LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Eating to Get in Shape”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a kind of cheese.
Answer: COTIJA, found by 390 solvers, 343 of which were solo solves

Tough for a Week 1! First thing to notice in this 13×13 grid is that six clues began with the word “Food”:

16-A: [Food that may get sauteed] = MUSHROOM
23-A: [Food sometimes julienned] = CARROT
34-A: [Food that hangs on a tree] = CANDY CANE
3-D: [Food that’s flaky] = CROISSANT
4-D: [Food beloved by Homer Simpson] = DONUT
35-A: [Food that may be Sweet & Tangy BBQ-flavored] = DORITO

Now what? Notice that each of these foods resembles a letter of the alphabet:

MUSHROOM looks like a T
CARROT looks like an I
CANDY CANE looks like a J
CROISSANT looks like a C
DONUT looks like an O
DORITO looks like an A

Put those in grid order and you get contest answer COTIJA cheese, found by 343 solvers. Thanks to Gridmaster J for the above graphic.

What made this one so tough? The idea of looking at the *shape* of the food is closer to a Week 2 leap than a Week 1 leap. Additionally, COTIJA cheese is not as universally known as cheddar or Swiss, so a confirming Google was required there for many solvers. Plus: the link between a DORITO and an A is a bit of a cheat since a Dorito is triangular like an A but doesn’t have the missing central parts.

Paolo P. writes, re 10-Down’s clue:

[One of the Alou brothers], you [redacted]

What?! I can’t get tricky on a single clue in Week 1?!

Raygirl writes:

I never spell or say this cheese correctly… this puzzle may have fixed me Thx

And finally, Pair-o-ducks says:

Oh hey, Phil Chow and I wrote a puzzle kinda like this one not too long ago! Check it out here if you’d like:

https://xword-muggles.com/viewtopic.php?t=3055

Companion pieces! Fun.

This played like a Week 2, so I’m offering Week 1 solving options for MGWCC #850 for what I hope will be a Week 1-diffculty puzzle.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS: