Tei”] and SAURON as [The “evil one” whom Robert Plant sang about in “Ramble On”].

SF suggests cluing A LOT as [“Baby Got Back” singer Sir Mix-___].

Stribbs suggests cluing IDLER as [Second word out of 23 in a Fiona Apple album title].

pbfrommn suggests cluing SCHEMES as [“I don’t have plans and ___” (lyric for the Skyliners, Ronnie Milsap, and Guns N’ Roses)].

EasyNow suggests cluing TIL as [“Voices Carry” band ___ Tuesday] and SAHARA as [“Tea in the ___” (Police song based on Paul Bowles’s 1949 novel “The Sheltering Sky”)].

Redhead64 suggests cluing EMERGE as [First single off of Fischerspooner’s first album].

Evan suggests cluing GOGO as [Funk subgenre for Rare Essence and Chuck Brown] and UNITE as [1990s Beastie Boys song with the lyric “People of the world, you realize / We got to get together and harmonize”].

Groaners: 

mlangschwager   GORE SOLO FAD LAW ORE DORK!

BrainBoggler   Not much to say other than “DOing a FAntastic job with each RElease and SOLution.”

Maddy Pollard   Wow! That meta puzzle was FAbulous!!! It made MI SOl happy! DOing these REally makes me LAugh! FantasTIc!

mrlampo   Once I got to the [Moving expenses?] clue, I almost fell for the Van Trap.

joeobie   This one had all of My Favorite Things.

The Back Jacks   FA. Took me a long, long time to solve.

Laurabrarian   how do you solve a meta like MMMMaria?

Danny K Bernstein   Hell yes, this puzzle was my jam and bread.

Pair-o-ducks    The hiiiiills are alive, with the sound of metas …

Allan Patterson   Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Totals this month:

562 correct, 119 incorrect

Rating: 4.29 out of 5 stars

Difficulty: 2.62 out of 5

Monthly mug winner: Steve Blais from Windsor, Ontario

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.

One More Thing: 
A number of solvers tried to make a melody out of the scale notes, in the manner of last year’s “Press Play” puzzle. Jim Q took the trouble of putting it into music notation and doing a small improv. You can check it out here, along with an AI-generated track using the same melody.

Thanks for playing and see you next month!