Across
1. Kangaroos and opossums
2. Kwame Nkrumah’s country
3. Duelling tool
5. With 4-Down, item used for pranks if one sits or puts one’s face on its transparent plate
7. Bad thing to accidentally spill an entire glass of while putting one’s face on a 5-Across
9. Container for the ink that is seeping into the bottom half of my tie
10. German change
12. Number of minutes I can be late to dinner, given that I am meeting my girlfriend’s parents, my tie is still in an 8-Down, and it’s a restaurant with a dress code
13. Person in my girlfriend’s life who has that old-fashioned “I’m gonna kill you if you hurt her” vibe even though society sort of frowns on that now
15. Number of times I have disappointed my girlfriend despite her very specific requests for timeliness over the past three months
16. ____ tie (what I should have brought, since this one is shot)
18. Where I’ll have to create a profile after I blow it tonight. Honestly, things have been pretty tough between us for a while, so I wonder if I subconsciously sabotaged our plans for the evening. There hasn’t been anything particular to point to, just . . . a distance, if you get where I’m coming from. Like, at a certain point we went from lovers to friends to roommates who barely even talk anymore. And sometimes the loneliness you feel with someone is worse than the loneliness you might feel without them. That isn’t how a relationship should be. She should be excited to see me, and I to see her. Instead, we find ourselves stuck in these monotonous cycles of working, coming home, sitting in silence, maybe watching some TV, and arguing about trivial stuff. I might fall asleep on the couch, I might not. The point is, she doesn’t care, and neither do I. I think we need to have a tough conversation. Something needs to change. And, when I get my tie out of this printer, I think I’ll finally find the courage to say, “This isn’t working. You don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this.” And, perhaps, somewhere down the line, we will meet again as new people, we will rediscover what we once loved about each other, and, even though our relationship ended, a deep friendship might begin.
Down
4. HP, Brother, or OfficeJet, e.g.
6. Iranian currency
8. Where, in a hasty effort to clean up a spill, my tie has suddenly got stuck
9. Ink color that’s leaking the hardest onto my once classy navy tie
11. What I scheduled weeks ago for 6:45 P.M. tonight, even though my girlfriend told me I would be cutting it close, for short
14. Woodwind instrument
17. What the three people who are probably arriving at the restaurant will not do when I tell them that I was trying to copy my face to print it out and put it on my intern’s desk as a fun prank when I became stuck in the damn machine
19. Traditional formal wear in Edinburgh
ANSWER KEY
Across
1. MARSUPIALS
2. GHANA
3. ÉPÉE
5. COPIER
7. WATER
9. CARTRIDGE
10. EURO
12. FIFTEEN
13. DAD
15. SIX
16. EXTRA
18. TINDER
Down
4. PRINTER
6. RIAL
8. PAPER FEED
9. CYAN
11. DINNER RES.
14. OBOE
17. BELIEVE ME
19. KILT
