Climber's belaying device / TUE 12-14-21 / Outed maliciously online / Military helicopters colloquially / Flag symbol seen twice in this puzzle's grid / Virtual citizen in popular video game franchise

That is the kind of crosswordese you absolutely banish from your grid if at all possible, and here it is in a simple corner, crammed in with somewhat less egregious crosswordese ORC and NSA. This is not an opening gambit to inspire confidence. And this time the alarm bells were not a false alarm. There's inexplicable AMIE in one tiny corner, inexplicable ORA in another. I know I'm starting with the small stuff, but it's the NYTXW, they should be sweating the small stuff. The small stuff is part of the puzzle, treat it with respect. Polish it, craft it, care for it. Don't just go "well, worked for 1996, works for me." It's depressing. As for the theme, those tiny black-square formations don't evoke much of anything. I guess that is what the crosses on those flags look like, but they look like ordinary black-square formations such as you'd find in any puzzle, so weird to build a whole puzzle concept around them. I did not know NORDIC CROSS was a term. Is NORDIC ... some NORDIC language for "tipped over"? I know of the Maltese Cross and the Southern Cross, but this one is new to me. Not hard to get, just new. The arrangement of country names is oddly asymmetrical, but since they're interlocking, I guess that's how it had to be. FINLAND is not always considered part of SCANDINAVIA, but sometimes it's included in a broad definition with ICELAND and the FAROE ISLANDS, and since the theme is really the cross on the flag, not the region, it's fine. Lots of places in the region feature the NORDIC CROSS on their flags, including the aforementioned ICELAND and FAROE ISLANDS, but the countries in the grid are the four largest, so you couldn't call the grouping arbitrary. Overall, the theme is a bit of a shrug, but it's not bad, and the cross symbols do add a layer of visual interest (however faint) and cleverness. It's really the fill where things go (ironically) south.

Honestly, there were only two things about this puzzle that left an impression when I was done, and neither of them was theme-related. The first was GRIGRI, which, LOL, what? It's Tuesday, where in the world is this term coming from? It was just a bunch of random letters to me. The last time GRIGRI was seen in the puzzle was twenty-five years ago, about two months before that famous CLINTON/BOBDOLE puzzle, and then it was clued as [African amulet]. This is truly not a Tuesday answer. But it's a colorful new (to me) word, so while I don't think it's Tuesday-appropriate, it's not a major offense. What is a major offense is the second thing about this puzzle that left an impression on me, and that is head-shaking, "what the hell?"-eliciting repetition of LOW. You've got LOWNESS on one line and then GO LOW ... on the very next line? How, why, what are you doing? I had LOWNESS (27A: Feeling of dejection) in place when I got to 37A: Play dirty, so when that answer started GO my thought was, "huh, well, it can't be GO LOW, because LOWNESSis already in the grid, so what could it be?" But ... It Was LOW. Just ... repeated. Baffling. Two LOWs in a grid shouldn't just set off alarm bells, it should shut down the production line. You can't do that. Your ERSE AMIE ORA stuff, that's just ugly. But LOWNESS / GO LOW is unprofessional. Genuinely, flagrantly bad form. 

DOXED is an ugly concept, and, more importantly, it's spelled with two "X"s, not one so DOXED manages to be both off-putting and in error. Fun. (18D: Outed maliciously online)

British ENTHRAL is just absurd, but not hard to get. Otherwise, there's not much more that's noteworthy about the fill. I gotta write two exams today, and while that might partly explain my mildly irascible mood, it doesn't explain all of it. That LOW dupe was a real LOW point. See you tomorrow.