Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski, and it’s tough. It look me a bit less time to finish (thirty-seven minutes) than some recent Stumpers, but it felt far more difficult. I started in the southeast with 36-A, three letters, “Fell”; 38-D, five letters, “Freegan’s bane”; and 41-A, four letters, “Brit’s bean.” After that, I was more or less stuck, trying an answer here, an answer there.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, eleven letters, “Where a tiny cart is kept.” To my mind, carts are still kept only in supermarkets, or in their parking lots, or on the porch of a thief.

16-A, four letters, “Save for posterity, perhaps.” Stumpery.

22-D, eleven letters, “Middle management successes.” Very clever.

25-D, four letters, “What Patton called his colleague.” I guessed right.

29-A, six letters, “Famed farce’s title troubles.” I thought first of The Perils of Pauline, though that’s not a farce.

31-A, ten letters, “Scorekeeper?” Nice one.

33-A, nine letters, “Gotcha.” The answer sounds a tad passive-aggressive to me.

34-D, seven letters, “Mermaid in the pool.” I am mermaid-, pony-, and unicorn-conscious.

39-D, six letters, “Times up.” I like the pun.

52-A, ten letters, “Fully firm.” Pretty oblique. I guessed (and spelled) coreectly.

58-A, eight letters, “The buck stops here.” HARRYTRUMANSDESK doesn’t fit.

One oddity in today’s puzzle: 9-A, four letters, “Cubo pequeo.” Something must have gone wrong with the typesetting.

One clue I don’t understand: 30-A, three letters, “Quad wheels, for short.” I looked up “quad wheels” and the answer, but I still don’t get it. [Later: a comment at Crossword Fiend might be the explanation.]

My favorite in today’s puzzle: 28-D, five letters, “What I will always be?”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.