Constructor: Jonathan Kaufman
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: LIL BABY (11D: Grammy-winning rapper with the 2022 #1 album "It's Only Me") —
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Easier than yesterday for me ... or about the same, but the difficulty was more expected, what with its being Saturday and all, so if yesterday's was "Medium-Challenging," this is a couple steps down at "Easy-Medium." Got a lot more whoosh-whoosh action out of this one as well, with the marquee answers exploding across the grid like fireworks, the way I like. Well, all except SPA TREATMENTS, mannnnnn was that hard for me to parse (14D: What cucumber slices and seaweed can be part of). I had SPA- and kept assuming it was part of a larger word. Then I came around from below and got some of the middle of the word, but that did nothing. "SPACE ... MEAT ... something?" By the time I actually saw SPA TREATMENTS, I had all but two or three squares filled in. My other big mental block was on 44D: Picker-uppers (TONGS). I had the "T" and could think only of TONICS, which wouldn't fit. Could not get the idea out of my head that "picker-upper" was something to pick me/you/one up. Like a "pick-me-up." Really glad I didn't get paper towels in my head ("Bounty: The Quicker Picker-Upper") or I might still be trying to figure it out. Instead I let go and let crosses handle it.
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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: LIL BABY (11D: Grammy-winning rapper with the 2022 #1 album "It's Only Me") —
Dominique Armani Jones (born December 3, 1994), known professionally as Lil Baby, is an American rapper. He rose to mainstream fame in 2017 following the release of his mixtape Perfect Timing.[4] His debut studio album, Harder Than Ever (2018), spawned the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 single "Yes Indeed" (with Drake). He later released mixtapes Drip Harder (with Gunna), which contained the Billboard Hot 100 top-five single "Drip Too Hard" and Street Gossip, which reached number two on the US Billboard 200.Lil Baby's sophomore album My Turn (2020) topped the Billboard 200, was certified triple-platinum by the RIAA, and became the best-selling album of 2020. The album spawned the singles, "We Paid" (with 42 Dugg) and "The Bigger Picture", both of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the latter of which received two Grammy nominations at the 2021 Grammy Awards. The following year, he released the collaborative album The Voice of the Heroes with rapper Lil Durk and won the Grammy Award for Best Melodic Rap Performance for his performance on the song "Hurricane" with Kanye West and The Weeknd. Lil Baby's third album It's Only Me became his third consecutive number-one album.
In addition to his Grammy Award, Lil Baby has received an MTV Video Music Award, and two BET Awards, and was crowned the biggest all-genre Artist of the Year at the Apple Music Awards 2020. (wikipedia)
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The most difficult part of the puzzle—harrowing, in fact—came in the SW, where yet another sing-songy hyphenated clue nearly did me in. With -TS sitting in the grid, I looked at 38A: Tittle-tattles and ... well, wondered what it meant. It sounded like a thing I'd heard before, but it also sounded like a million things (tattle tale, Fiddle Faddle, dilly dally, etc.), so I hesitated. Then I remembered that "tittle" definitely means "little bit" (as in the phrase "every jot and tittle," i.e. "even the smallest detail or amount"), so I thought "Eureka!" and wrote in WHITS (meaning "little bits" or "smallest amounts"). Then, the coup de grace: I Proudly "Confirmed" that "H" with "WHO ELSE?" (34D: "Of course it was me!"). Wrong answers are bad, but wrong answer you "confirm" with crosses are deadly. After I time, I pulled the answer back to -H-TS but still, no idea. Because HAT TIPS was so completely inscrutable to me (35D: Credit lines?) (I thought maybe HOT TIPS??), I had to work that section down to a single letter at CH-TS / H-T TIPS and then run the vowels. Luckily "A" is the first vowel. Never heard of "Tittle-tattles" meaning CHATS. Would not have thought of HAT TIPS as "lines," but I guess if you give someone "credit" for something and you write (as one often does, esp on social media) "hat tip to" whomever (often abbreviated "ht" or "H/T"), then OK, that "credit" does come in ... "line" form, in that you have written ... lines ... crediting someone. Anyway, that bit was grueling, but nothing else in the grid came close to flummoxing me so badly.
I don't think the marquee answers are marquee enough today. HERD MENTALITY and "WHAT'S THE POINT?" really stand out, but SPA TREATMENTS and GOING TOE-TO-TOE feel pretty bland (I've certainly seen TOE-TO-TOE a bunch), and we just saw some version of DID A SOLID not too long ago. Ooh, LOAN SHARK was good (20D: Figure in the criminal underworld, maybe), so the spine and two ribs of this thing are really solid, really lovely. Not much else going on, though. Of the corners, the NE seems like the standout to me, with solid answers all around, dynamic answers (BROILS! GRAPHIC!), a nice colloquial phrase ("I HEAR IT"), a crafty cool clue on OUTSELL (17A: Move more), and a performance by LIL BABY. The other corners are ho-hum, with the SE being the weakest, if only for the gruesome ONALEAD. It's not ATADESK bad (see yesterday), but it's pretty bad. Somehow worse that it wants to be about detectives and not dogs. And definitely worse than it might have been because it's the second (!?) ONA- answer in the grid. I tolerated ON A HIGH just fine, but ON A LEAD is an ONA too far, and it's absurd as clued. Google "on a lead" and it's all dogs. Wall-to-wall dogs. For a reason. Nothing else in that corner is helping to make up for the ugliness of ONALEAD.]
What else? I had PEON before PAGE (48D: Errand runner). I also had ROTE before RATE (8D: Derivative, essentially). Not exactly sure why—something about "derivative" sounding like a criticism of unimaginative art, and doing something by ROTE being automatic and hence unimaginative. That's my defense. Math never occurred to me. But before you (rightly) begin disparaging my math & science chops, I'll have you know that I absolutely dunked on IRIDIUM. I mean, I wouldn't know IRIDIUM from chewing gum but I know that it exists, that it is an element, and I parsed it from virtually nothing. The -RI-, I think. So there. Proper names weren't too hard today. A mix of things I did (SOLANGE) and didn't (NINA) know, with a one or two I knew but had trouble getting from context (PEROT). LIL BABY is like IRIDIUM to me, in that I know his name, I know he exists, but that is all I know ... and yet that was enough for me to get him pretty easily (I had -ABY in place before I ever looked at the clue).
Biz OPS ... please never say that. Do you not hear yourself? Stop. Hey, what does the "B" in ABA stand for today (I mean, since it doesn't stand for its more customary meaning, "Bar") (21A: Trade org. of interest to publishers and authors)? I think it's "Booksellers" but I'm gonna have to check ... Whoa, I just googled "ABA" and apparently in the real, i.e. non-crossword world, everyone thinks ABA = "Applied Behavior Analysis" (whatever that is). My god it is hard to find today's ABA ... searching [ABA books] and [ABA library] is useless ... I'm getting American Beverage ... American Bankers ... ah there we go. I was right: American Booksellers Association. Man, google really Really doesn't want you to find this particular ABA. The quality of google as a search engine has so horribly degraded in recent years, and somehow the fact that it's hiding booksellers from me today feels ominously on-brand. Have a nice day!