This puzzle proved to be rather more difficult to finish than I expected. You see, most crossword constructors maintain large lists of potential fill words that they’ve gleaned from all over, often prioritized by quality and “liveliness”. And, inevitably, some words creep in that aren’t actually words at all. This is typically no problem — since you are carefully choosing which words to put in the grid, you just notice that bad word in your list and get rid of it. What you don’t want to do is discover this dud after you’ve already written clues for 3/4 of the puzzle. In extreme cases, you can sometimes fudge it (i.e. “flys” isn’t a normal word, but there is a band called “The Flys”). However, the right thing to do is to laboriously rip out 2…7…15 words — however many are required — and replace them with alternates that actually produce a proper valid fill. You then quietly weep over all of the lovely clues you crafted for all of the lovely words that are no longer in the puzzle.
So it goes….
Title: Craving Chicken
Difficulty: Thursday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)