Today’s Newsday Saturday

I woke up thinking I’d better write a post about the Newsday  Saturday crossword. And then I realized that I hadn’t done the puzzle last night. Why? Because we were visiting friends to watch a movie, for the first time in well over a year. The times are changing.

Today’s puzzle is by the Newsday puzzle editor, Stan Newman. It’s a fine puzzle, with room for lowlifes and rowdies and royalty:

5-D, four letters, “Wild bunch.”

28-D, five letters, and 49-A, three letters, “Quite a boor.”

34-A, fifteen letters, “2017 QEII celebration.”

For me this was one of those puzzles in which clue after clue leads nowhere — for instance, 17-A, seven letters, “Paper aide,” or 30-D, five letters, “More than kind.” And then when the puzzle is done, nearly every answer seems inevitable.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

3-D, six letters, “Bread flavoring.” Yes.

8-D, fifteen letters, “Erie Canal Museum city.” We’ve stayed there a few times on road trips — in the city, not the museum.

20-A, seven letters, “They’re in a book of Liszt’s.” Where they’d be Liszted in the index, I suppose.

30-A, five letters, “Evacuation order.” A nice clash of diction between clue and answer.

35-D, eight letters, “Signature collectors’ banes.” Who thinks about these things? Signature collectors, I guess.

38-A, six letters, “Deny or sustain, say.” Not as obvious an answer as you might think.

44-D, six letters, “Milwaukee TV tribute statue in a two-thumbs-up pose.” Not SISKELANDEBERT.

62-A, eight letters, “Subject of an early Tom Wolfe book (1968).” Easy to be misled by the opening letters of the answer, at least if you’re me.

One pairing that doesn’t persuade me: 12-D, eight letters, “Ecclesiastical antonym.” I may be missing something, but I don’t see a contrast. Ecclesiastical matters can be just as 12-D in their focus as anything else.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.