Bose competitor / FRI 6-14-24 / Gym machine for rowing exercises, informally / Work on an intaglio / Emulates Niobe / "___ Honey," debut album for Radiohead / Some traitorous transgressions

• • •

The thing about smooth puzzles like this is that when I hit a bump, it really Bumps. Whether it's me or the puzzle itself that is clunking, rough spots become very memorable. Some combination of me and the puzzle clunking simultaneously made the start of this solve very awkward. I should've just written in ETHEL, because come on, what other actress besides DREW has that name, but I had already decided that an "intaglio" involved the act of TILE-ing, not ETCHing, and I had also decided that Queen Suthida Bajrasudhabimalalakshana was a RANI (crossword reflex!). I maybe should've recognized the name as THAI, but that's the problem, that, the way I used "THAI" just there—I would only ever use that word as an adjective. "She's a THAI"? I'm sure that's valid, but it is not at all intuitive to my ears. If the clue had been [Like Queen Suthida Bajrasudhabimalalakshana], RANI (a noun) would've been out, as would all nouns, and so THAI would likely have come to me sooner. This is like cluing GERMAN as [Werner Herzog, e.g.]. I want GERMAN to be an adjective, even though I know that it can be a noun. Cluing THAI as a noun, while technically legal, felt very awkward. Anyway, I'm mostly embarrassed that my first response here placed the Queen in an entirely different country. At least RANI is, in fact, the equivalent of "Queen." That makes my error slightly less mortifying. 

Couldn't remember what "intaglio" was, couldn't identify the nationality of a queen—that pretty much gummed up the works in the NW, but I just moved over to the N where I found a NUDE, who kindly helped me get some real traction, and from that point, the Whoosh began—across the NE and then back over to the NW and then down to the SW and finally up the IRISES and over to the NATO SUMMIT, finishing up with not Kea but LOA (52D: "Mahalo nui ___" (Hawaiian for "Thank you very much")). After the TILE / RANI fiasco of the NW, only a couple of places really stood out as ugly or troublesome. I would call the sweater type a "crewneck," so 31D: Works on a crew? (DARNS) just didn't land for me. Needed every single cross. [correction: you darn socks, obviously, so this is a crew sock, which I have really Really never heard called just a “crew”]. I also have never really heard the term STEAM TABLE (except, apparently, in the NYTXW back in '09. Sounds like something you'd find at a spa. I can picture one, I guess, but maybe the buffets I've been to of late have used sterno as a heating element? Not really a buffet enthusiast, to be honest. But STEAM TABLEs are very real things—just beyond my ken (and general vocabulary). I wouldn't say ORE comes in "pockets" (29D: Things in pockets that can be picked?) (I've always been told—by the crossword!—that ORE comes in "seams"), nor would I say that a bridge "runs across" a river, say (see clue for SPANS (25A: Runs across)), but both clues are obviously trying (very hard) to misdirect you, and they're both technically valid, so OK. Not sure why there's a "?" on the ORE clue except to say "hey look at me doing some really bad 'pickpocket' wordplay." Maybe this clue just wanted to do a little "pocket" callback to the CARGO PANTS clue (3D: They have deep pockets). The misdirection on [Runs across] is more sly. That clue obviously wants you to think "Runs across" as in "Meets" or "Encounters." Mission accomplished.

Notes:

• 17A: Gather together (HERD) — an additional factor in the whole opening NW wipe-out. I wanted REAP ... maybe MASS.
• 45A: Emulates Niobe (MOURNS)— she's so strongly associated with tears that after CRIES wouldn't fit, I was out of ideas. But MOURNS, sure, that is what occasions the crying. 

• 49A: "Ew, ew, EW!" ("TMI!")— "Too Much Information"; a really great clue. You can really feel the "stop talking now!" energy.
• 10D: Pair making an appearance in the "Iliad"? (IOTAS)— a "letteral" clue, with the referent being the two (Greek) "I"s in the word "Iliad." ["Iliad" pair] (no question mark) would've been wickeder. 
• 13D: Best Actress nominee in 1992 who won Best Supporting Actress in 2020 (DERN) — it says something (bad? telling?) about my pop culture brain that without looking I could name the 1992 movie in question (Rambling Rose) but not the 2020 one. I thought maybe Certain Women (wrong year) or else Little Women, but she wasn't nominated for that (Ronin and Pugh were). Did you know she was also in Dr. T and the Women (2000)? This means that there is (unofficially, but now also canonically) a Laura DERN"Women" trilogy. Anyway, DERN won her Oscar for playing a divorce lawyer in Marriage Story. 

[DR. T has made 27 NYTXW appearances to date, mostly for this movie ... though occasionally also for the freaky Seussian musical fantasy, The 5000 Fingers of DR. T (1953)]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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