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 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

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Signature hats for Indiana Jones / MON 4-15-24 / Yellow fruits that, despite their name, look more like apples / Taiwanese tech company / Soybean paste in Japanese cuisine / Poster holder-upper

Constructor: Amanda Winters

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday) (solved Downs-only)

THEME: AS ABOVE / SO BELOW (39A: with 41-Across, philosophical principle in which Earth mirrors heaven ... or a hint to the shaded squares) — bunch of ASSO squares (top two letters "AS," bottom two letters "SO")

Word of the Day: ASIAN PEARS (3D: Yellow fruits that, despite their name, look more like apples) —

Pyrus pyrifolia is a species of pear tree native to southern China and northern Indochina that has been introduced to Korea, Japan and other parts of the world. The tree's edible fruit is known by many names, including Asian pear, Persian pear, Japanese pear, Chinese pear Korean pear, Taiwanese pear, apple pear zodiac pear, three-halves pear, papple, naspati and sand pear. Along with cultivars of P. × bretschneideri and P. ussuriensis, the fruit is also called the nashi pear. Cultivars derived from Pyrus pyrifolia are grown throughout East Asia, and in other countries such as India, Pakistan, Nepal, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Traditionally in East Asia the tree's flowers are a popular symbol of early spring, and it is a common sight in gardens and the countryside. // The fruits are not generally baked in pies or made into jams because they have a high water content and a crisp, grainy texture, very different from the European varieties. They are commonly served raw and peeled. The fruit tends to be quite large and fragrant, and when carefully wrapped (it has a tendency to bruise because of its juiciness), it can last for several weeks (or more) in a cold, dry place. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hard to get excited about a bunch of ASSOs floating around your grid. Solved this one Downs-only and kept trying to make the ASSOs mean something, anything. Never saw the revealer, and so ended up very stuck at my very last answer: 27D: Thumbs-up equivalent. I had ... nothing. -IP, -SE, and -URL could've been many things. Then there was -SABOVE, and I figured it was probably AS ABOVE (some kind of footnote phrase?), but could not eliminate IS ABOVE as a possible answer (yes, it's terrible, but this grid isn't exactly brimming with great fill, so IS ABOVE seemed at least possible). Somehow my brain was eventually able to get from [Thumbs-up equivalent] to YEAH (a long journey), and I got the "Congratulations" message from my software, but yeesh, AS ABOVE? That seemed bad. Only then did I go back and try to make sense of all the ASSOs, and only then did I see SO BELOW (totally missed that while I was solving, somehow). I'm vaguely familiar with the phrase AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, and the puzzle seems only vaguely aware as well ("philosophical principle" isn't very evocative). I wish that phrase meant more to me, but what I really wish is that scattered ASSOs had anything pleasing about them whatsoever, from a solving standpoint. I kept trying to spell things ("is this ... a Sammy SOSA puzzle?"), but got nowhere. The problem with the concept isn't just that it isn't inherently compelling, it's that it also puts a Lot of pressure on the grid, and the fill ... buckles. Predictably. And that's *with* the two cheater squares (four, actually, because of symmetry—these are black squares that don't increase word count, added solely to make the grid easier to fill (today, above 62D: MAD and below 27D: YEAH)). But even with the cheaters: ESOS IPSO ESE OSSO ASUS (!?), ATAD ASEA ADOS AESOP SQIN CPL ... that's a lot to take. And the longer answers don't add nearly enough color to offset the short-fill unpleasantness.

That last answer (YEAH) was the only one that put up any kind of fight. I had some trouble with CLEAVE (21D: Split, as with an axe), largely because I couldn't infer the first letter ("C") because I couldn't think of *any* letter that could acceptably fill the blank at -PL (21A). I know that NPL is the National Puzzlers' League, but that seemed way too niche, even for the puzzle-happy NYTXW. I ran the alphabet and got nothing. Which means I didn't run it carefully enough—CPL is a standard military abbr. ("corporal"), and the only -PL possibility there is. I thought maybe PPL stood for "people" ... does it? Looks like it does. Also "parts per liter" and "participle." Good to know! Where else did I get slowed down on the Downs-only journey? Honestly, nowhere. ASIAN PEARS went in once I inferred the "AS," SOLAR PANELS went in once I inferred the "SO." I had a few moments of scrambling around 52D: Fix, as a printer, assuming the first two letters were going to be "RE-". Oh, and ASUS, yikes, haven't seen that in a while. Whoa, I haven't seen it *ever* in a NYTXW—it's a debut! That's a debut that's hard to celebrate, and an unfortunate corporate name, generally. After ACER, I'm all out of four-letter A-starting tech companies. I don't really get why "sign" was added to the clue at 36D: "Credit cards only" sign ("NO CASH"). "Credit cards only" is the equivalent of "NO CASH." What's "sign" got to do with it. One phrase could be a "sign" as well as the other. "Sign" is just muddling things, and ruining the equivalency. Bizarre cluing choice. Also, a very tiny matter. Gonna sign off before I get even further into minutiae and subminutiae. See you tomorrow. Oh, and go see La Chimera, it is the best film I've seen in a while. 

OK, bye!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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