Noted criminal extradited to the U.S. in 2017 / THU 4-24-25 / Eponymous Italian designer Mario / The Knights of ___, shadowy side group in "Star Wars" / Might, to Shakespeare / ___ Holden, U.S. soccer player-turned-commentator / Dave ___, seven-time All-Star pitcher for the Blue Jays / One-named singer who's a former member of One Direction / Like some socks and chess players / People celebrated worldwide on March 8 / Verb that sounds like a number and is a letter backward

Constructor: Kathleen Duncan

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: GENRE-BENDING (51D: Mixing thematic elements and tropes ... or a feature of this puzzle?) — genres literally bend (i.e. change direction mid-answer, at a ninety-degree angle)

Theme answers:

• DARK FANTASY (1A: "Interview with the Vampire" and "Prince of Thorns")
• MOCKUMENTARY (6A: "Borat" and "This Is Spinal Tap")
• COMING-OF-AGE (35D: "Lady Bird" and "Stand by Me")
• COZY MYSTERY (24D: "The Thursday Murder Club" and "A Killer Sundae")
• PERIOD PIECE (46D: "Downton Abbey" and "Shogun")

Word of the Day: ZAYN (34D: One-named singer who's a former member of One Direction) —

Zain Javadd "Zayn" Malik (/ˈmælɪk/ MAL-ik; born 12 January 1993) is an English singer-songwriter. He auditioned as a solo contestant for the British music competition television series The X Factor in 2010, where he ended up being a part of five-piece boy band One Direction, which went on to become one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. He left the group in March 2015 and signed a solo recording contract with RCA Records.

Adopting a more alternative R&B music style on his first solo studio album, Mind of Mine (2016), and its lead single, "Pillowtalk", he became the first British male artist to debut at number one in both the UK and US with his debut single and album. His subsequent collaborative singles "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" with Taylor Swift and "Dusk Till Dawn" featuring Sia were met with international success. He released his second studio album, Icarus Falls, in 2018, followed by his third album, Nobody Is Listening, in 2021.

Malik has received several accolades, including an American Music Award and a MTV Video Music Award. He is the only artist to have won the Billboard Music Award for New Artist of the Year twice, receiving it once as a member of One Direction in 2013 and again in 2017 as a soloist. (wikipedia)

• • •

On the one hand, those are all genres, and they all bend, so the puzzle does what it says it does. You can't argue with the execution, at least on a literal level. On the other hand, I've seen answers "bend" before (a bunch)—this one gives its own reason, but from a solving standpoint, there's nothing particularly new or exciting here. I was expecting the revealer to reveal some second level, some aspect of the puzzle I hadn't noticed while dutifully entering all the right-angle genres. At first I actually thought the genres themselves were "genre-bending"—like, hybrid genres (DARK FANTASY is a subgenre, MOCKUMENTARY obviously blends "documentary" with satire, etc.). But in the end, the genres are just genres. COZY MYSTERY is just a genre. You need genres long enough to make it interesting when you bend them (i.e. ROMANCE on its own would be dull), and these all do nicely. But there's no second level here. There are genres. They bend. Therefore, GENRE-BENDING. The end. It's a hard thing to do—build a puzzle around themers that change directions. The strain it puts on the grid is tremendous, and you really have to build the grid carefully because once you figure out where those themers are gonna go (the first thing you'd do), you've got fixed letters *everywhere*, which really reduces your flexibility as a constructor. So though the fill isn't squeaky clean, it's impressive that this grid came out as clean as it is, given the thematic pressures. There's nothing particularly tricky or even novel about the theme today, but it's a fine example of a type, and I enjoyed working out some of the thornier patches. A completely adequate, and occasionally charming, Thursday.

What was charming about it? Well, I'm gonna be a bit of a pervert here and say OBEISANT was charming. I obediently wrote in OBEDIENT there, and then it didn't work, and then I remembered that OBEISANT existed, somewhere in the Quaintville section of my brain, and I wrote it in, and it worked. Sandwiched between the much harder-sounding MOCKUMENTARY and VENDETTA, OBEISANT made for a nice textural contrast—deliciously quaint sandwich filling. Straight out of a COZY MYSTERY, that one. I enjoyed remembering some movies, like Lady Bird and Stand by Me and This is ... Spinal Tap! And Clueless, frankly. The greatest "AS IF!" of all time. The epitome of "AS IF!"s. The "AS IF!" paradigm.

There were a couple of parts where I really had to work to dig out the answers, most notably at the COZY part of COZY MYSTERY, which is the site of a proper-noun pile-up that had me floundering for a bit. Robert Frost ... collection? (You Come TOO)!? Never heard of it. As for ZAYN ... he has two names. ZAYN Malik. The way I know this is the crossword has told me so. Repeatedly. Four MALIKs in the past eight years or so, all of them clued with some variation of [Singer Zayn]. Which means he is a singer with two names. Yes, he goes by the one name. But he also goes by the two names, so he was not legible to me at all as a "One-named singer," even with the One Direction hint (you will not be surprised to find out that I was not a big One Direction fan, as I was not a teenage girl in the 2010s ... or ever, now that I think of it). So I wasn't getting the "Z"s from COZY or ZAYN, and, worse, I had TARRY for 33A: Dither (TIZZY), so it wasn't til I committed to COZY that I could finally get the "Z" train rolling. "Dither" (as a verb) means "act indecisively," which seemed like a form of TARRYing. Bah. Also STU was nearby, who the hell is that? (30A: ___ Holden, U.S. soccer player-turned-commentator). He didn't really make the whole "ZZ" part any harder, but he's standing nearby, so I'm blaming him for my struggles as well. Proper nouns got you down? Welcome to TOO-ZAYN-STU! It is a murky, confusing place.

Once I managed to pull out of the TOO-ZAYN-STU station, the only other rough spot on the trip was trying to figure out what MAY- was going to do with its tail end (37D: Might, to Shakespeare). Ugh, that was right at an important (and narrow) passageway from center to SE. Momentum, stopped! MAYETH? MAYHAP? I entertained both. But no, MAYEST. Sigh. MAYEST / ESE may be the puzzle's lowest moment. Not quite EWW-worthy, but ... not great.

Bullets:

• 69A: Person with the shift after a long one of yours (RELIEVER) — man that clue is awkward. Awkwardly phrased ("a long one of yours"???) and awkwardly not about baseball. The only way to clue RELIEVER in a believable way is to go through baseball. Or ... I don't know, aspirin, I suppose ([Pain ___]).
• 11D: Like some socks and chess players (MATED) — socks are paired, come on. "Oh, look, mother, I have MATED my socks! My chores are now completed! MAYEST I go outside and play with my hoop and stick now, mother!? I'm ever so OBEISANT." In conclusion: paired. Or matched. I would also accept 'matched.'
• 42D: Button added to Apple's Messages app in 2022 (EDIT) — a long and boring clue for a simple word. Was this supposed to be an exciting event? You don't EDIT texts, you send subsequent texts with asterisks indicating what you meant to say. It's a time-honored tradition. Anyway, why are you editing your texts, Shakespeare? They're just texts.
  
• 55D: People celebrated worldwide on March 8 (WOMEN) — I had OBTAIN as RETAIN at first (60A: Get), and then assumed this answer ended in "S" (because plural), so I was trying to make sense of "WE--S" for a bit. "WELTS? WEEDS? WEEKS? What the hell kind of people are these?!"

• 52D: Dave ___, seven-time All-Star pitcher for the Blue Jays (STIEB) — laughed out loud here, mainly because I imagined all the justly-mad non-baseball fans being justly mad at this answer. I collected baseball cards when STIEB was active, and even I was like "... is he a STIEG? STAUB? No, that's Rusty STAUB..." In short, despite the seven All-Star appearances, he's kind of an obscurity if you're not a (middle-aged or older) baseball fan.
• 2D: Verb that sounds like a number ... and is a letter backward (ATE) — sounds like "8" and is a the (Greek) letter "ETA" (uppercase Η, lowercase η) spelled backwards.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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