Muller Monthly Music Meta – MMXXII Mega-Meta

Title: “Location, Location, Location,” by Pete Muller
Prompt: The Mega-Meta reply is a music from 1973.
Answer: “Stuck in the Middle With You” by Gerry Rafferty

Matt is swamped by household obligations, giving me a welcome likelihood to specific my appreciation of the MMMM sequence. [Thanks, Hector! an appreciation echoed by me. Hector is a highly-skilled veteran meta-solver whose name many of you will recognize from solver lists over the years. –Matt G.]

The thirteenth puzzle of this in any other case month-to-month meta sequence is supposed to tip off solvers to the mechanisms for the 12 months’s Mega Meta and Red Herring.

Both are numeric. The Red Herring was introduced in January as a music from the 80s, and we’re informed right here at 46A that it was sung by Tommy Tutone. The first seven puzzles comprise clues indicating that the entry “rhymes with a number.” Assembling the numbers reveals the (1981) music to be “867-5309/Jenny,” the lyrics of which violated the norm prohibiting legitimate cellphone numbers in fictions, to the annoyance of quite a few folks not referred to as Jenny. 

Solvers of the Mega Meta have been looking out for a music from 1973, and the opposite obvious themer on this puzzle combines 4D and 30A with the clue, “what most numbers in the clues of this year’s puzzles represent,” to yield X AND Y COORDINATES (we’d already realized in November’s puzzle that the mechanism entails coordinates, so this truly added little or no new info).

The clues specify column-row coordinates: columns in Across clues and rows in Downs. You must ignore years and different numbers bigger than the grid dimension, and in addition numbers which might be spelled out (“five” or “fifth” as a substitute of 5 or fifth; I may need gone with “numerals” moderately than “numbers” within the 4D clue, as a result of there are various numbers that play no function within the mechanism). The puzzles provide one or two letters every, spelling STEALERS WHEEL HIT, which might solely be “Stuck in the Middle With You,” written and sung by the identical Gerry Rafferty who in 1978 gave us “Right Down the Line” – that Line presumably being within the Middle, the place Gerry remained centrally adhered. Confirmation is hardly wanted, however STEAL and WHEEL provide it.

I do know I’m not the one solver as soon as once more feeling a mixture of gratitude for Pete’s month-to-month presents to us of those sensible puzzles and dread that if this 12 months’s sequence is the final, it will likely be proper about now that we’ll hear about it. I hope that he’s having fun with his holidays, with or with out the corporate of clowns and jokers, as he prefers.

What are your ideas concerning the Mega Meta and Red Herring, and about this 12 months’s MMMM suite?