puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

By C.C. Burnikel
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/02/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis

11/02/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, November 2, 2022

ACROSS
1 Flash __: 
impromptu 
gatherings
5 Chew like a 
squirrel
9 Pretzel topping
13 Pentathlete’s 
sword
14 Low opera voice
15 Joshua __ 
National Park
16 Swell
17 “Your work is 
awesome!”
19 Overstep 
boundaries, 
perhaps
21 Civil rights activist 
Baker
22 Beverage brewed 
in a chawan
23 “The Bone 
Garden” novelist 
Gerritsen
25 City that hosts 
the State Fair of 
Texas
29 Fifth of a nickel
31 Round of 
applause
33 Aggravate
34 “I’ll handle this”
36 __-Free: contact 
lens solution
37 By way of
38 Fact-checker’s 
catch
39 Leave stunned
40 Troubled to no end
42 Thanos, to the 
Avengers
43 Those, in Spanish
45 “Say cheese!”
46 QB stats
47 Org. fighting for 
LGBTQ rights
48 Garlic’s covering
49 Emphatic 
agreement
51 Washed-out
53 Go out for a bit?
56 Light in signs
58 Text from a glum 
chum
60 Gala celebrating 
the Academy 
Awards
64 Heavy burden
65 Like ground 
chicken
66 Dubai dignitaries
67 Fully aware of
68 Palm fruit
69 Promotional 
sample
70 Turns blue, maybe

DOWN
1 Deserve
2 Offer one’s two 
cents
3 Academy Award 
category
4 One with a 
crystal ball
5 Go and Go Fish
6 Org. that uses 
cryptanalysis
7 Arthur in the 
International 
Tennis Hall of 
Fame
8 “__ that be nice!”
9 Real bargain
10 Bark
11 Field for grazing
12 Value of a Q tile, 
in Scrabble
14 Bathroom fixture
18 “Great to find that 
out”
20 Eclectic online 
digest
24 Arrives, and an 
apt description of 
the sets of circled 
letters
26 Au pair
27 Sans serif 
typeface
28 Go rollerblading
30 Music genre that 
spawned screamo

32 Donkey Kong, 
e.g.
34 Southpaw
35 Wear down
39 Yahoo! 
alternative
41 “Spare us 
the details!”: 
Abbr.
44 Served, as 
ice cream
48 Brings down 
the house
50 Plain silly

52 Four-footed 
Jetson
54 Like a 30-degree 
angle
55 Guadalajara cash
57 January or June
59 Something to 
chew on
60 Like antiques
61 Zooplankton’s 
habitat
62 Litter box visitor
63 Hoop’s outer 
edge

SUDOKU

WHISPER

“That 2 day 
weekend just 
don’t be hittin 
like it used to... 
”

“Provide a new 
weekly cross-
word.”

WHISPER

By Baylee Devereaux
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/26/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis

10/26/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2022

ACROSS
1 Homes in 
Honduras
6 “Let’s put a 
smile on your 
plate” breakfast 
chain
10 Chop (off)
13 Like a brand-new 
candle
14 __ drum
15 Mimic
16 Receptionist at 
a high-rise hotel, 
one might say
18 Pothole filler
19 __ card
20 Kunis of “Black 
Swan”
21 Sharp cry
22 Instagram 
influencer, one 
might say
27 French article
28 Orchestra 
leader
31 Capital city on a 
fjord
34 Give up, as a 
right
36 In the know
37 Bartender 
pouring a 
selection of craft 
beers for tasting, 
one might say
41 Black Mission 
fruit
42 Eggs on
43 Rolls the credits
44 “The Office” 
sales rep 
who solves 
crosswords 
during meetings
46 Actor Meadows
48 Pathological liar, 
one might say
53 “Take a __ 
breath”
55 Fútbol cheers
56 Female sheep
58 Part of BYOB
59 Audiophile with 
an extensive 
collection of club 
mixes, one might 
say
63 Top of a 
semicolon
64 Place of refuge
65 Unleash upon
66 Approves
67 Bring (out)
68 Cereal tidbit

DOWN
1 Talk a blue 
streak?
2 Those opposed
3 Replay tech
4 __ guitar
5 Completely 
stump
6 Kin by marriage
7 “2001” 
supercomputer
8 Some 
underground 
rock bands?
9 According to
10 After
11 Birthstone for 
some Libras
12 BOLO target
14 Advice from 
a nervous 
stockbroker
17 Spanish aunts
21 “Be glad to”
23 Heavy shoe
24 Fails to mention
25 Carry on
26 Sharp
29 Cocktail garnish
30 Chooses
31 Send-__: 
farewells
32 Buttonhole, e.g.
33 Bone-connecting 
tissues

34 Japanese cattle 
breed used for 
Kobe beef
35 Had a bite
38 She-__: Marvel 
role for Tatiana 
Maslany
39 Ancestry.com 
printout
40 Singer Lovato
45 Short snooze
46 Taxing trip
47 In and of __
49 Hypothesize

50 Stout and porter
51 Nasal partitions
52 Tinker with
53 Long-extinct 
bird
54 “Star Wars” critter 
that looks like a 
teddy bear
57 Art Deco icon
59 Spicy
60 Lifeboat blade
61 GI morale 
booster
62 Electric __

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
6 — Wednesday, November 2, 2022 

‘The X-Files,’ monsters 
and the fallacy of 
scientism

There’s an episode in the 
third season of “The X-Files” 
— “Quagmire” — where special 
agents 
Fox 
Mulder 
(David 
Duchovny, 
“Aquarius”) 
and 
Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson, 
“Sex Education”) are in Georgia 
investigating 
“Big 
Blue,” 
a 
continental version of the Loch 
Ness Monster. In the rest of 
the show’s “Monster of the 
Week” 
installments, 
there’s 
always something to hunt — a 
200-year-old 
shapeshifting 
serial killer who lies dormant in 
30-year increments, a human-
flatworm hybrid that inhabits 
the New Jersey sewer system, 
a parasitic slug worshipped by 
a cult. But “Quagmire” is not so 
open-and-shut. 
Scully 
criticizes 
Mulder’s 
futile 
cryptozoological 
obsession, 
and 
she’s 
right. 
Mulder takes out an alligator 
instead of a water dinosaur. 
There is no Big Blue, and the two 
return to the FBI headquarters.
This isn’t entirely out of 
place, though. “The X-Files” 
waxes philosophical frequently, 
something that I missed as 
a preteen (admittedly, I was 
focused 
on 
the 
impossibly 
frustrating will-they-won’t-they 
dynamic between the leads). 
The show uses its Monster of the 
Week episodes to experiment 
— 
they 
are 
constantly 
stretching and contracting the 
ontology of monsters. Though 
inconsequential to the show 
as a whole, these episodes are 
fascinating explorations of the 
metaphysical.
Throughout 
“Quagmire,” 

though, Mulder is deadlocked on 
the existence of Big Blue. It’s a 
microcosm of his lifelong pursuit 
of the unknown — an obsession 
that is the very essence of his 
character, defining him as the 
foil to Scully’s voice of reason. 
A conversation near the end of 
the episode sums this up quite 
nicely. Scully compares Mulder 
to “Moby Dick’”s Captain Ahab, 
asserting that no matter what 
he believes, “everything takes 
on a warped significance to 
fit (Mulder’s) megalomaniacal 
cosmology.” She goes on, “It’s 
just … the truth or a white 
whale … what difference does it 
make?”
“The X-Files” exists in the 
realm of the uncertain, a story 
told through convoluted and 
inconsistent 
fragments 
from 
which we try to derive meaning. 
Its mythology is impossible 
to decipher under blankets of 
bureaucracy and government 
conspiracies. But Scully is a 
scientist through-and-through, 
here to pull back the curtains. 
“The X-Files”’ depiction of an 
even-keeled, astute and self-
sufficient female scientist was 
state-of-the-art. When 13-year-
old me met Dana Scully for 
the first time, I met myself. I 
learned that these aspects of her 
character — logic, calculation, 
perpetual skepticism — were 
the pieces making up my own 
view of the world. 
I wasn’t alone in this. Scully 
is responsible for a generation 
of STEM-interested women and 
girls, a theory that is not only 
supported by testimony, but a 
rigorous course of research, too 
— in true Scully fashion. 

LAINE BROTHERTON
Digital Culture Beat Editor

Read more at MichiganDaily.

The monster is closer than we think: 
When a house is more than a home and a 
reader is more than an observer

CAMILLE NAGY
 Daily Arts Contributor

When most of us think of a 
monster, we tend to visualize the 
same stereotypical markers: four-
legged beasts and shadow-people 
with claws like blades, creatures 
of inhuman sizes or with no shape 
at all, supernatural beings that can 
kill without moving or those who 
simply move through the world as if 
its laws do not apply to them.
What most of us do not picture, 
though, is a place.
Mark Z. Danielewski’s mixed-
media horror novel “House of 
Leaves” is unique in this sense, 
crafting a monster not just out of 
place but out of the characters’ 
expectations and, perhaps even 
more interestingly, the reader’s. 
“House of Leaves” is a hard book to 
describe. On the surface, it follows a 
family that moves into a house only 
to discover that it is larger on the 
inside than it is on the outside. While 
at first only a tiny difference of 
three-quarters of an inch is noticed, 
the problem quickly expands to 
include an intricate set of seemingly 
endless tunnels under the house. As 
the characters attempt to explore 
the labyrinthine maze, typical 
horror hijinks ensue (such as the 
unexplained disappearance of the 
family pets or mysterious sounds 
coming from the walls). 
There are numerous stories 
layered within “House of Leaves,” 
and to only acknowledge the surface 
narrative would not do justice to the 
elaborate storytelling at play here. 
The distinct, interactive formatting 
of this novel plays an essential 
part in its story, crafting not only a 
memorable reading experience but 
a profoundly haunting one, too. 
The main story is presented 
through the academic writings of 

a strange, cryptic author (referred 
to only as Zampanò) about a movie 
following the family and their 
experiences while living in the 
house. The story implies that this 
movie, while largely unknown by 
general audiences, has attracted 
an almost cult-like following in 
the academic sphere, resulting in 
numerous academic papers about 
the house, which are referenced 
throughout the text. Among these 
articles, 
an 
ongoing 
scholarly 
debate over the authenticity of the 
film persists. Thus, the main story 
is made into an urban legend within 
the book itself; readers are just as 
unsure as the characters are about 
whether the events at the house 
actually take place or if the film is 
an elaborate project created by the 
main character of the movie, Will 

Navidson. Alongside this book-
within-a-book are footnotes from 
Johnny Truant, the man who is 
presumably guiding us through 
the novel while experiencing an 
emotional breakdown, which we 
witness through his annotations as 
the story progresses.
If you’re confused by now, 
don’t worry: that’s the point. The 
formatting of the book makes 

it clear that readers are meant 
to spiral at the same time as the 
characters (and that not everything 
about the house will or should 
make sense to us, just as is true for 
those within the novel). During the 
main descent into the house, the 
annotations do not just become less 
logical, but literally begin twisting 
into and jumping across the page. 
Following these footnotes — and 
in turn, following the narrative — 
serves to repeatedly confuse and 
frustrate readers in the same way 
the characters are confused and 
frustrated by their surroundings 
while exploring the underbelly of 
the house. By forcing readers to 
interact with the text through its 
annotations and devolving form, 
“House of Leaves” ensures that 
the reader’s journey mirrors the 

characters’ and creates a feeling of 
shared experience between the two.
Choosing to ignore or skip these 
elements of the story denies readers 
the visceral experience Danielewski 
intends for them. The author goes 
to great pains to make “House of 
Leaves” feel as authentic as possible, 
from leaving his own name off 
the title page in lieu of Zampanò’s 
and Johnny’s to having fictional 

editors write notes to the reader 
throughout the text as if this were 
a published manuscript from the 
world of “House of Leaves” rather 
than a fictional work. Beginning 
with the introduction, Danielewski 
practically dares readers to consider 
the validity of his story by having 
Johnny beg them to consider 
otherwise. Even Zampanò admits: 
“They say truth stands the test 
of time. I can think of no greater 
comfortant than knowing this 
document failed such a test.” The 
possibility that this book could be an 
artifact from the “House of Leaves” 
universe these characters exist in, 
however outrageous or unrealistic 
that thought, is planted in readers’ 
heads from page one.
There are numerous Easter eggs 
and hidden pieces of symbolism 
scattered throughout the text; to 
decipher them all, some would 
argue, is impossible. Yet, just 
as there is a cult-like following 
for the film in the story, there is 
an online fanbase dedicated to 
uncovering and discussing the 
secrets within “House of Leaves.” 
Through 
this 
community, 
the 
horror of Danielewski’s novel has 
transcended print and found its 
place among similar Alternate 
Reality 
Games 
(ARGs), 
found 
footage films and urban legends. 
While these may all appear to be 
unrelated at first glance, these 
modes of storytelling are tied 
together by their inclusion of the 
reader as a character within the 
story’s world. Each form of media 
is conscientious of the role the 
reader plays in experiencing and 
interpreting the story, and many 
ask the viewer at the very least to 
consider that the story could be 
true, if not outright interact with it 
as if it truly were. 

Design by Emma Sortor

Everyone 
knows 
Cookie 
Monster.
“Sesame Street” was a staple 
of all our childhoods, with 
its 
easy-going 
theme 
song, 
the 
familiar 
Muppets 
and 
the lessons of kindness and 
compassion the characters all 
taught us. 
And, let’s be honest; everyone 
had 
their 
favorite 
Muppet. 
Some liked Oscar the Grouch, 
thinking his grumpiness was 
funny and his trash can home 
was silly. Others found Big Bird 
appealing (but he always scared 
me a little). Grover had his ever-
entertaining antics — Super 
Grover was a huge part of my 
childhood. And who could forget 
Bert and Ernie? Their dynamic 
was unparalleled.
But Cookie Monster was 
always my favorite. I’m pretty 
sure it started out just because 
I appreciated and could relate 
to his obsession with cookies. 
What 3-year-old couldn’t? But 
now, I think Cookie Monster 
means something more than 
just a love for cookies; he 
represents a need for self-care 
and the absolute importance of 
putting yourself first.
Somewhat recently, “Sesame 
Street” and its creators have 

tried to shift Cookie Monster’s 
love for cookies onto some other, 
healthier foods in an effort to 
encourage kids to eat healthier. 
In fact, when Grover appeared 
on “Jimmy Kimmel” he even 
mentioned 
Cookie 
Monster 
having “a little bit of a cookie 
problem” and, as a result, is now 
on a diet to eat “better” foods 
instead of just cookies. Cookie 
Monster being used to promote 
diet 
culture 
is 
concerning 
because it can be very damaging 
— it often encourages people to 
forgo desserts and food labeled 
as “bad” altogether. 
That being said, considering 
the 
discussion 
surrounding 
Cookie Monster as a symbol 
for addiction, it isn’t really 
that surprising to see “Sesame 
Street” try to change things up 
a little with Cookie Monster 
and his favorite food. And look, 
I get it; parents want their kids 
to be healthy. They want to see 
their kids pick a carrot over a 
cookie, and who better to teach 
them that lesson than Cookie 
Monster? 
But as a college student who 
faces burnout and has trouble 
prioritizing self-care, I can’t 
help but think Cookie Monster 
has the right idea. Enjoy your 
life. Do what makes you happy. 
Eat a cookie. 

Cookie Monster: 
Our self-care champion

SABRIYA IMAMI
Managing Arts Editor

Design by Serena Shen

Design by Abby Schreck

Read more at MichiganDaily.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com

