Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Gustie Owens

Constructor: Gustie Owens

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Gossip Session" — gossip-related verb phrases clued as if the subjects were engaged different activities / members of different professions:

Theme answers:

SHARES AN ACCOUNT (23A: "A lover of gossip, the Netflix user ...")
HAS ALL THE JUICY DETAILS (41A: "The smoothie bar worker ...")
SPILLS THE TEA (59A: "The Boston Harbor worker ...")
STIRS UP DRAMA (72A: "The cooking show contestant ...")
AIRS THEIR DIRTY LAUNDRY (89A: "The athlete in the locker room ...")
WANTS TO HEAR MORE (114A: "And the up-and-coming trial judge...")

Word of the Day: AMERICANAH (14D: Best-selling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel whose protagonist leaves Nigeria for a U.S. university) —

Americanah is a 2013 novel by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for which Adichie won the 2013 U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.^[1] Americanah tells the story of a young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who immigrates to the United States to attend university. The novel traces Ifemelu's life in both countries, threaded by her love story with high school classmate Obinze. It was Adichie's third novel, published on May 14, 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf. A television miniseries, starring and produced by Lupita Nyong'o, was in development for HBO Max, but then was later dropped. (wikipedia)

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It's an interesting idea of a theme, but the execution didn't quite work for me. A few of the phrases felt a bit forced in terms of their phrasing. "HAS"!? HAS ALL THE JUICY DETAILS—that's a weak verb compared to the rest of them. SHARES AN ACCOUNT doesn't really convey *gossip* as heavily as the other phrases. And WANTS TO HEAR MORE isn't like the other answers at all. Every other themer subject is dishing, but this trial judge just wants to hear? The answers just don't land as perfectly as they should. The grid feels like it's trying to make up for a fairly straightforward, fairly light theme with a pretty toughly-clued grid, heavy on odd / ambiguous cluing and *especially* heavy on proper nouns. Crossing two figures from the hip-hop / R&B realm is about as good an idea as crossing two figures from any realm, i.e. not a good idea. Crossing names are always a potential problem, but ideally the names at least come from different fields, especially if the fame of at least one is not universal. Now, CARDI B is exceedingly famous, so even if you didn't know CIARA (you're forgiven), you should probably have been able to figure out that "C"—but still, this puzzle is not at all careful with proper nouns. What on god's green earth is going on with the SHAKA SIGN / SERKIS crossing. First of all, SERKIS?! No idea (29A: Andy who voiced Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings"). Also, not a name I've ever known anyone to have, so no part of it is inferable. Second, the SHAKA part of SHAKA SIGN!?!? I have no idea where I pulled the term from. The only SHAKA I really know is from the movie title "SHAKA Zulu" ... wait, is that even a movie? And is that even how it's spelled? Hang on ... looks like it was a mid-'80s TV miniseries. But the Zulu kingdom was in southern Africa, whereas I thought "Hang loose" was associated with Hawaii and surf culture (it is), so I'm very confused. Anyway, SHAKA / SERKIS, yikes and yipes. And with the not-exceedingly-famous AMERICANAH running right through the same area!? Rough stuff. There's no name that shouldn't be here, but you gotta watch how you dole them out. Crowding names together is a recipe for unpleasantness.

I really thought AMERICANAH was AMERICAN (space) AH, like ... maybe the protagonist's family name was AH, or maybe it was about a dentist, or both, I dunno. Surprised we saw this title before we saw the author's name (ADICHIE), which seems like it would be very grid-friendly (i.e. easy to work with if you're a constructor). The only other thing in the grid I flat-out didn't know was IDLI, which was just a series of random letters to me (31D: Savory rice cake of southern India). I have tried so hard to tuck away rafts of short fill related to Indian cuisine (ATTA, ROTI, NA(A)N, LASSI, DOSA, CHAPATI ... the last of which I haven't seen yet, but I'm ready!). But IDLI caught me off-guard. Crosses are fair, so ultimately no problem, but that definitely slowed me down but good. SEED for ARIL also really, really put a wrench in the works. Oh, and RUNS OUT for RUNS DRY, oof (11D: Gets fully depleted). I kinda resent the clue on PROUST. I just looked up this "questionnaire" and I still don't actually understand it. It sounds banal as f***. And yet it comes from PROUST's own notebooks? And is used by interviewers? Yeeeeesh. Would've liked the clue to have been ... PROUSTier. Or mentioned anything even vaguely PROUSTy. Seriously, this "questionnaire" ... why ... is it? "Favorite color"? Sigh. What are we doing here? These look like the questions to the least revealing interview of all time.

Bullet points:

22A: "Gotcha," more informally ("I'M HIP") — Is it? Is it "more informal." I think "more quaintly" or "more bygonely" might work, but "more informally" feels factually untrue. You don't get much more "informal" than "Gotcha!"
63A: Denim jacket adornment (PATCH) — really struggled with this one. No idea what the context is. Is it ... a biker? What year is it? Is this an iron-on PATCH? I guess I just don't see denim jackets much any more, and if I do, they're somehow PATCH-free.
85D: Syd tha ___, onetime hip-hop moniker (KYD) — if it's "onetime," maybe you should respect that and move on to other KYDs ... like Thomas! Everyone loves revenge tragedies, right? Right!?

102D: Nightmarish address, for short (ELM ST.) — "Nightmarish" because of the movie "A Nightmare on ELM ST." ... which you've probably figured out by now.
103D: Slangy thing that may be "dropped" in a serious relationship (L-BOMB) — not everything has to be a "bomb." F-BOMB, L-BOMB ... sigh. I really wanted this to be TROU (literally the only time I have ever wanted the answer to be TROU)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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