There's "current" and then there's "desperate to seem current," and I think this puzzle falls more into the latter category. I had no idea who TAMARA was ( 5D: Actress Taylor of TV's "Bones"), or that there was custard in FRUIT TART (1A: Colorful custardy confection), but those are more *me* problems. I don't think that particular Christie title really rises to the level of crossworthiness, but then I also think "eh, it's gettable and it's kind of colorful, so it's OK." If it hadn't been gummed up in this already icky corner, I probably would've minded its relative obscurity much less. The clue helps a little, but the THE remained recalcitrant for a bit (I had ON A.). I can rattle off a dozen or so Christie titles, but that is not one of them (it was apparently made into an BBC mini-series in 2020, but like so much of 2020, I don't remember that). I also wonder about " THE PALE HORSE," an answer I want to like, but.
The other issues up here are APAT crossing APLAY-they are bad individually, but together they are a cringe tornado. Stand firm! Ugh, not happy when I have to spend time on what should be an inconsequential three-letter answer, but -THS is a three-alarmer, so I gotta do what I gotta do. It's bad enough that we are going to have a wordlist-inspired " UM, NO" epidemic for the next 100 years don't let - THS sneak into the modern crossword ecosystem like some Maleskan-era* invasive species. I'm begging constructors-erase it from your wordlists. And so now you're (rightly) mad at the puzzle, not yourself. "Why can't I figure this out?" you wonder, "What is wrong with me?" And *then* you get it, and it's. And the thing is, you think the problem is *you*. But this one, this one you have to sit with. It's so, so bad, and much worse than other bad answers because there's no easy way to clue it, so what we get is the Worst answer in the puzzle doubling as one of the toughest answers in the puzzle. *twenty-seven years*! That's how long it's been since - THS has been in the puzzle. I love the slang as slang, but as with "woke" yesterday, I just think the clue should give credit where credit is due- mention queer ball culture, or "Paris is Burning," or even Beyoncé. SLAYS ( 61A: Crushes it) was less irksome, and off-putting only in the sense that it is yet another instance of white mainstream culture appropriating a term from a subculture (in this case, Black / queer). So while ADULTS (as a verb) was easy enough to get, it was not a joy to get ( 11D: Does laundry or pays bills, in modern lingo) (laundry!?! that's "adulting"? yeesh, that is a low bar). As with yesterday, I found the "modern lingo" a little off-putting, first because there is no bit of "modern lingo" I find more off-putting than "adulting"-it's not cosplay, it's just paying your bills, it's fine, you don't need to continue to infantilize yourself well into your 30s, come on. I for one definitely needed the LETS from LETS THINGS SLIDE as well as the RATTLE from RATTLESNAKE BITE to even begin to make serious headway in that NW section. Still, the anchor answers (those crossing 15s) are very strong and once you get into them and bring them down, they give you a framework to get into every part of the grid (except the aforementioned iso-corners) and work things out. The cluing also felt harder than normal throughout, causing it to feel more like a Saturday fight than a Friday fling. Didn't have quite the flow or zing that I like on Fridays, due in large part to those very, very cut-off NE and SW corners, which played like entirely separate mini-puzzles and then were almost no help at all getting into the meat of the puzzle (speaking of MEAT, side note: that was my first ( MEAD)). Started and finished in the NW, which is by far the hardest and the weakest part of this puzzle, so let's come back to that later and start by saying that this is basically a solid Friday puzzle.