Short post today as I’m in a hurry to go to Lancaster, PA, but there’s an easy puzzle again this week. Nothing y’all can’t handle.

The Indie 500 Crossword Tournament is just three weeks away! Come for the puzzles, stay for the Pie!

p.s. Yes, I’m aware that the quote punned in 17-Across is erroneously attributed to the speaker in the clue. Just work with me on this one, m-kay?

Easy puzzle today. Just a few things I wanted to pass along:

1. I did an interview with Puzzle Nation about the upcoming Indie 500 Crossword Tournament. Check it out, and get yourself registered — it’s only four weeks away!

2. In case you missed it, I wrote a long review of Patrick Berry‘s Vicious Circle mini-ganza. Because reasons.

3. The variety puzzle magazine Will Shortz’s WordPlay is, sadly, being discontinued. It just never reached enough of an audience to keep going. That’s a major shame, though it’s a reality that a lot of puzzlemakers have to prepare for. Anyhow, I now have at least two accepted but unpublished variety puzzles hanging around my shelf again, so I might post them here one day.

4. Full disclosure: today’s puzzle theme has been done before, maybe more than once. Dan Naddor had a version of it in the LA Times in February 2010. But I aimed to get original theme answers that I liked, and hey, there’s nothing wrong with reusing a similar story line every now and then. When you’re finished with the puzzle, highlight the space below to see an alternate title that I just don’t think I can use:

Subheadings

Enjoy the puzzle. There will be a new one on May 9.

Update, 5/3/15 @ 3:45 pm ET: I just now discovered that one of the words in a theme answer had been unfortunately repeated in a separate clue. I’m shocked that I missed this as I normally check for repeats of all my answers. I don’t usually care if an answer has an incredibly common word like A or I or THE and then that same word shows up in another clue, but for uncommon and otherwise major words, I strictly avoid this kind of situation. Maybe most solvers didn’t notice it when they solved the puzzle, but I’ve removed the offending word anyhow. Sorry about that.