Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, is truly stumperesque. Stumpacular. Stumperiffic. I spent thirty-nine minutes coming to terms with this puzzle and was surprised that I was able to finish. I started in the southeast and traveled to the southwest, the northeast, and the northwest, with one clue in each area giving me a start: 60-A, four letters, “Blog troll’s name, often”; 58-A, “When the Common Era began”; 16-A, five letters, “‘Daily ___’ (L.A. newspaper)”; 27-A, five letters, “Global Strike Command facility: Abbr.”

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

7-D, six letters, “Habitual pincher.” The answer always reminds me of an All in the Family storyline.

17-A, four letters, “’60s singer who sounds sylvan.” There’s an excellent documentary.

20-A, eight letters, “Sort of breaker.” OVERTIME? No.

21-D, seven letters, “Restrains, as sounds.” DAMPENS? No.

23-A, three letters, “Passage disclaimer.” A little strained. But I suppose the answer fits as it would appear in a passage.

29-A, nine letters, “Color-correcting cosmetic.” The answer broke open much of the puzzle for me.

37-D, seven letters, “Where one shouldn’t go.” One might agree that it’s a clever clue.

42-D, seven letters, “13-time leading name on Gallup’s Most Admired Women list.” I’m always happy to see her name.

56-A, four letters, “Certain calf brusher.” I was thinking tykes and pants legs. Then I figured it out.

57-A, four letters, “Not quite a calf brusher.” See previous clue.

A startling factoid: 4-D, four letters, “She turned down Swanson’s role in Sunset Boulevard.” I think of what Billy Wilder said when George Raft turned down the lead in Double Indemnity: “We knew then that we’d have a good picture.” The thought of 4-D as Norma Desmond makes my head hurt.

And one clue whose answer I still don’t understand: 8-D, “‘Don Juan’ for all time.” Meaning what, exactly? And here the puzzle’s use of quotation marks and not italics makes for a puzzle within a puzzle: is “Don Juan” a nickame, or Byron’s poem?

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8:14 p.m.: One more, which I wrote off as another bit of bafflement. But now I understand: 34-A, three letters, “One in a sure-to-sue scenario.”

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.