The July MMMM challenged solvers to find a famous singer whose last name is missing from the grid. 

The puzzle has five obvious theme entries: JORJA SMITH, SELENA GOMEZ, PAULA ABDUL, DONNA SUMMER, and ERYKAH BADU. Five musicians. What to do next?

The first unusual thing noticed by many solvers is that a few grid entries, such as HENLEY [English regatta town] and SIMON [Leader in a kids’ game], would normally be clued musically, but aren’t. This turns out to be the key to solving the meta.

If one interprets the title phonetically as “Taken uh-back,” removing the “uh” (or schwa) sound from the first name of each theme entry gives a different first name (e.g. JORJA → GEORGE), which in four of five cases can be paired with a non-musically-clued grid entry to make a famous singer, as follows:

Now it’s clear why HENLEY didn’t have a musical clue! There’s no appropriate grid entry to similarly pair with the second theme entry, but there’s only one famous musical CELINE, and the desired famous singer whose last name is missing from the grid is this month’s meta answer, Celine Dion.

Meta Song:

I invited the fabulous Melissa Raye to take on a Celine classic this month, and she was up for the challenge!

Selected Solver Comments:

billkatz   Clever and unique mechanism, with just the right amount of hint in the title.

BethA   You won’t believe how hard I tried to find a male singer whose first name matched phonetically with Selen! My brain finally unclenched enough this afternoon to see the logic and beauty of this meta!

Roman Koshykar   I love this meta – it’s just challenging enough, but doesn’t leave me scratching my head like they sometimes do!

misunderstruck   I have never been able to solve or make meaningful progress on one of these “missing from the grid” or “needed to complete the theme” type metas before. Today, for some reason, the names Simon and Henley jumped out at me when glancing at the completed grid after walking away for some time and it just clicked and WHAT A GOOD FEELING!

Jonesy   Only confusion was about 4 male singers and the answer being female!

Redhead64   Boy, my habit of suggesting alternate clues really helped out on this one!

Alternative Music Clues:

Evan suggests cluing TAB as [Guitarist’s notation, for short], RHINO as [Horned animal whose longer name serves as the title of a Smashing Pumpkins song], and SAY YES as [Positive-sounding Elliott Smith song with the lyric “I’m in love with the world / Through the eyes of a girl”].

pbfrommn suggests cluing RHINO as [“Go to ___ Records” (Wild Man Fischer song)] and SAY YES as [“It’s a love story, baby, just ___” (Taylor Swift lyric)].

HPetriJr suggests cluing MAD RUSH as [Philip Glass “Solo Piano” piece].

micmarc suggests cluing EDEN in reference to the Sara Bareilles song.

xtina suggests cluing MASH as [Dance move preferred by monsters, in a classic Halloween song].

Groaners:

Erich Otto   To sele the dele I had to go phonetic.

ant   You’re doing ITS ALL TAKEN ABACK TO ME NOW, right?

Spelvin   Good to know that my streak will go on.

DBMiller   Maybe I can get Megha(n) Trainor to help me solve the mega-meta now. Or Meg Ryan.

DangerGirl   It’s all coming (A)back to me now!

Mikey G   (excerpted)

Near, far, wherever clues are
I believe that the grid does go on
(Why does the grid go on?)
Once more, with crosswords in store
And you’re here in my grid
And my grid will go on and on

JayW0509   I missed last month’s puzzle, I lost some focus, but it’s all coming back to me now.

Totals this month:

280 correct, 40 incorrect

Rating: 4.28 out of 5 stars

Difficulty: 3.11 out of 5

Monthly mug winner: Justin Graham from Oakland, CA (original winner was Jim Sherman, who already has a mug and generously offered a redraw)

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!