This month’s MMMM challenged solvers to find a pop rock band. Numerous words in the grid did not match their expected word lengths in the traditional sense, such as the seven-letter entry in 2-Down [Keys on a keyboard] yielding the six-letter answer ALICIA and the five-letter entry in 16-Across [Number once recited to a record 70,030 digits] yielding the rarely seen two-letter answer of PI. The way to rectify these inconsistencies was to leave a number of the white squares blank, as shown in the image to the left. The final grid reveals that these “plain white” squares line up in five T-shaped patterns, leading to this month’s meta answer, the Plain White T’s.

The mega-meta was cracked this month by three different solvers. A huge congratulations to Louis Lana, Danny K Bernstein, and Brent Holman for getting it after seeing only five puzzles and earning lots of bonus points for the year!

Meta Song: We picked the most successful Plain White T’s song, the Grammy-nominated #1 hit “Hey There Delilah,” for this month’s cover. I was joined by Lindsay Marie on vocals, Kevin Harvey on guitar, and Jacob Goldman on cello. Enjoy!

Selected Solver Comments:

adamrosenfield   Never heard of them, but wasn’t too hard to google.   Surprisingly (to me), quite a few solvers mentioned never hearing of the band.

Alexander S   I might have set my record for “lowest percentage of grid completed before figuring out the meta” on this one.

Darrell   The apostrophe in their name has always bugged me — don’t pluralize with an apostrophe!   Good point!

EFlatMinor   What a fun twist on the “why don’t these obvious answers fit” problem!

M+S   First MMMM as newlyweds — and our most satisfying solve yet!   Congratulations!

Tyler Hinman   Refreshing to have a meta crossword in which filling the grid is significantly harder than the meta.

gpagano   Love, love, lo-lo-lo-love the aha here.

Alternative Music Clues:

Pete Mitchell suggests cluing RAINY DAY as [A downer for the Carpenters] and ELSE as [“Nothing ___ Matters” (Metallica hit)].

EasyNow suggests cluing RONAN as [Taylor Swift song first performed live during a telethon for the charity Stand Up to Cancer].

Cruciverbalicious suggests cluing SPEEDS as [Can’t drive 55, like Sammy Hagar?].

pbfrommn suggests cluing UNO as [First word, appropriately, heard in the U2 hit “Vertigo”].

EricH suggests cluing ZANE as [“Callin’ Me” rapper Lil’ ___].

Hollie suggests cluing RAINY DAY as [“Save It for a ___” (Stephen Bishop hit)].

Evan suggests cluing NANA as [One-eighth of the syllables people often sing before “Batman” for the 1960s TV show theme song] and YOUTUBE as [Means of seeing Chicago and Boston and Berlin all in a matter of minutes?].

Groaners:

Kaymook   I drew a blank with this band 🙂

Abide   Grea concep !

QueenPercy   I felt like I was a thousand miles away from the answer but it still looks so pretty!

Johnny Mac   Almost spaced out on this one before I saw the lighT.

Jeneric   Hey there, Pete Muller, what’s it like in New York City?
You’ve got puzzles on your website and tonight I need your pity. Yes, I do.
The clues are burning in my brain, it’s such a pain.
Hey there, Pete Muller, don’t you worry I will solve it. I’m still here, if I get smarter, I will make those big old Ts fit.
Close my eyes. Thinking of band names and those big Ts, I’m losing sleep
Oh, what are those five big Ts
Oh, what are those five white Ts
Oh, what are those five plain Ts
Oh, it is the Plain White Ts, the Plain White Ts!

Totals this month:

552 correct, 103 incorrect

Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

Difficulty: 3.29 out of 5

Monthly mug winner:  Matthew Moran from Palos Park, IL

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!