The January MMMM challenged solvers to find a famous band. The puzzle contains five two-word theme entries:

HERB GARDEN
JOB GROWTH
TAXICAB GEOMETRY
BOB GELDOF
JACOB GRIMM

What do these have in common? The first word of each entry ends in a “B,” and the second word starts with a “G.” With the puzzle title, “Inside Voices,” it’s not hard to get to the classic group, the Bee Gees, January’s meta answer. It is the first puzzle of the year, and the meta is supposed to be easy!

Meta song:

So many choices this month. I chose to cover “To Love Somebody” with my buddy Whools – hope you like it!

Selected Solver Comments:

glasser   At first thought I needed a band whose members were Herb, Job, Jacob, Bob, and… Taxicab???

MattMan   This is my first try. Lots of fun!   Lots of first-timers commenting this month. Welcome to all the newbies, including Monte, csean, smossberg, and Jlaf!

Tim P   New Year’s resolution: Do the MMMM all year and solve Mega-Meta!   Lots of people making a similar resolution. Let’s see who’s still around in November (cue evil laugh)!

DelphiRune   Grid was quite difficult, but meta was easy. Now that’s a switch!  

Steve Blais   Thank you for including TAXICAB GEOMETRY as a theme entry. It really put a smile on this math geek’s face.   

Maggie W.   I hope you continue the song recordings. Those were great last year!   Thanks!  For sure!

Grayson Holmes   What are the three asterisks for?   From the 2019 MMMM Notes section on the home page: Puzzle clues marked with (***) indicate a connection to the mega-meta. It’s up to you to figure out what’s going on.

Alternative Music Clues:

Evan suggests cluing ELIJAH as [Mendelssohn oratorio about a Biblical prophet].

rachaar suggests cluing NUDE as [Radiohead single from In Rainbows].

Flipperista suggests cluing TEEN as [“___ Angel”].

Redhead64 suggests cluing MR MOM as [Animated music video by Lonestar about a frazzled father].

Groaners:

ant   I’m going to guess that this will be your longest GROANERS list yet. In fact, you might just want to label that section JIVE TALKIN’ this month.

adammwilkins   BinGo 🙂

Laurabrarian   I’ve gotta get a meta to you, hold on.

musicgleehigh   Petey B. Goode!

denesaur   You can tell the answer by the way you use your words!

Mike W   Stayin’ alive for the 2019 contest grand prize.   Ira, Qatsi and many others said something similar.

Jwaan   A Gibb-ous moon on the way.

Math Teacher Dave   I gave it all I have to Gibb.

yosser   I think the Jan Meta last year was ZZ Top. So…”Gibb me all your lovin'”?

A total of 444 solvers found their way to the correct answer this month. The average rating for the puzzle was 4.06 stars, and the average difficulty rating was 2.02. This month’s randomly chosen winner of an MMMM coffee mug is Doug Weber of Westport, CT. 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 in two weeks!