Solution to Mrs. Frisby

Answer: UTILITY
by Deborah Levinson, Foggy Brume and Tracy Cobbs

Upon answering a few of the easier or more obvious clues, you'll notice that they're all 3 or 4 letter initialisms, and this can guide you in your search for the less obvious answers. You may also notice that the first set of clues has no apparent ordering, either in the clue phrases or the answers, while the second set has its clue phrases in alphabetical order.

After you've answered enough clues, you may notice that the final 2 or 3 letters of initialisms in the first set match the beginning 2 or 3 letters of those in the second set. So match each overlapping pair in the order given by the first set.

Solution table
Answer 1	Answer 2	Clue
ASE	SEM	The JEOL 5910 General Purpose is one (as opposed to the FEI/Philips XL30 or FEI Tecnai)
IAP	API	How one piece of software talks to another piece of software
LBV	BVD	Men's underwear brand
NPH	PHD	Shirley Ann Jackson earned one from MIT in 1973
BLT	LTL	In trucking, it's an amount carried that's not at capacity
IWW	WWE	Vince McMahon's organization (as of 2002)
ISO	SOL	Ship with a built-in movie theater and robots made from the parts that control it
CEO	EOE	Videogame in which a woman's soul is placed inside a weapon called Legacy
ASMR	SMRT	They can get you from the Changi Airport to Pasir Ris
YMCA	MCAT	Those who want to be health practitioners take it
FAO	AOE	In gaming, how much ground an attack covers
AOC	OCR	It can make a picture worth a thousand words, or at least as many words as are in the picture
NIMH	IMHO	"Here's what I think..."
MVP	VPF	Katie Hammer became this February 2021
APB	PBS	Their first logo had a blue character named "Everyman" which was later changed to be an "Everyone"
EBT	BTU	Amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit
EMT	MTV	Real World channel
DDR	DRM	Technology that controls the use or modification of everything from software to tractors
DPI	PIE	Theorized common ancestor of numerous languages that looks like a tasty dessert
SMBT	MBTA	They'll help you go to Harvard if you're in the red?
VHS	HSN	QVC competitor
DLC	LCS	It originated as Project MAC in 1963, and merged with the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 2003

Reading the final letter of the answers from the second set gives the clue phrase "Middle letter of SUV means". Since SUV stands for "Sport Utility Vehicle," the final answer is UTILITY.

Author's Notes

(Tracy) This puzzle idea came from a Jeopardy! category. On the January 25, 2021 episode, the category "4-LETTER BEFORE & AFTER" had clues and responses such as:

At the office that gives out driver's licenses, the star performer who brings the team to the top: "What is DMVP?"
The squeal of a teenage girl when she sees Leo the Lion & realizes "Mrs. Miniver" or "Ben Hur" is on: "What is OMGM?"

The first draft of this puzzle was written to a different answer and used an extraction method that made the construction much more highly constrained. When the current answer UTILITY was assigned to this puzzle, Foggy basically rewrote the puzzle from scratch, simplifying and streamlining it to get us past that construction bottleneck. Debby added many clues and, as fate would have it, had a meeting with the MIT VPF not long after Debby had written the clue about her.

This puzzle is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Helen Cobbs, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and passed away during the writing of this Mystery Hunt. She was a Jeopardy! fan and she was as dedicated to protecting and providing for her children as the eponym of this puzzle, Mrs. Frisby.