107. Pack It In

Update: This puzzle has been updated to a Level 3 about 2.5 hours after publication, and I've fiddled around with a few of the clues, none of which affect the mechanism. Note the new prompt below!

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Hello hello! On the Cubs front, our newest upstart of a player Pete Crow-Armstrong (PCA) hit an inside-the-park home run last night, and it was incredible to see. On the coffee front, I'm drinking it. And on the crossword front, we've got two more puzzles in this Summer of Solves! We'll go back to biweekly after that in the autumn months, at least.

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1. Puzzle #106 answer: BALLOON

Correct entries: 42 (I thought a Level 3, perhaps, but this played like a Level 4, for sure; I'd reckon only about 20 or so of these were solos.)

Shortest explanation: The main component of air useful to us humans is oxygen, whose chemical formula is the diatomic O2 (in retrospect, for this to be a Level 3, there should have been a nudge to that in the grid). Seven symmetrically placed vertical entries indeed have two Os spread apart, and a 2- or 3-letter word is spelled in-between each of them. We play alternates with these in the grid (also symmetrical), and the initial letters spell BALLOON, "drifting" upward through the grid from bottom-left to top-right. A toughie indeed!

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2. We need a bit of a cooldown from last week for sure! I'm thinking Level 2 for this one.

Good luck, and may all your solves be beautiful!

Mikey G

The answer to the meta is an 8-letter noun often seen at a school.