| PADMA | "Top Chef" host Lakshmi, author of "Love, Loss and What We Ate" |
| TRANS | "Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for ___ Equality" (memoir by Sarah McBride) |
| LAKSHMI | (Sadly former) "Top Chef" host Padma |
| AFAR | "Our deeds still travel with us from ___, / And what we have been makes us what we are": George Eliot |
| FROMAFAR | "Our deeds still travel with us ___ ___, and what we have been makes us what we are": George Eliot (4,4) |
| REPAST | About those days of yore and the way we ate (6) |
| MITFORD | Author of ' Love in a Cold Climate', Nancy ---- (7) |
| CIRCLETHEWAGONS | Get into a defensive position, and what we do in this grid |
| NANCYMITFORD | Author of Love in a Cold Climate (5,7) |
| BAUDELAIRE | 19th-century French author of love poetry (10) |
| MELTEDAWAY | Out to lunch, we ate madly and disappeared (6,4) |
| TEATOWEL | Last recourse of washer-upper, seeing terrible lot we ate? (3,5) |
| YALIE | Author of "Love Story" |
| SEGAL | Author of Love Story, Erich ..... (5) |
| ERICH | Mr. Segal, author of Love Story (5) |
| GORDONRAMSAY | British "Next Level Chef" host who teaches a MasterClass course on cooking: 2 wds. |
| AMORIST | General word for a writer of love (7) |
| REGRET | Have a feeling of loss and sorrow (6) |
| AWL | Consumed by draw, loss and one of those picking holes in things (3) |
| ALAMO | US battle with awful loss and massacre. Outrageous, first and foremost (5) |