JES

Well, I liked it. Was lucky enough to catch onto the "any"/"NE" gimmick early on -- that answer just HAD to be COCKY, no way could there be two letters between the K and the Y... And then the lightbulb went on. Thanks!

I never ("What - NEVER?" "...hardly EVER!") skip over to the blog to read about the puzzle till after I've completed it. Today, though... whew! I managed to read no further than the initial explanation of the theme, at least, before returning to the grid to bang my head against it. Not one I'm confident I'd ever have solved on my own! (Because, duh, I didn't.) Thanks!

Haven't read all the comments yet, so apologies if I'm repeating someone else... I noticed while working out the puzzle on my (Android) phone that when I entered ANT for the rebuses, the keyboard autofill feature offered to replace the string with an ant emoji: 🐜. Anybody else see that? I'm annoyed only that I didn't accept the hint -- it would've been fun (sorry, Deb) seeing the little critters infesting the grid!