Exhibiting a green face, stereotypically / FRI 6-12-26 / Half ass reply? / Obstacle for Odysseus / Children's book title character in a green suit / Home of the world's largest independently owned bookstore (spanning an entire city block) / Cab alternative / Style with spotty coverage? / Pastry with Austrian origins, despite its name

Constructor: Amanda Winters

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Empire of the ANTS (19A: "Empire of the ___" (1977 sci-fi film with an approval rating of 5% on Rotten Tomatoes)) —

[Joan Collins!]

Empire of the Ants is a 1977 science fiction horror film co-written and directed by Bert I. Gordon. Based very loosely on the 1905 short story "Empire of the Ants" by H. G. Wells, the film involves a group of prospective land buyers led by a land developer, pitted against large mutated ants.

It is the third and last film released in A.I.P.'s H.G. Wells film cycle, which include The Food of the Gods (1976) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977). // The opening narration notes how ants use pheromones to communicate and how this causes an obligatory response. As the opening credits roll, barrels sporting radioactive waste decals are dumped off a boat into the ocean. One of the barrels washes onto a beach and leaks a silvery goo onto the sand.

Meanwhile, shady land developer Marilyn Fryser takes prospective clients on a boat trip to view a beachfront land development in the area of the waste dump. Unbeknownst to the visitors, ants are writhing in the radioactive goo from the leaky barrel. The visitors question the value of the land, but the trip is cut short when some of them are attacked by giant mutated ants. The ants destroy their boat and chase the group through woods. After losing some of their party along the way, the survivors discover a town and gain a promise of help from the local sheriff. Their sense of safety is short-lived as they discover that the queen ant, using pheromones, has put the townsfolk under her control and is making them provide her colony with sugar from the local sugar plant. Joe Morrison, one of the prospective land buyers, kills the queen ant in an explosion, enabling the remaining survivors to escape the area in a speedboat. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was probably "Easy," but I got stupidly bogged down in the NE, so I had to bump it up to "Easy-Medium." Two main problems. First, the term GENETIC LOTTERY just doesn't resonate. Seeing it now, I recognize it as a phrase I've seen or heard before, but I don't really know how or where or why it's used. It's just ... your genes. You get what you get. You have no choice in the matter. It's luck. Is that the idea? You "win the GENETIC LOTTERY" if you live a long and relatively healthy life? Thinking in terms of "winning" or "losing" genes gets you into some pretty creepy, eugenics-adjacent territory. Anyway, the term just isn't on my radar, so even having GENETIC in the grid didn't help me get it. GENETIC ...  MAKEUP? CODE? I was looking for a more neutral and common term. So what should've been my anchor in the NE just wasn't there. Which leads to the second problem: JEALOUS. As in, "I'm JEALOUS of those of you who managed to solve the NE corner without writing in 'JEALOUS' for 5A: Exhibiting a green face, stereotypically." I looked at that clue, looked at the letters I had in place (_EA____) and confidently wrote in JEALOUS. Jealousy is the "green-eyed monster," and you can be "green with envy," which is basically the same as jealousy, so, yeah, JEALOUS. Solid as a rock, I thought. I see now the clues are doing some kind of "green" bit here, with successive "green" clues (this one followed by the BABAR one (12A: Children's book title character in a green suit)). But the clue isn't the problem. I just fell into the pit created by the coincidence of the shared letters in JEALOUS and SEASICK. It also would've helped me if, after I'd ripped out JEALOUS, I could've seen either CHRONIC (10D: Persistent) or KEY WEST (11D: Home of the Ernest Hemingway House). I found my stuckness so perplexing, I took a screenshot.

Now please understand that when I say I got bogged down, I mean "relative to the rest of the puzzle." It actually took me very little time to get out of this mess. It's just that there were no other messes in the puzzle, so this bit stood out. Couldn't parse CHRONIC and wow I really should've seen KEY WEST but my Florida associations with Hemingway are surpassed by my Idaho associations, probably because my family is from Idaho and I've been to Ketchum, ID in the not-too-distant past (that's where Hemingway killed himself). Also, did you know—Ketchum, Idaho also has an Ernest Hemingway House!? It's true. The one in Ketchum is actually called the Ernest and Mary Hemingway House, but still, a house is a house, and a house is not a home, and two houses both alike in dignity divided against itself shall not stand! Or something like that. I'm laughing now at the fact that KETCHUM and KEYWEST, like JEALOUS and SEASICK, share two letters! Anyway, after all this floundering, I was saved by ice cream (9D: Place where customers get their licks in? = ICE CREAM PARLOR). Are there no limits to its magical powers!? Looking forward to hitting the ICE CREAM PARLOR later today—going up to Ithaca to catch a movie (Stop! That! Train!) and then hitting Purity Ice Cream directly afterwards so I can have my vanilla malt (drink of the summer! third-best beverage in the world after hot black coffee and a cold Manhattan). It got hot and humid here all of a sudden yesterday, so a cool theater followed by a cold melt is gonna feel amazing. 

I found this puzzle a little dull for a Friday. Something about the shape of it meant that the longer answers were cut off from each other and everything around them was kinda short. It's a very choppy grid that appears to have very little to offer in the way of marquee fill, though there are six long answers, which is ... reasonable, I guess. I'd like something closer to ten or even a dozen, but six isn't terrible, I suppose. Very few of those answers seemed particularly marquee-worthy. I can see someone liking GENETIC LOTTERY, I guess, but as we've established, I did not. I do love ICE CREAM PARLORs, and BEST-KEPT SECRET is a plucky phrase, but the others are just OK. Not bad. But lacking the kind of zing and oomph that makes for a really bright Friday. The parts I enjoyed most were, again, ICE CREAM PARLOR, and then PORTLAND, OREGON, largely because of the clue (58A: Home of the world's largest independently owned bookstore (spanning an entire city block)) The bookstore in question is Powell's ... I guess putting the name in the clue would've made it too easy? But if you know Powell's, then the clue is already easy, so why not just name the bookstore? You do all this free advertising for Apple and Oreo, you can name an independent bookstore, New York Times, it won't hurt you.

[my Tuesday mug, but maybe I'll break it out today in honor of the puzzle ... oh who am I kidding, I will not do that, the mug schedule is the mug schedule and it changes for no one!] 

Nothing particularly tricky in the grid today, that I can see. I laughed at the clue on ATTIC (7D: Ghost story?). It's almost certainly not original, but it's funny and vivid and clever and everything a "?" should be. I also liked that there was both a "cup" clue (44A: Big name in cups = SOLO) and a "cone" clue (63A: Cone holders = RETINAS) in a puzzle that also contained ICE CREAM PARLOR. Big day for ice cream, at least in my head.

Bullets:

• 1A: Get-up (DUDS) — so, "get-up" as in "clothing." I was thinking "get-up" as in "pep," "vim," "vigor," but maybe that's "get-up-and-go"

• 20A: Velociraptor, e.g., informally (DINO) — yesterday was the 33rd anniversary of the release of Jurassic Park. Spielberg's got a new one in theaters this weekend, Disclosure Day, which sounds ... good, actually. Or promising. The trailers make it seem a little somber / humorless, which has never been true of his great summer blockbusters (E.T., Close Encounters, Jurassic Park, etc.). But maybe that won't be true. I'm going to see it no matter what, per the Josh O'Connor Rule (which is the rule that says I will see any movie starring Josh O'Connor):

• 29A: Half ass reply? (HEE) — cute. I had HAW at first.
• 35D: Baseball trio (OUTS) — you know you've been doing crossword puzzles way, way too long when you see [Baseball trio] and the letters "OU" and your first thought is ALOUS (brothers Felipe, Matty, and Jesus all played in the Majors, and at one point (1963) made up the entirety of the Giants' outfield)

[Baseball trio]

• 49D: Do business? (SALON) — "Do" as in "hairdo"; I was just just grateful the answer wasn't urination- or defecation-related.
• 51D: Obstacle for Odysseus (SIREN) — there were a lot of obstacles! Scylla Charybdis Cyclops Circe on and on. But of those, only CIRCE fit, and I must've had other letters in place because I never considered her. Odysseus makes his men tie him to the mast when they pass the SIRENs so he can hear their call without being tempted (to his death?) by it. His men plug their ears.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Sailor's bearings, to an ancient Roman? / THU 6-11-26 / TV journalist Spencer / Olympic snowboarder Kim / EGOT-winning composer Menken / People one might meet at a drive / Poker holding of four cards of the same suit / Something you might keep tabs on? / Word before baked or naked / Hair style sported by painter Bob Ross

Constructor: Nikhil Bailey

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "... to an ancient Roman?" — answers to theme clues must be read aloud—the parts that sound like letters (e.g. "aye" ("I"), "see" ("C"), etc.) must be understood as Roman numerals and then written into the grid as their English equivalent. So:

Theme answers:

• 18A: "Yes, sir!," to an ancient Roman? = "Aye aye, captain" = "I I, captain" = TWO, CAPTAIN
• 25A: Sailor's bearings, to an ancient Roman? = "sea legs" = "C legs" = HUNDRED LEGS
• 43A: Certain Microsoft office files, to an ancient Roman? = "Excel sheets" = "XL sheets" = FORTY SHEETS
• 55A: Prestigious group of schools, to an ancient Roman? = "Ivy League" = "IV League" = FOUR LEAGUE

Word of the Day: ALAN Menken (11D: EGOT-winning composer Menken) —

Alan Irwin Menken (born July 22, 1949) is an American composer and conductor. Over his career he has received numerous accolades including winning eight Academy Awards, a Tony Award, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, and a Golden Raspberry for worst original song. He is one of 22 recipients to have won the competitive EGOT (Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony).

He is best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Menken's contributions to The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) won him two Academy Awards for each film. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), Disenchanted (2022), and Spellbound (2024), among others.

He is also known for his work in musical theater for Broadway winning the Tony Award for Best Original Score for Newsies (2012). He was Tony-nominated for Beauty and the Beast (1993), The Little Mermaid (2008), Sister Act (2009), and Aladdin (2014). His other stage hits include Little Shop of Horrors (1982), A Christmas Carol (1994), Leap of Faith (2012), and A Bronx Tale (2016). (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme *feels* straightforward, but I kept getting tripped up by it because it has not one layer but two—that is, both the sound of the Roman numeral and the meaning of the Roman numeral matter. My first and biggest mistake was thinking I had it when I did not, in fact, have it. I could see that the answer to 25A: Sailor's bearings, to an ancient Roman? was going to start HUNDRED, so I was like "OK, so the actual answer starts with the letter 'C' ... what are 'Sailor's bearings' that start with 'C' ... 'CL-' ... 'CLE-' ... CLEG- ...  what the hell are 'CLEGS'!" And only then did I realize, "Oh, 'C' = 'SEA'! SEA LEGS!" I also misunderstood "bearings" in that clue, thinking it had to do with directions. So I struggled, then half got it, then all-the-way got it. And yet I kept mentally dropping it after that. I wanted to write in "II CAPTAIN" as the answer for 18A: "Yes, sir!," to an ancient Roman?, forgetting that I had to do yet another conversion: not just words to Roman numerals, but then Roman numerals to their English-language equivalent. I think the phrase "to an ancient Roman?" made me really Really want the actual in-the-grid answer to be a Roman numeral. The whole concept here is pretty silly, in that an ancient Roman would not hear the phrase "Aye aye, captain" and think it meant "TWO, CAPTAIN." "I" would not have sounded like "aye" in ancient Rome, and anyway presumably the ancient Roman couldn't speak English at all (since it didn't exist). But if you just let yourself go with the silliness, the theme is kind of entertaining, and sufficiently tricky, I think, for a Thursday.

["Drowning ... in a hundred of love ..."]

I was less entertained by the non-theme stuff. Two of the longer answers, FLUSH DRAW and OPTIC LOBE, were wasted on me, as I don't really know those terms (4D: Poker holding of four cards of the same suit) (40A: Your mind's eye?). They're niche terms that just left me shrugging. I could infer them, but I didn't enjoy them. I know the term FOUR FLUSHER—a great term for one who talks big but can't back it up (i.e. you're playing like you have a full flush but you've only got four of the five necessary cards). A phony, a fraud, a small-time person who puts up a big-time front. I learned the term from Chandler's "Red Wind." I thought the answer might be something colorful like that. But no, it's just the dull FLUSH DRAW. As for OPTIC LOBE, I assume that's the part of your brain concerned with vision. The only word I know that follows OPTIC is NERVE. Anything besides NERVE, I'll just have to take your word for it. And then two other longer answers, OPERAGOER and SALE ITEMS, are flat-out dull. In short, lots of marquee space is wasted on answers that don't have much pop, and certainly hold no interest for me. But the grid holds up OK otherwise; mostly clean, rarely cringey. 

["Time ... keeps flowing like a river ... to the hundred ..."]

I like that SEA FOG (9D: Ocean mist) crosses "(aye aye) CAPTAIN" and "(sea) LEGS"—I guess I could be mad that "sea" is (kinda sorta) duped, but I'm too busy enjoying the nautical vibes. I think my least favorite themer is FOUR LEAGUE, just because everyone knows the (not really true) story of the "Ivy" part of Ivy League deriving from the fact that the league originally had just four (IV) schools in it. The name for the league actually came from class day ceremonies involving the planting of ivy, starting in the 19th century, but the term "Ivy League" doesn't appear for the first time until the '30s, and it gets used chiefly in relation to athletics. But still: "A common folk etymology attributes the name to the Roman numeral for four (IV), asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins helped to perpetuate this belief. The supposed "IV League" was formed over a century ago and consisted of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a fourth school that varies depending on who is telling the story" (wikipedia). Because the Ivy League comes preloaded with this numerical association, I didn't enjoy FOUR LEAGUE as much as the others, because it was far less surprising. 

I struggled with some longer answers—the aforementioned FLUSH DRAW and OPTIC LOBE, but also ACID TRIP (???). I wanted ACID PAPER. I get that acid comes in tabs, but I still think the phrasing [Something you might keep tabs on?] makes no surface-level sense for ACID TRIP. Tabs can set you on your trip, but you do not keep them on your trip. I also didn't really know MASSLESS. I just let crosses take care of it. As for mistakes, there weren't many. I really enjoyed the one mistake I remember making—namely, "confirming" ACMES (5A: Pinnacles) by writing in CATS / MEWS at 6D: Barnyard producers of 7-Down and 7D: Sounds produced by 6-Down (COWS / MOOS). Barn kitties! They're real! Sadly, not what the puzzle was looking for. Otherwise, this puzzle was something less than an ORDEAL. Nothing overly taxing about it. 

Bullets:

• 1A: Word before baked or naked (HALF) — first thought was BARE, but "BARE baked" ... is once letter short of being a thing (wow, don't search "barebacked" unless you're in the mood for porn). HALF Baked is one of the best ice cream flavors ever made as well as one of the worst movies ever made—the only movie I've ever walked out of (I walked out when I realized that "Simpsons" reruns would be on TV shortly and those would be much more fun to watch, true story).

[good]

[no]

• 23A: Sarcastic laugh syllable (HAR) — laugh syllables, always bad, but I appreciated the "Sarcastic," which at least made the answer clear. Or can HEH be sarcastic, too? For some reason, HAR reads to me like the most sarcastic of the laugh syllables (ha, hah, heh, har ... those are your basics ... I guess ho gets involved from time to time, but usually only via Santa).
• 33A: Met someone? (OPERAGOER) — another longer answer where the second part gave me fits. I got the OPERA part easy but went with ... OPERA DIVA. That's really a someone. An OPERAGOER? That's a Met no one. A face in the crowd. Boo. 

• 63A: Gym units (SETS) — oh, I managed to trip over this a little because REPS shares half its letters with SETS.
• 1D: Jon of "Top Gun: Maverick" (HAMM) — early-morning brain: "ugh who is this Jon actor I've never heard of?" This from someone who watched every episode of Mad Men and even watched The Morning Show until finally Reese Witherspoon's character simply became completely unbearable.
• 28D: People one might meet at a drive (DONORS) — think blood drive
• 48D: "There is no love sincerer than the love of ___": George Bernard Shaw ("FOOD") — where crossword clues are concerned, I am a notorious fill-in-the-blank quotation hater, but I did enjoy hacking my way to the answer here. Seemed worth it. Unexpected and ... probably true. Speaking of food ... I need coffee. Is coffee a food? Close enough.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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