LOS ANGELES TIMES SUNDAY CROSSWORD PUZZLE “GET WISE” By MATT SKOCZEN ACROSS 1 Jelly Roll Morton genre 8 Benjamin 13 Kind of manner 20 Repertoire 21 Riveting WWII icon 22 Volatile solvent 23 Irish region named for a literary nobleman? 25 Vehicle in a pit 26 Works with purls 27 Easy comparison 28 Heartache 30 “Star Wars” antagonist 31 Commiseration at a cookout? 35 Inquire 38 Advance with determination 40 “The Purloined Letter” author 41 Cream additive 42 __-jongg 45 Normandy city 46 Bro, for one 48 Spent 49 Bouquets 51 Sham indignation? 56 San Juan __: California mission city 59 Athlete-turnedsportscaster Rashad 60 “Weeds” law org. 61 Word with rule or show 62 Wears down 65 USG successor 66 “It’s __ a while” 67 Excited cry from a gemologist? 71 Short rules? 74 Female lobster 75 Wells’ island doctor 76 Degrade 80 Junior Olympic Games org. 81 __ Tranquility
83 Feature of much 10 Nittany Lions’ sch. commercial 11 Jed Clampett’s maple syrup find 85 Dilemma 12 Needle presented by a 13 Hispanic city area suspicious peace 14 Whist relative offering? 15 Shill 89 “Yeah, right!” 16 Booyah or 90 Ho-hum feeling bouillabaisse 91 India is home to 17 Games org. a plurality of its 18 CSI stuff employees 19 Poetic adverb 92 __ Victoria 24 __ to go: eager, 94 Remote needs colloquially 95 “Do-Re-Mi” critter 29 On the facing pg. 96 Three Kingdoms 31 Really good time Chinese state 32 Block ending 99 Trading post 33 Mozart’s “__ fan visitors tutte” 103 Nutrition fig. 34 Textbook 104 Young farm animals’ taxi segment company? 35 Refer (to) 106 Radio switch 36 Nighttime shindig 110 Middle Jackson 37 Ugandan sister neighbor 111 Uzbekistan, once: 39 “The Plough Abbr. and the Stars” 112 Farm song letters playwright Sean 113 Coup member? 41 TV alien 116 Cues from the 42 Apple offerings Miracles’ lead 43 Depleted sea singer? 44 Southwestern 121 Loom power native source 47 Song cry heard 122 White-plumed here, there and heron everywhere? 123 Hot air 48 Furthermore 124 Gave the okay 50 Golden touch 125 Framing supports king 126 Night flights 51 “You __ out?” 52 Internet link DOWN 53 Sequence of 1 Spaces for spices online posts 2 Rice-__ 54 Saturate 3 Astronaut’s 55 Nicole Kidman’s apparel island birthplace 4 5, in 2.5 57 Try again 5 QB’s concerns 58 Playground 6 5, in 5/8, say crack? 7 The past, in the 63 That, to Tito past 64 Classic Fender, 8 Buster of old for short Hollywood 66 One way to get 9 Game with around town strikers 68 Vincent van
Gogh’s brother 69 Actress Lamarr 70 Harsh critic 71 Very violent, perhaps 72 Made 73 Mali neighbor 77 Río contents 78 Poet Teasdale 79 Cockney toast opener 81 __ lodge 82 “Good” day occurring once a yr. 84 “Okey-__!” 86 Snake 87 Declines 88 Human rights lawyer Clooney 92 Skeptical 93 BOS posting 96 Rooster feature 97 Runs off to wed 98 Boston __ 100 Wagered 101 Den furnishings 102 Jeanne d’Arc, par exemple 104 Reese’s output 105 Relieves 107 Rich, as tomato sauce 108 Dijon daughter 109 Exodus leader 110 It’s usually played by a star 112 “Yikes!” 113 Mark and Luke: Abbr. 114 “Deathtrap” playwright Levin 115 Island garland 117 Co. heads 118 Okla. campus with a Prayer Tower 119 6-Down is in it: Abbr. 120 Hot state
JERK DU SOLEIL I’m a guy in my senior year of college. I cannot figure out how my roommate gets all the women he does. He’s a huge jerk to everyone, including women – the typical “bad boy.” He breaks any rule or law he can, doesn’t care who he hurts, and makes very little effort with women, yet all my female friends go for him. A good friend (sleeping over, as it got really late) even left my bed in the middle of the night to get into his! Why?!! — Nice Guy Women – especially in their 20s – will blather on about how they want a nice, reliable guy. Then they find one and immediately despise him for how nice and reliable he is: like how he always calls when he says he will – usually to the minute! – and there’s never that recorded voice on the line first, “Will you accept a collect call from prison?” Reading between the lines of your email, you seem to have the same question cognitive scientist Scott Barry Kaufman asked: Basically, do you have to be a jerk to get the girl? To answer that, Kaufman explored bad boys’ appeal. He observes that bad boys tend to have big helpings of “dark triad” personality traits. Dark triad sounds like the name for three ne’er-do-well superheroes, but it’s actually the term for three malevolent personality traits with some ugly similarities: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. Machiavellianism, named for 16thcentury Italian political adviser (aka tyrant whisperer) Niccolo Machiavelli, plays out in ruthless scheming, callousness, and self-interest. Psychopathy shows itself in callous detachment, poor impulse control, and a lack of empathy and remorse. Narcissism is reflected in egotism, an extra-large sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and “grandiosity”: an inflated sense of one’s greatness in contrast with all the rest of the human worms. This is quite the personality poison pack, yet – in research mirroring your experience – evolutionary psychologist Peter K. Jonason found that dark triad traits were correlated with having more sex partners (as well as more of a desire for hookups). Obviously, the dark triad traits themselves – essentially heartless, exploitative user-ishness – make exactly no one in their right mind go, “Wow, where do I sign up for somebody with all that?!” However, Kaufman observes that dark triad “bad boys tend to have lots of positive traits that come along for the ride
(with) the badness,” such as confidence, assertiveness, and fearlessness, along with creativity, humor, charisma, and high energy – “all things women find attractive.” I think two types of women are particularly drawn to bad boys: hookuperellas – women who just want casual sex – and “sensationseeking” excitement junkies. Sensation seeking is a personality trait that psychologist Marvin Zuckerman finds plays out in a craving for novel, varied, intense sensations and experiences and a willingness to take risks to get them. There’s a clue in all of this for the dismayed nice guy who can’t understand why women seem to fall out of the trees into bed with the jerk. Even women who aren’t danger-and-excitement junkies are drawn to men who are a consistent source of “novel” experiences: that is, who never stop surprising them (though playfully rather than evilly!). Also, consider that what drives away women isn’t so much being a nice guy but an overly nice guy: a guy who comes off needy, tentative and desperate to be wanted. Now, maybe you feel needy, tentative and desperate – at least to some degree. (Who doesn’t?!) The thing is there’s no mandate for you to act the way you feel. That said, I explain in “Unf*ckology” that “fake it till you make it” is actually a bust, because you typically succumb to “cognitive overload”: you have so many things to remember (to come off confident, surprising, fun, etc.) that you end up getting overwhelmed and falling apart. I instead advise that you “impersonate your way” into the new confident you: basically, borrow a confident, easygoing, fun guy’s persona – meaning, secretly “be” him (like an actor playing a role) when, say, talking to a new woman in a coffee shop. Do this repeatedly, and you should see that women treat you very differently. There are sure to be some hiccups, but you should eventually feel ready to do this confident, easygoing thing as you: a nice guy who’s trained himself into having the good parts of bad-boy mojo. By the way, you should have an easier time with the ladies as you approach your 30s because many women will have been jerkburned at least once and learned their lesson. They want a guy who can hold their attention for hours with his wit and good nature – as opposed to the dude who seems destined to hold off the cops for hours by shouting demands from inside the 7-Eleven.
GOT A PROBLEM? Write to Amy Alkon at 171 Pier Ave, Ste. 280, Santa Monica, CA 90405, or email her at AdviceAmy@aol.com. ©2021, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. Alkon’s latest book is “Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence.” Follow @amyalkon on Twitter or visit blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon.
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