Work through the levels. Reveal the Spangram only when you’re truly ready.
Today’s clue: “Who ya gonna call?”
A gentle direction — no specifics.
Closer — the category is coming into focus.
Near-direct — only read if you’re stuck.
Direction only.
Getting closer.
Near-direct.
6 theme words — lengths in random order
Spaces not counted in total
All theme words — shuffled
These words fit the theme on the surface, but aren’t part of today’s solution. Knowing them ahead of time can save you minutes of searching.
The clue's famous movie echo makes it feel like the obvious callback, so many solvers will reach for it before testing it against the rest of the grid.
A household annoyance that fits the same unwanted-company feeling, it is an easy short word to hunt for and can feel plausible before the set's real shape emerges.
Its creepy reputation and familiar shape make it feel like a likely hidden entry, but it is a near-miss rather than part of the set.
A stinging summer familiar, it feels thematically plausible, but a short, sharp word can be a decoy when the grid's actual group is more varied.
a textbook decoy
The 5.6 rating comes from the clue's Ghostbusters misdirect: “Who ya gonna call?” pulls the eye toward GHOSTS before the grid's household register takes over. Once RATS and MICE turn up, the set snaps into focus as common pests, and ANTS, TICKS, TERMITES, and COCKROACHES become much easier to scan for because the solver stops hunting for supernatural terms. EXTERMINATOR is almost inevitable after that pivot, but tracing a 12-letter answer across a crowded 6×8 board is still the real spangram challenge. What makes the group trickier than it first appears is its mix of insects and mammals: anyone locked onto “bugs” can overlook MICE and RATS until late.
“Who ya gonna call?” is the famous call-and-response from Ghostbusters, so the official clue deliberately borrows a supernatural-pop-culture echo. The joke is that today’s grid doesn’t go ghost-hunting at all: it stays firmly in the ordinary household, where the things you call about are pests, not poltergeists. The theme words are common home invaders—ANTS, COCKROACHES, MICE, RATS, TERMITES, TICKS—and the Spangram, EXTERMINATOR, supplies the punchline as the person you’d actually summon. It’s a bait-and-switch that gets warmer the longer you sit with it.
Tracy Bennett's set avoids cartoonish monsters and instead chooses six familiar household intruders that span both insects and mammals—ANTS, COCKROACHES, TERMITES, TICKS, MICE, and RATS. That mix is the editorial angle: it forces solvers to move beyond a single 'bug' bucket and recognize a broader nuisance category. EXTERMINATOR then unifies the set as the human response, turning a list of problems into a call-and-response with the clue.
