Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Steve Mossberg, whose Stumpers have sometimes given me fits. Today’s puzzle felt difficult, particularly in the southwest. But I did it.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, ten letters, “Film with the most AFI top 100 quotes (6).” I’d call it a gimme, for me maybe the only gimme in the puzzle. It didn’t hurt to have listened to a podcast episode about this film yesterday.

1-D, four letters, “Brown Derby owner who gave his name to a green course.” Are we golfing? A nice bit of dowdy trivia.

11-D, eleven letters, “Emeril makes them with yogurt and coconut.” No thanks.

12-D, ten letters, “Taste of philosophy.” A bit forced.

15-A, ten letters, “Set aside.” I’m surprised to see that that is what the word can mean.

19-A, three letters, “Frost line.” Hah.

20-A, five letters, “Frost lines.” Hah.

22-D, eleven letters, “One concerned with approach, take-off and landing.” Get the first and third letters and you’ll struggle to see the rest.

27-D, ten letters, “Brown sugar.” Tricky, but not tricky enough!

32-D, four letters, “Off-the-wall call.” A nice way to clue a familiar word.

34-A, five letters, “Pumps (up).” At least three plausible answers, all of which begin with the same letter. So sussing out 25-D, four letters, “Lift to greet” helped not a bit.

38-A, ten letters, “Words that add depth to a video game character.” Certainly a gimme for some. New to me. My video-game play has been limited to three arcade games — Cruis’n World, Ms. Pac-Man, Night Driver — and one computer game, Mario Kart. Do the words “I’m-a Luigi, number one” add depth?

55-A, ten letters, “Big Apple’s Pastrami Queen, e.g.” Also new to me. And speaking of “new,” can’t we just write “NYC’s”? I remember advising a great student who told me that she was moving to “the Big Apple”: “Never call it ‘the Big Apple.’ It’ll mark you as an outsider.” Good advice, no?

My favorite clue in this puzzle: 45-A, seven letters, “Case workers.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.