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Note: The answer grid will include every letter of the alphabet.
BY EMILY COX AND HENRY RATHvON

I know a lot of people want to have a smoking gun. . . . It’s more like breadcrumbs everywhere, and they’re not always leading in one direction. It’s like the whole floor is covered in breadcrumbs.

—Alina Chan, a postdoc at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who specializes in genetic engineering and has been vocal about the need to investigate the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from a laboratory leak (NBC News, June 16)

If anyone is going to come out strongly on one hypothesis or another, the scientific method says that there should be evidence to back it. I worry when some people are very willing to be firm about one origin or the other but...

ACROSS

6. Infant feeding station?
7. Alternative form of a gene
9. Where the first 38 US presidents were born
10. Muscle that draws a body part away from the midline
11. Kind of bond an infant may form
13. Likely birthplace of a hatchling
14. Appendage that may swell during pregnancy
16. Carries and develops before parturition
19. Neonatal condition treated with light therapy
20. Dye hue in an unreliable pregnancy test
21. Cell formed by the union of two gametes
22. Epoch when modern mammals arose

DOWN

1. Nipple ring
2. ___ in the woods
3. Push with great effort
4. Related to a tail
5. Umbilical cord attachment
8. Closed circuits
12. Muscle that stretches or straightens a body part
15. Oocyte producer
16. Acts as a doula, say
17. Country where midwives play essential roles
18. Horse doctor's patient
20. Sire of a doe

© JONNY HAWKINS

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