My time: 16:53, quicker than average but not great. I liked the long fill and some more modern answers like AD-CLICK RATE and OPEN A NEW TAB.
For the vague clue "no _____" I tentatively tried *WAY, then thought it might be *BIG, until it finally revealed itself to be MSG. I really am not a fan of these vague blank clues.
I solved almost all of this puzzle in about eleven minutes, and then spent five on the northwest corner. I've never heard of the RITA Award, given by the Romance Writers of America to the most outstanding romance novel. It's stylized in all capitals, but it's not an anagram; it is named for the RWA's first president, Rita Clay Estrada.
The clue crossing RITA, "about 5% of the world's population," also stumped me. A little mental math revealed that this was about 350 million so I was trying to fit Americans in that somehow; it's ARABS.
And then "finer cut, usually" — that is so devious. For all know it's a crossword puzzle mainstay but I don't think I've seen it before. Very sly wordplay here: it's SIDE A. I had to get that letter by letter.
"Anxious" for ITCHY didn't help a lot, either, as *ANTSY fits well in there and is a much fairer synonym.
Still in the northwest corner, I had *INSISTS for BEHESTS at "commands."
Finally out of the northwest corner, "one of the film-directing Wachowskis." I had no idea that they were transgender! None. I sure am out of the loop. Apparently, Larry Wachowski is now LANA, and her sister (formerly Andy) is Lilly!
For "not just rank" I had *ROTTED (it's ROTTEN), meaning for its cross "scrim material" I had *LINED, which kind of sort of made sense because scrim is used in lining? But it's LINEN which makes a lot more sense.
I kind of remember GLO Worms, the 1980s toy, I suppose, though I'm in the wrong age bracket (didn't have kids, wasn't a kid).
I guessed very quickly that it's HERB ALPERT who is the "only musician to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 as both a vocalist and an instrumentalist." It turns out the details are the last sentence in his wiki page intro paragraph: Alpert is the only musician to hit No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 pop chart as both a vocalist ("This Guy's in Love with You," 1968) and an instrumentalist ("Rise," 1979). I never heard of either of those!
NCR came up in 2018 as a manufacturer of ATMs (and I complained about it back then). Today it's clued as "big manufacturer of bar code scanners." Ugh.
NAT Sherman cigars came up on November 11, 2018.
Clever clues: "One taking a bow" is ARCHER. "Smallest possible band" is DUO (I don't know why I was only thinking of wedding bands and radio bands — sometimes I try to hard to get the oblique meaning). "An order might be one" is SECRET SOCIETY. "This might be cast in a police drama"? Of course, a WIDE NET. "It appears in stacks" is SOOT. "Something the force is responsible for?" was a real stumper (northwest corner, of course); it's SALES.
Whoo! What a challenge. Lots of head-scratching and aha moments. That Joe DiPietro is a SLY crossword creator! What a LARK!
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