Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Steve Mossberg. It’s tough, knotty, difficult, formidable. (And I just accounted for all its answers — of one, two, three, and four syllables.) I missed by one square: having come up with a wholly plausible answer for 1-A, four letters, “Dough additive,” an answer that I never thought to second-guess, I assumed that the resulting answer for 1-D, four letters, “Plotter's preparations” was strained and Stumpery. But it was just wrong.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, thirteen letters, “Stay out all night.” Nice.

9-A, three letters, “Entryway adorned with a butterfly.” Pretty strained.

10-D, five letters, “Cliffside debris.” I like this word.

16-A, ten letters, “Publishing bottleneck.” A novel answer, no pun intended.

23-A, eight letters, “Dander-free pets.” Elaine approved of this clue when I ran it by her, but as she also points out, apples are a gluten-free food. And I am writing at a dander-free desk, on a fragrance-free MacBook Air. There’s something odd about calling these critters dander-free.

26-D, ten letters, “Multi-milk Mexican dessert.” A giveaway, I think, but I’ll take it.

38-A, eleven letters, “Small corner gatherings.” Clever.

43-A, eight letters, “Person paid to wave.” I think the Saturday Stumper is a bit obsessed with this line of work, or clueing.

45-A, eight letters, “Third quarters.” Stumpery.

My favorite in this puzzle, because it broke things open and because I got the answer from nothing more than its last three letters: 17-D, thirteen letters, “Contemporary office trend.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.