puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
By Enrique Henestroza Anguiano
©2023 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/15/23
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis
02/15/23
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2023
ACROSS
1 Tool that can
be a musical
instrument
4 Not berthed
8 Designated
14 Confidentiality
contract: Abbr.
15 Spider-Man
co-creator Lee
16 Prophecy source
17 Get-together with
a sketchy vibe?
19 Beam benders
20 Cookie-based
dessert
21 Spanish “those”
22 Salon job
23 Marketer’s blitz
campaign?
28 Affirmative
replies
30 General on a
menu
31 Sign of healing
32 __ Cruces, New
Mexico
34 “Yeah, I guess”
36 Pickleball shot
37 Intercom call on
Take Your Child
to Work Day?
40 Mud bath spot
42 Bash who
co-hosts CNN’s
“State of the
Union”
43 Mo
44 The Buckeye
State
46 WNBA official
47 A few bucks, say
51 Shake Weight
and The Flex
Belt, per their
infomercials?
55 Heaps
56 Limo destination
57 Jack up
59 Nut used to
make vegan
cheese
62 Cold Hawaiian
treat ... or a
directive followed
four times in this
puzzle?
63 Understood by
few
64 Despise
65 Org. with seven
teams in Canada
66 “This Is Spinal
Tap” director
67 Lyft competitor
68 Game Boy
batteries
DOWN
1 Beagle who pilots
an imaginary
Sopwith Camel
2 Like premium
streaming
services
3 Communion
rounds
4 Urgent letters
5 Narrow piece
6 Foodie website
covering 25
metro areas
7 “__ takers?”
8 Arcade
achievements
9 Bad move
10 Ups the ante
11 Telethon VIPs
12 Blight-stricken tree
13 __ Moines
18 Grapefruit kin
21 Succeed
24 “You can come
out now”
25 Rights advocacy
gp.
26 __ Tomé and
Príncipe
27 Recede
29 Hourglass stuff
33 Draw for some
pictures
35 Contact lens
holders
37 Uttered
38 Hr. for an after-
lunch nap,
maybe
39 Interval of eight
notes
40 Cry noisily
41 Soup with rice
noodles
45 Anne of Green
Gables, for one
48 “Riverdale”
actress
Huffman
49 “Caught
red-handed!”
50 Braces (oneself)
52 Nobel-winning
chemist Joliot-
Curie
53 Process that may
involve PT or OT
54 Roofing option
58 Of all time
59 Subway unit
60 “What __ those?”
61 Bio or chem
62 Moo __ pork
SUDOKU
WHISPER
“Please
unblock me
mom”
“Happy
birthday,
Emily You!”
WHISPER
By Wendy L. Brandes
©2023 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/01/23
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis
02/01/23
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Wednesday, February 1, 2023
ACROSS
1 Unexpected
obstacle
5 “Pronto!” letters
9 Suffers after a
Pure Barre class,
say
14 __ Top ice cream
15 Four Corners
state
16 “If only!”
17 “Will do!”
18 Emperor after
Claudius
19 __ touch
20 Forgettable band
with a memorable
song
23 Jazz pianist
McCoy
24 Unnecessary
28 Pie crust fat
31 Ace a
presentation
32 “Pipe down!”
37 Lingerie selection
38 Musical ability
39 Old PC platform
41 Snaky fish
42 Shopping cart
fillers
45 Spot for spare
change
48 Cook’s Illustrated
offering
50 Lake bird with a
wild laugh
51 Sotheby’s
auctions, e.g.
54 Fragrance
58 Element of irony,
and what can be
found in each set
of circled letters?
61 Like 18-Across
64 Goalie’s success
65 Per-hour amount
66 Not sleeping
67 Diva’s big
moment
68 Simpson
daughter voiced
by Yeardley
Smith
69 Came to a close
70 Shout
71 Opening for a
hotel key card
DOWN
1 “Ask me
anything!”
2 Mary Poppins,
for one
3 Out of this world?
4 Went to a tutoring
session, say
5 Many a
godmother
6 Fret (over)
7 Judge who hit
62 home runs in
2022
8 Galaxy, for one
9 Set one’s sights
on
10 “All the Birds in
the Sky” Nebula
winner __ Jane
Anders
11 Monopolize
12 Prefix with dermis
13 Triple __:
orange-flavored
liqueur
21 Baghdad’s
country
22 Room that may
have a sectional
sofa
25 Respected
leader
26 Cucumber salad,
coconut rice, etc.
27 Panache
29 Bacardi liquor
30 Blu-ray buy
32 Knightley of
“Bend It Like
Beckham”
33 “Peter, Peter,
pumpkin __ ... ”
34 Build
35 Old name of
Tokyo
36 Work hard
40 __-cone
43 Error
44 Brought about,
as a movement
46 Like a red-carpet
event
47 Opens, as a fern
frond
49 Former
quarterback
Manning
52 Writing contest
entry, maybe
53 Long look
55 “Reply all”
medium
56 “Untrue!”
57 October 31 option
59 Malicious
60 Hand out cards
61 “Insecure” star
Issa
62 Woolf’s “A Room
of One’s __”
63 Fit to be tied
Wednesday, February 15, 2023 — 3
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Art has an ability to crack the
surface and shove itself deep
into every crevice of humanity.
Once inside of us, art warps our
foundations to add new mean-
ings to the lives we live, whether
it be through pumping our hearts,
pressing on our bruises or melt-
ing all of the soft, pink parts that
make us human. Art can be an
indulgence that outshines reality,
but it is more powerful as a mir-
ror — reflecting the most vulner-
able, packed-away portions of our
insides. This means that a connec-
tion to art requires a connection
to self, and neither can be severed
from its counterpart. So, while a
work of art is an open wound, our
connection to it is what keeps dig-
ging deeper and deeper into the
skin until something strikes blood.
For this reason, the consumption
of art is the most intimate act of
all. The Intimacies B-side is all
about how art has shaped us and
cut through us, and the tender-
ness we feel toward art. And while
art may be the common diamond
among our words, each work of art
is surrounded by its own unique
mix of vulnerability that only the
observer can add to the master-
piece. Spanning from exploring
how books bridge the gaps that
love letters can’t to how art can
become a makeshift home, this
B-side has cocooned a cohort of
writers who have split themselves
open and let their own soft, pink
parts fall right onto the page. This
is a bit of a diary, this is a bit of
an art critique and this is wholly
what makes art worthwhile.
The Intimacies B-Side
On books as love letters
and letting yourself
be known
The intimacy of book-giving has
two sides. There’s the side of the
giver — of presuming to know the
other person, of the vulnerability
of exposing what you think is good
or enjoyable. There’s the side of
the receiver — of trusting the giver
with untold hours of your life,
with the deepest emotional part
of yourself that a book can sneak-
ily unlock. As someone who gives
and receives many books as gifts,
the art of book-giving is something
near and dear to my heart.
Famous anthropologist Mar-
cel Mauss has a theory of gift
exchange, which says that gifts
are ways of furthering and creat-
ing relationships. Unlike giving a
gift, when you exchange money
with the cashier at the grocery
store, the goods (groceries and
money) and actors (yourself and
the cashier) are interchangeable.
That very interaction could take
place anywhere, between any two
people. When you leave the store,
the interaction is over.
But a gift exchange is differ-
ent — the actors are integral parts
of the exchange itself because
they inform everything about the
interaction, and the interaction
would be irrevocably changed
should one or both of the actors be
replaced. Because of this relation-
ship between the giver and the
receiver, the gift itself becomes
inalienable — that is, unable to be
exchanged.
If my friend gets me a pair of
earrings, and I lose those earrings
and get the exact same pair from
the same store, the fundamen-
tal nature of the object has still
changed (and not just because I
had to pay for them this time).
That’s because part of the special-
ness of a gift is the fact that it is a
gift. That pair of earrings becomes
inextricably linked with my friend;
I think of her when I see them and
wear them. Our society takes issue
with overt materialism, but it is
natural to imbue certain objects
with meaning, especially when
they are given as gifts.
I don’t have to explain why
books contain innumerable shades
of meaning. But giving a book as
a gift is like saying, “Here’s the
inside of my brain. Here’s what
my heart looks like.” Or, similarly,
“This is who I think you are. This
is how I think of you.” Often, it’s
a combination of these things.
Sometimes, recommending a book
is like saying, “Here, take a look at
the deepest parts of myself that a
stranger articulated so perfectly.”
Giving a book requires trust,
vulnerability and, above all, inti-
macy. You must trust the other
person as they trust you. The book
between you represents that trust.
In a way, giving someone a book
feels like offering them a love
letter in which you pour out the
inside of your brain and heart in an
attempt to let them know you. And
is there anything more terrifying
than being known?
EMILIA FERRANTE
Daily Arts Writer
AVA BURZYCKI
Senior Arts Editor
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
With love, from ‘Love, Rosie’
“Although a classic ‘indie’ film,
and what many may call just anoth-
er romcom, ‘Love, Rosie’ enamors
me, just as much as Alex and Rosie
are enamored with each other.”
The statement above is a direct
quote from my application to The
Michigan Daily Arts section, in
which I specified that “Love,
Rosie” had been the last piece of
media to make me cry.
I cry, a lot. I think crying is one
of the most organic reactions the
human body can engender. When
we’re sad, we cry. When we’re
angry, we cry. Even when we’re
happy, we cry. Crying serves as the
ultimate response catalyzed by any
emotion we may experience that
feels like it’s too much to handle.
These emotions render us speech-
less, so we have no other option but
to cry in an attempt to fully express
them. Crying doesn’t make us sen-
sitive, and it most certainly does not
make us weak. It makes us real and,
above all, it makes us intimate.
I possess many intimacies —
with one of them being that I cry
when I watch romcoms. I really
can’t tell you what it is about them.
They just make me very emotional.
But among all the romcoms I’ve
ever watched (and trust me, I’ve
watched a lot), “Love, Rosie” never
fails to make me cry the hardest.
From the looks they exchange
to the laughs they share, Alex
(Sam Claflin, “Me Before You”)
and Rosie (Lily Collins, “Emily in
Paris”) never run out of intimacies
to bless each other with, and that’s
what makes their love so beautiful
and so special.
“Love, Rosie” is the movie adap-
tation of Cecelia Ahern’s novel
“Where Rainbows End,” and it fol-
lows childhood best friends Alex
and Rosie as they go on the epic
rollercoaster that is the transition
from adolescence to adulthood,
falling in love with each other in
the process. With countless “right
person, wrong time” moments
throughout the course of the
movie, Rosie and Alex’s relation-
ship is slow-burn excellence, even
if the buildup drives me insane.
Alex and Rosie are intimate
with each other in insurmount-
able ways. For them, a smile, a look,
even a fleeting moment means so
much more than any physical con-
tact they could share, more than
anything they leave unsaid. There
is an intimacy in two pairs of lips
almost touching, but not quite, in
two people bound by their past,
even in their vastly different pres-
ents, that no written word will ever
be able to explain. It sometimes felt
like they were able to communicate
telepathically. Sure, they couldn’t
verbalize their feelings. I mean, the
reason why it takes so long for them
to finally get together is that Alex
assumed that Rosie was choosing
to forget the kiss they shared on her
18th birthday when she had, truth-
fully, forgotten. But apart from
that, they understood each other
in ways nobody else did. Their con-
nection always leads me to ques-
tion how they could be so intimate
with each other while hiding the
most vulnerable intimacy of all.
The feelings that others may
find impossible to understand were
naturally and simultaneously com-
prehended by Alex and Rosie. For
instance, when Rosie’s father died,
she was virtually inconsolable. Her
hopelessness is understandable, but
one could only expect that her hus-
band would be able to appease her
sorrow, even if to a small degree.
Funnily enough, it wasn’t Greg
(Christian Cooke, “Point Blank”)
who was able to make her smile at
her dad’s funeral. It was Alex. Alex
knew exactly the gift to bring and
just what to say. While Greg was off
making jokes about Rosie’s cousin
being a “bore,” Alex spoke wonders
of Rosie’s dad and was able to bring
their inner children back, even if
for a short moment, in an attempt
to comfort Rosie.
GRACIELA BATLLE CESTERO
Daily Arts Writer
Design by Phoebe Unwin
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Literally me: The cringe
characters that knew me
before I knew myself
“A character, sir, may always
ask a man who he is.” — Luigi
Pirandello
Cringe. That awful feeling
that gravitates your shoulders
together, tightens every muscle
in your face and sticks a needle in
your soul. Cringe is a divider, the
benchmark on which we measure
what’s acceptable to enjoy on the
internet and what is mocked end-
lessly. It is pure embarrassment,
both second and firsthand, though
somewhat arbitrarily assigned.
I’ve been cringe in publication
before — admitting myself as a
Five Nights at Freddy’s and Sonic
fan, as well as a “Morbius” ana-
lyzer — but none so far as these.
When it comes to the characters
I’ve intimately known, these are
the three — across Shakespeare,
musicals and anime — that always
come to my mind.
I was in eighth grade when it
first happened. As we were seated
in my English class, I fixated on
my class copy of “A Midsummer
Night’s Dream,” trying my best
to decipher a path through its
Shakespearean labyrinth of lan-
guage. One character handed me
a glowing thread and we began
to understand each other. I don’t
even remember the scene, but
I remember when it clicked. I
remember starting to skip over
lines, just looking for the four
capitalized letters and colon,
the lines that spoke to my soul. I
remember starting to giggle as I
began to understand this grem-
lin and began to feel understood
by the bard, despite being centu-
ries apart. I glanced around at my
friends, who were confused by my
barely-contained laughter, and
explained:
“Dude, Puck is literally me.”
Now, what the hell was I on
about? Well, for those unfamil-
iar with that totally niche classic,
Puck’s basically the prototypical
“silly little guy.” His defining char-
acter traits and contributions to
the plot of “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream” are causing problems on
purpose and through incompe-
tence, but choosing to laugh at
both. This is what stood out to
me, more than any other fictional
character I’ve read: a perhaps
self-deprecating admission of my
childhood cycle of self-sabotage.
I was never the best-behaved kid,
so I think having a character that
exhibited his mistakes as enter-
tainment for himself rather than
further degradation contained
within a text almost half a millen-
nium ago — something about that
was supremely significant to me.
The second time was as a
high school freshman, fixating
on something that you possibly
might’ve heard of: the hip-hop
historical musical “Hamilton.”
What I’m going to confess is
definitively cringey — the charac-
ter I found myself again intensely
relating to, more than any other
character, was that eponymous
protagonist Alexander Hamil-
ton. Not the historical figure, of
course, but this musical reimagin-
ing of the character. Looking back,
my reasons were not as complex
as relating to Puck. Alexander was
simply a character who shared my
love for the art of the argument,
stemming from an annoying
assumption that he was always in
the right. I also related to his driv-
ing impetus being as existential
as one should get in high school
— to leave behind a legacy. What I
reflect on now is how embarrass-
ing admitting that makes me feel,
or at least how it used to feel.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
SAARTHAK JOHRI
Digital Culture Beat Editor
Design by Evelyn Mousigian