L.A TIMES CROSSWORD

ACROSS

1 *Top selection

9 Bring pleasure (to) 15 Horror film line that usually gets its speaker in trouble

16 With conviction

17 Final Yahtzee roll, e.g. 18 Defies 19 Omaha-to-Milwaukee dir. 20 Epidermal flaw

21 Its practice doesn't make it perfect

22 *Preliminary sketch 28 Cowboy leggings

30 Quite small

31 __ culpa

32 Indian noblewoman 33 Utopia

35 Degrees of creativity, briefly

36 *Overly defensive stance 39 Track calculation

40 Very long time

41 Support for a stroller 42 Seminarian's subj.

43 __ bran

44 Stun gun brand

45 *Newbie

49 Kareem, once

50 Interoffice PC connection 51 Vehicle that really moves?

54 Canal zone

57 “Lives of the Mayfair Witches” trilogy author 60 Video game figure 61 Agonize about

62 Deal with a bounced email

63 *Stud poker element

DOWN

1 Roofing unit

2 Vigorous spirit

3 “Got anything __?”

4 Mil. three-striper

5 High on the Scoville scale 6 Rodeos, e.g.

7 Equip anew

8 Back nine opener

9 Wealthy

10 “Ecce homo” speaker 11 Hunt stealthily

12 Source of lean red meat 13 PC key

14 Fleur in heraldry

22 Assigns relative value to 23 Mayberry kid

24 2018 Pro Football

Hall of Fame inductee Terrell 25 “It's just a scratch”

26 Not as messy

27 “Nothing to it!”

28 Less refined

29 Deal with

33 Put on quite an act

34 Cubs' digs

35 Heck of a party

36 Swedish tennis great 37 Astern

38 Amazon berry

43 Kind of band

44 Mine feature

46 Please mightily

47 Be at loggerheads

48 Cost

51 Brawny rival

52 Big name in PCs

53 Bookish sort

54 What a sequence of single strokes from the start of each starred answer to the next often adds up to

55 Thoroughfare:

Abbr.

56 “Life Is Good” rapper

58 Farm girl

59 Dungeons & Dragons bird