ABOVE: © istock.com, bgblue

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

The biggest risk to progress against the pandemic in 2022 would be the emergence of a new variant combining the worst characteristics of Delta and Beta. The world must hope that science provides the tools to finally outsmart covid.

—The Economist, in a late-November installment of its “The Economist explains” column titled “What will the covid-19 pandemic look like in 2022?” (November 19)
ACROSS

6. Mayfly genus; short-lived matter
7. Cobra’s trademark
8. Any of the Canaries
9. Therianthropic figure of folklore
10. Do the opposite of coil
12. Sub-Saharan fly, a vector of trypanosomes
13. Tropical lizard with a dewlap
15. Pertaining to 1-Down or a 7-Down
16. Like muscle tissue with sarcomeres
17. Snacks for Sciuridae members
19. Owl or bat abode
20. Beset by a boa

DOWN

1. Primatology subjects
2. Kind of doctor for this puzzle?
3. Spoke in Persian?
4. Cockatoo or lory
5. Phylum for squid and snail
7. New World tree-dweller with a loud call (2 wds.)
11. Nocturnal bird sometimes called a goatsucker
14. Disorder with a “spectrum”
15. Element isolated by Humphry Davy in 1807
18. Late Cretaceous “king” (2 wds.)

SWOT will be our first global snapshot of all surface water that we have now, how the water moves around the planet, and what happens to it in a new climate.

—Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, NASA scientist and collaborator on the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) program, which aims to launch next-generation satellites in 2022 that will be the first to conduct an Earth-wide survey of surface water (November 18)
© JONNY HAWKINS