52 | New Scientist | 24 October 2020
Quick crossword #69 Set by Richard Smyth
Scribble
zoneAnswers and
the next cryptic
crossword next week The back pages Puzzles
Our crosswords are now solvable online
newscientist.com/crosswordsQuick quiz #74
1 Who was the first African-American
woman in space?2 Charles Drew was a US physician
famous for developing methods for
the long-term storage of what?3 Which 19th-century agronomist
is known for pioneering crop rotation
across the southern US and inventing
hundreds of uses for peanuts?4 Parvitermes collinsae, named
after entomologist Margaret Collins,
is a species of which kind of insect?5 Until the 1940s, the Ball method,
developed by chemist Alice Ball,
was the most effective treatment
for which disease?Answers on page 55Puzzle
set by Chris Maslanka
#82 DogmandooWhen “Hairy” Potter returned from
his failed expedition to find the
legendary lost city of Dogmandoo,
he gave a press conference.
“It was a jungle out there!” joked
the great man. “Luckily for me,
it wasn’t the rainy season. For the
whole expedition, I noticed that
if it rained in the morning it was
fine in the afternoon; if it rained
in the afternoon it was fine in the
morning. In fact, I see from my diary
that it was fine on 37 mornings
and 43 afternoons. Mind you,
it did rain on a total of 40 days.”Back at the office of The Daily Grind,
I found that my notes weren’t quite
as compendious as I had thought.
On how many afternoons of Potter’s
expedition had it rained? If this was
typical of the rainy season what
(roughly) are the chances in that
season of a day unspoilt by rain?Answers next weekACROSS
8 Raw material for the production of paper (4)
9 ___-19, infectious disease first identified in
Wuhan, China (abbr.) (5)
10 Australopithecus skeleton known officially
as AL288-1 (4)
11 Relating to an unborn infant (6)
12 Excavation in a water environment (8)
13 ___ acid, also known as hydrochloric acid (8)
15 Period of widespread glaciation (3,3)
17 Solution of acetic acid (7)
19 System of transmitters, cables
or computers, perhaps (7)
22 Constellation seen between
Taurus and Cancer (6)
24 8th prime number (8)
26 Ordinal of 11 (8)
28 Breathe out (6)
30 Diesel fuel (4)
31 Tier; even (5)
32 Computer operating system
developed by AT&T (4)DOWN
1 Lymph node swelling (4)
2 British fighter aircraft designed
by R. J. Mitchell (8)
3 Spotted cat of South America (6)
4 Organ known in humans as
the Fallopian tube (7)
5 Sticky (8)
6 Pestilence (6)
7 Procedure that might be CT or PET (4)
14 Waste water (5)
16 Prickly plant in the genus Ulex (5)
18 Infectious disease such as H5N1 (5,3)
20 Work done by 1W in 1h (4-4)
21 Small marine fish in the family Engraulidae (7)
23 Of an experiment, performed
on living cells or organisms (2,4)
25 Syringe (6)
27 Edible plant in the genus Allium (4)
29 ___ Organa, princess in the Star Wars films (4)