Can a heating element somehow not have continuity despite appearing to be intact? Or possibly shorting out/grounding out through the metal plate?

And if in fact the element is fine after I use this as an excuse to buy a multimeter, what's the next most likely culprit?

(Newer Maytag electric dryer with all digital controls)

Every house and car needs a meter even if its a 5$ harbor freight one. I seldom see bad heating elements but always see bad thermal fuses.

I just had this exact thing occur for a 2 year old Maytag. Bought a kit off Amazon for $30 and working now. BTW, shout out to Maytag for making the dryer in such a way that it's impossible to access anything without taking it apart into 500 pieces. At that point I just decided to replace everything I could even though thermal fuse and cut off weren't out.

I thought my heating element went out, but it was a thermal fuse. Find your make/model and youtube it. I am fairly handy and it was a very straight forward and simple job. Biggest PITA was getting the dryer pulled apart without dropping the screws behind or between the dryer and wall/washer.

It was cool seeing how simple a dryer really is, also a good time to vacuum out all the lint/dust and what not for fire prevention

Can you be more specific? We replaced our Maytag dryer (3000 series from late 2000s) circuit board around 5 years ago without issue. Easy fix except maybe for the disassemble of the case. I don't think that was too hard, it was just hard getting around in our small utility room. It worked great until about 6 weeks ago when the dryer pulley or whatever it is called started going out. After looking at replacing that and reading reviews about how those hold up about a year, we replaced the 13 year old dryer.

But I would strongly suggest you research your symptoms on Youtube and see if a new board is what is needed. If it is, it should be an easy fix if you are even remotely handy (i.e. have nutdrivers/socket set and know how to use them).

I have replaced the element and thermal fuse on my Samsung electric dryer at separate times. Check the new parts before installing them as I put a brand new fuse in and had to remove the assembly again after it still wasn't working. I checked the fuse and it failed. Saw a YouTube where repair guy said these parts are so cheaply made (typically in China) it's not uncommon to get bad parts straight from the factory even buying supposed OEM.

It was the high limit cut-off switch. Bought a kit and just replaced all the fuses while it was torn apart. Tested all the Bangladeshi fuses and they were fine out of the box. Hotter'n two rats ****in in a wool sock.