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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
Friday, June 12, 2026
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)) —
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.
[Joan Collins!] 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)
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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.
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| [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)
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| [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.
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19 comments:
I quite liked the puzzle overall but some clues sounded a bit off to me. Especially 46A where I really wanted EMAIL, but also a plural answer. Imagine coming across a clue like [Contents of a winter storm] and then finding out that the answer is just singular HAILSTONE. (I also thought the "coverage" in the 34A clue referred to clothing, but the clue there works just fine).
Easy. Good Wednesday level of difficulty. Not a bad puzzle, just too easy for a Friday.
* * _ _ _
Overwrites:
garb before DUDS for the 1A get-up.
My 23D Olympics local was Asia before it was the ALPS.
My ex- was erST before it was PAST (43A).
WOEs:
The movie Empire of the ANTS at 19A.
I may have heard of DANA Point CA, but it took every cross (55D).
Easy for me except for the NW, where "well-kept secret" wouldn't fly.
Easy for me except for the NW, where "well-kept secret" wouldn't fly. I guessed at DUDS, which made UBER and DANISH obvious...then I was home. Very nice Friday with clever but reasonable cluing.
Tend to agree with the big guy here - there were some good things here but for every POINTILLISM and ANEMONE we get the full flatness of PORTLAND OREGON and ICE CREAM PARLOR.
Southside
I liked the SEASICK - ATTACHE pair. CONEY ISLAND dead center is fine but a long gimme. BEST KEPT SECRET is the highlight long. Like the Les Mis lyric.
MEAT Is Murder
Yup - maybe a little too straightforward and staid but a pleasant enough Friday morning solve.
Plateau
12 minutes for me last night, so yeah, easy medium. Loved this grid structure--4 fourteens around the edges, crossing elevens in the middle (so each of the elevens has to work with 2 fourteens and the other eleven). PORTLANDOREGON (while a boring answer) and ICECREAMPARLOR whooshed me right around this grid! CONEYISLAND was pretty easy, POINTILLISM took a bit longer. Thanks, @REX, for pointing out the CUP and the CONE. MAGGIE Smith was a WOE and had to wait for crosses.... very little junk in this puzzle, thanks for a fun Friday, Amanda!!!! : )
but what if the answer to the winter storm clue were "SNOW"..... I think of EMAIL more like SNOW (you get buried by lots of little tiny items all adding up!!! :)
I was stymied by "Deuce follower" crossing "____ Point, Calif." I neither do enough crossword puzzles nor play enough tennis to have internalized AD IN, and for me DANA Point is far more obscure than Natick. D was a logical guess, but it still left me muttering, "Deuce a din? Deuceadin?!"
I had the P for 34A and confidently put in POLKA DOTTED. Then none of the downs worked so out it came. Jealous, also tried nauseous and nauseated but none of that worked, finally got SEASICK. I found this more on the medium side. Agree about GENETIC LOTTERY. But overall I enjoyed it.
I got stuck in the SE, where I had confidently entered MEAn for “central point” and could not figure out what someone named ANnE Cost had to do with a hand…
I’ve heard the term GENETIC LOTTERY a lot, and I think it’s usually in the context not of a long and happy life, but good looks. As in, “Damn, girl won the GENETIC LOTTERY.”
So, no problem in the NE, and really, no problem at all except at the end, when I thought I was going to Natick on A-IN and -ANA. No idea about the California town, and of course I was looking for something like “trey” for “Deuce follower.” Didn’t have to run the alphabet too far to get the tennis reference.
Lots of good misdirect clues, such as for SALMON, POINTILLISM, OTC and MEAT, but none held me up for long.
I still don’t know what “adin” has to do with deuce and I’d never heard of Dana Point.
Surely we all fell into the JEALOUS/SEASICK trap? But like for Rex a very short hang-up. Otherwise really no obstacles at all - almost. All the long answers were either gimmes (PORTLANDOREGON, CONEYISLAND), POINTILLISM) or obvious from the crosses (BESTKEPTSECRET, ICECREAMPARLOR). Zipped right through the rest until 54A where I had confidently entered TREY to follow DEUCE, which clearly didn’t work with the SALON and OPINES crosses. That left me with A_IN and _ANA down. Started to run the alphabet until my Doh moment. Pretty sure I saw a tennis court when I was in Dana Point a couple of years ago.
It's to do with tennis. AD IN means the server is up by one point and can win the game (in a set) by winning the next point. But just before AD IN is Deuce, which is a tie situation.
Hegseth and Trump don't seem to appreciate that info on upcoming military operations is BESTKEPTSECRET.
Brutus: Love the new DUDS, Julie. What do you call that collar?
Caesar: ETON, Brutè.
For someone pushing nuclear energy, DATA on Three Mile Island is TMI.
In addition to the usual acrosses and downs, this puzzle has its INNS and OUTS.
Not too surprised to find SEASICK after yesterday's puzzle.
To convert your mail from postal to electronic, just ATTACHE.
Sorry to see that poor COW at 18D become MEAT by 57D.
Ready for the trip?
Yes, IMPACT.
Good, IMGLAD.
I wasn’t a fan of “epic beginning” as the clue for PART ONE, which seems overly generic. Do all epics consist of “parts” in addition to chapters? What about an introduction - is that verboten if you desire to pen an epic tale ? Close enough for CrossWorld, I suppose, but it seemed off to me.
That ANTS film sounds like it is so bad that it good be good. I wonder how primitive or prevalent the special effects were. Did they use mechanical ants ? How big were they ? Inquiring minds want to know.
I don't solve early week puzzles just to avoid wasting my time on effortless solves like what we got today. The NW set the tone for the entire solve. DUDS was a bit of a mystery but UBER, DATED and SRI all dropped right in and DUDS became just as obvious. The B of UBER gave me BABAR(we had BABAR just last week.) This was one of those puzzles where it's hard to concentrate on one section because the consonants of one answer give away the next answer and you can stair step right across the grid. It was just one softball clue after another. A few things like LOTTERY and SALMON were late week but when the majority of the puzzle is this porous it makes no difference.
I read a quote from the editor once where he explained the weekly progression as simply making each day harder than the last. The bar has been set low for tomorrow.
Quickest Friday in some months. Enjoyable. POINTILLISM is a word I think of often when I do crosswords, because so often my grid near the beginning of the solve will look like pointillist art, a dot here, a dot there, as I scan for things I can fill in immediately. I'm not one of these (to me somewhat amazing) people who can just start in the NW and then methodically and implacably fill in from left to right and down, with these impregnable forTRESSes of letters. It's usually a bit more haphazard as I wait for things to come together. But it came together rather quickly today.
There was an upbeat feeling of spring in the air, with ICE CREAM PARLOR, and places to sight-see like CONEY ISLAND and PORTLAND OREGON, harboring their well- or even BEST-KEPT SECRETS. Oh, and I almost overlooked KEY WEST, which is where we spent part of our honeymoon. I liked the little touches like ANEMONE and SIKHS (how many of you out there know about Guru Nanak? you might have heard of him if you've seen Bend It Like Beckham, since his portrait is on the wall of Jess's home [as it is in many SIKH homes), and she has to solemnly promise by swearing on Guru Nanak's name).
This puzzle was more than UP TO PAR, and I'M GLAD. Thank you Amanda Winters, and have a very pleasant day, everyone!
TIL that both SEASICK and JEALOUS have the same number of letters as ENVIOUS, which obviously should have been the correct answer.
Last letter in: the D in ADIN/DANA. From the depths of memory came a tidbit about someplace in California being named after Richard Henry Dana, author of Two Years before the Mast, a book I’ve never read. Figured ADIN is probably some sportball term. Took a lucky guess.
Amanda’s first Times puzzle (4/15/24), a Monday, had a theme that radiated elegance, and I marked her name as one to watch.
Her next, today’s, exuded that quality, IMO, in answers such as ATTACHE, GENETIC LOTTERY, POINTILLISM, and in clues such as [Contents of a modern flood] for EMAIL, [Needing no script] for OTC.
The grid design itself is elegant with those stair-step corners, and quartet of lovely black square patterns dominating the center.
An air of elegance is rare and wonderful in a puzzle.
This was all bolstered by happy memories of CONEY ISLAND and that powerful Les Mis song. And by a very funny moment, where I had AN_S for “Empire of the ___” (that badly-rated movie), and wondered if my missing letter was a U.
I loved coming across the bouncy sing-song words ANEMONE, “tzatziki” and “Nanak”.
Feel-good from start to finish, Amanda. I greatly look forward to your next. Bring it on, and thank you!
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