23. Back to School (Meta 8)

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Well, I'm trying not too cry too loudly after my beloved Cubbies had a fire sale to close out the trade deadline - so don't be surprised if that shows up in the puzzles, haha.

And it's the end of the month, so you know what that means: meta time! First, a recap on the previous one:

 

1. July recap

June answer: 1776

Correct entries: 17

Winner: Laura M and oldjudge - congrats!!

It's hard to tell what's going on with just those two entries, but those happened to be entries clued at #37 and #48. (Note plenty of red herrings - include one very literal!) The title of the puzzle, "Use the Fourth," hints that we are to do something with "fourth," and in this case, it's the letter in the fourth position of every clue (this took a while, haha).

Taking the fourth letter of every clue, in fact, spells out the directive: FIND THE PRODUCT OF THE CLUE NUMBERS OF THE GRID ENTRIES TO START AND END WITH THE SAME LETTER.

And the only two are "STARS" and "STRIPES," at the positions 37 and 48. The product of 37 and 48 is, voila, 1776, the answer to the meta.

2. Today's puzzle has a Level of 2 of 5, though I'm not sure how official my rankings are. To quote the title of my puzzle to my students, "BACK TO SCHOOL, KIDS!" Shout-out to Ajay for test-solving this under such short notice!

Good luck!!

Mikey G

The answer to the meta is a 5-letter word.