Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: "Right?," in British lingo / SAT 6-13-26 / Lovingly, in a score / Sinister cackle / Retired rapper Azalea / Many a modern chess-playing program / Submissive sort, informally / Obsolescent office accessory / Outmoded living room fixtures / Alligatorid of Central and South America

Constructor: Ryan McCarty

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: IGGY Azalea (46A: Retired rapper Azalea) —

Amethyst Amelia Kelly (born 7 June 1990), known professionally as Iggy Azalea (/əˈzeɪliə/ ə-ZAY-lee-ə), is an Australian model, businesswoman and former rapper. Born in Sydney, Azalea moved to the United States at the age of 16 to pursue a career in music. She earned recognition on YouTube with the music videos for her 2011 songs "Pussy" and "Two Times". She then self-released her debut mixtape Ignorant Art (2011) before signing with American rapper T.I.'s Grand Hustle Records.
Azalea's debut studio album, The New Classic (2014), peaked within the top five of several charts worldwide and later topped the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, making Azalea the first non-American female rapper to do so. Its preceding single, "Fancy" (featuring Charli XCX), achieved significant commercial success; it peaked atop the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for Record of the Year at the 2015 Grammy Awards. Azalea was featured on Ariana Grande's 2014 single "Problem", which peaked at number two behind "Fancy". The two songs made Azalea the second musical act (aside from the Beatles) to rank at the top two spots simultaneously with their debut entries in the chart. The album spawned one further single, "Black Widow" (featuring Rita Ora), which peaked within the chart's top ten. [...]
In 2024, Azalea announced her retirement from music as posted on her social media and by Billboard. // Azalea is one of the best selling female rappers in the world, and her accolades include two American Music Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award, a People's Choice Award, and four Teen Choice Awards, in addition to nominations for four Grammy Awards. Her YouTube channel together with other collaborators has accumulated 7 billion views, and 15 of her music videos have received over 100 million views on Vevo. (wikipedia)

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A real mixed bag for me. I normally enjoy Ryan McCarty puzzles but this one ... it was like it was intentionally trying to alienate me, starting with A.I. MODEL (3D: Many a modern chess-playing program) (A.I. and chess? This clue really hates me). The encroachment of "A.I." terms into the grid has been one of the worst crossword developments of the past year or so. Whatever the opposite of "gung-ho" is, that is how I feel about A.I. Also how I feel about multi-billionaires (what an unnecessarily horrid clue for HAVE) (24D: Multibillionaire, e.g.). So I've got A.I. and multibillionaires and I've barely gotten started? Inauspicious! What else? Vaping, for one. And then there's this weird obsession with obsolescent things. An obsolescence obsession. Obsolescent office accessories! (STAMP PAD). Outmoded living room fixtures! (PLASMA TVS). Add to that embarrassing manosphere lingo (26D: Submissive sort, informally = BETA), and yeah, there just wasn't that much for me to love. A single ALARM BELL? (Just ONE?). The grid seems very solidly filled, and yet there were no points where I felt really happy with a clue or answer, except maybe early on when I semi-jokingly used "MWAHAHA" to confirm AMASS and AHOY and it turned out to be right! I do love that [Sinister cackle]. But otherwise, highs were hard to come by today.

The puzzle was also really uneven in terms of difficulty. A tough clue on HAVE plus the improbability of a single ALARM BELL meant that I couldn't get into the middle on the first pass. Had to reboot in the SW, which I did in the strangest way—I considered RARE for 24D: Multibillionaire, e.g., even though I knew it could not be right (clue is a noun, so answer has to be a noun). But for some reason I still decided to check that "E" from RARE against the cross and somehow that "E" alone got me BADE (31A: Wished). I wasn't sure about BADE so I checked crosses and confirmed it with AMOROSO (32D: Lovingly, in a score). Except then I wasn't sure about AMOROSO, so I checked its crosses, and both POP ART and AMA checked out, so I was up and rolling again.

And from here, things started to get much easier. That clue on REGGIE JACKSON was Monday-level easy (13D: Clutch hitter nicknamed "Mr. October"), and that "J" got me to VAPE JUICE (ew, the very term—I'm not sure anyone can say it out loud and maintain anything like dignity), and with those long crosses anchoring the middle, the puzzle started to fall quickly. The SE corner was done in about ten seconds, as the "V" from PLASMA TVS made VLOGGER obvious and the whole corner went down easy from there. That just left the NE corner, which didn't put up much of a fight. I rode the ADRIEN Brody SEX DREAMS into the sunset. The end. Ultimately, the puzzle ended up full of things I just didn't care for, and it didn't prove as challenging as I'd generally like a Saturday to be (or as challenging as they have been recently).

Bullets:

1A: Bring together (AMASS) — yes, I too tried UNITE here at first. Crosses didn't check out. Then I tried AMASS, and suddenly ...

19A: "Right?," in British lingo ("INNIT?") — ha. Loved this. Can't believe it's been nine years since this very familiar bit of British slang has been in the grid. Five common letters, how is this answer not more popular? Maybe it's less generally familiar than I think it is. Maybe people in the U.S. don't watch as much British TV or as many British movies as I do. It's possible.
42A: Festival flier (KITE) — what sort of festival? Is it a KITE festival? I guess I don't go to enough festivals to know why there would be KITEs there.
7D: Actor Brody (ADRIEN) — I get ADRIEN Brody and Adam Brody confused. I mean, not if you put them both in front of me, I can definitely tell them apart. But ... two tall dark and arguable handsome actors named Brody, both of whose first names start "AD-" .... wait a minute! OMG I just realized that I'm not confusing ADRIEN Brody and Adam Brody, I'm confusing ADRIEN Brody with Adam Driver, and Adam Brody is somehow acting as a catalyst in this confusion (I know Adam Brody from The O.C., though he appears to have done a lot since then, including getting nominated for an Emmy for something called Nobody Wants This (Netflix, 2024-present)

46A: Retired rapper Azalea (IGGY) — "Retired" made me laugh. Out loud. Since when is the puzzle using "retired" for anyone besides athletes?? Since never. Literally never. I just looked over ~175 clues that featured the word "Retired" and that word has never been used in conjunction with any person who wasn't an athlete. It's also been used for old aircraft (SST) and old cigarette mascots (JOE CAMEL). For a rapper? It feels at least mildly insulting that the only adjective used to describe IGGY Azalea is "Retired." Maybe her self-proclaimed "retirement" is the most famous thing about her now, I have no idea, I haven't heard her or seen her name in ages.
31D: It comes in handy when the chips are downed (BAG CLIP) — this clue is trying to do a punny thing with the common idiomatic phrase "when the chips are down" but wow it really fails on a literal level. What does the BAG CLIP have to do with chips being downed, i.e. eaten? Yes, when I eat some, and not all, of the chips, it's handy to have a BAG CLIP to keep the remaining chips from going stale. But there is no direct correlation between the eating and the clipping. The BAG CLIP comes in "handy" when you need to store the chips. If I've eaten all the chips, I don't need to store them. So the clue should be something like [It comes in handy when some but not all of the chips are downed]. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Or maybe "downed" is being used in some extremely tortured way to mean "depleted"; maybe the idea is that the chip level, the number of chips in the bag, has gone "down." I am overthinking this, but only because the clue is underthinking it. If the chips are, indeed, "downed" (as in "consumed"), then why in the world do I need a BAG CLIP?
6A: Alligatorid of Central and South America (CAIMAN) — "Alligatorid," what a cool word? I liked it slightly better when I thought it was "Alligatoroid," which sounds like an awesome '70s mutated-animal disaster film

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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