ABOVE: © istock.com, Anna Bliokh

Click the puzzle for a full-size, interactive version.
Note: The answer grid will include every letter of the alphabet.
BY EMILY COX AND HENRY RATHvON

You know, maybe we underinvested in research on human behavior. I never imagined a year ago, when those [COVID-19] vaccines were just proving to be fantastically safe and effective, that we would still have 60 million people [in the United States] who had not taken advantage of them because of misinformation and disinformation that somehow dominated all of the ways in which people were getting their answers.

—Francis Collins, newly retired director of the National Institutes of Health, talking with PBS NewsHour in December about what he wished the NIH could have studied during his tenure (December 20)
ACROSS

7. Growth containing keratin
8. Macroparasite such as a tapeworm
9. Noble feral child of fiction
10. Buccal cavities
11. Carapace bearer of brackish regions
13. Facts and figures that may be “raw”
15. Growth containing keratin
17. Harvest of turnips or beets (2 wds.)
19. Cerumen
21. Unit in a temperature scale
22. Annual occasion for tree planting (2 wds.)
23. Early animal conservationist?

DOWN

1. Chili pepper with a tilde in its name
2. Giant panda, horse, or other graminivore
3. Tibia setting
4. Wader with pinkish plumage
5. State with a definite volume but no fixed shape
6. Home of Canyonlands National Park
12. Household disinfectant and cleaning agent
14. From frost-free climes
16. F = ma formulator
18. Social group in a hive, e.g.
20. One of 640 in a square mile
21. Low islands or reefs

Losing the agreement on UK participation in the world’s biggest international science funding programme at this stage, when it has already been negotiated and is ready to sign, would be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

—Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, speaking to BBC News about the United Kingdom’s potential withdrawal from Horizon Europe, a €100 billion European research funding program (December 22)
© JONNY HAWKINS