Here's a puzzle (pdf, puz, pdf solution) inspired by Proust's magnum opus. I failed to really appreciate it when I read it so many years ago but it's continually risen in my estimation the more I've thought about it (which is a sign I should probably reread, but on the other hand, life is short). Oh, and I lied last week when I said the puzzle was just a plain old themeless - the solution to the meta is below today's puz.
If you solved last week's "Themeless," you might have noticed a couple of odd clues. One, ["Nine Lives" by Aerosmith] is a weirdly specific way to clue SONG. Two, [Boxes may be carried out from here] is kind of an awkward phrasing for a RESTAURANT clue. And you might further have noticed that both SONG and RESTAURANT become legit phrases if you add THEME to the beginning. In fact there were a total of three THEME-less phrases in the grid: SONG, PARK, and RESTAURANT. Taking the first words of their clues in grid order gives you "nine central boxes," and if you look in the nine central boxes of the grid, you'll see the string TAANSWER around the central black square. TA ANSWER, of course, is a THEME-less version of THE META ANSWER, so that's the location of the meta answer. (A couple of eagle-eyed solvers noticed the TA ANSWER string without even needing the first part of the mechanism, which works too!) Congratulations to the prize winner, Casey Callaghan, chosen randomly from the correct answers.
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