Valentine Cameron Prinsep, The Queen was in the Parlour, Eating Bread and Honey
Many of us more advanced constructors, in addition to expressing our special identities, prefer to exclude from our puzzles bad things (like the NRA) and to fill them instead with good things (like our favorite celebrities), with the purpose of causing solvers to transfer their support from the bad things to the good things. When I started making crosswords, I didn’t know I had this power over solvers, and I let the odd bad thing slip in, usually for the purpose of making the grid easier to solve; but I’ve learned better—what solvers expect and deserve from me, I’ve come to realize, is not guessable content, but cultural uplift and moral correction.
Now I’m appalled at how many OREOs we constructors routinely allow into our grids, not to mention OLEO (long a source of trans fat), and PIE. So this puzzle is meant as a corrective; it’s filled with foods that are not only healthy, but trendy too! Those solvers who regulate their diet by crossword answers (have you wondered why you’re eating more fish since solving Crossword 127?) will thank me, decades from now, in their heart-healthy hearts, when, before taking their daily five-mile jogs, they read the obituaries of their Oreo-gobbling, pie-stuffed peers.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online: