Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman, constructing as “Anna Stiga” (Stan Again), the pseudonym that signals an easier Stumper. This Stumper was not easy though. I began with 27-A, three letters, “Declares, so to speak” and 3-D, six letters, “Paris premiere of 1980” and soon had the northwest and southeast corners done. But I missed by one square in the northeast: the first letter of 26-A, four letters, “Turkish tapas” and 26-D, five letters, “Drudges.” To my mind, that’s a ridiculous cross, even in a Stumper. If I were a kid playing some sort of game, I’d shout “No fair!” Or, in a resigned frame of mind, 20-D, seven letters, “Commiseration for a miss.”

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

18-A, ten letters, “It’s best left sealed.” Oblique and novel.

21-A, three letters, “Outback etching.” I learned something.

25-D, seven letters, “Get on with it.” HURRYUP? BUSFARE? No. No.

29-D, three letters, “Postwar establishment.” I thought of the CIA. But the last letter, by way of 33-A, makes the answer clear.

33-A, fifteen letters, “Fête nationale.” I knew it, I knew it.

33-D, eight letters, “Small town surrounded by soldiers.” This puzzle is not playing games.

44-A, four letters, “Reader using batteries.” I thought the plural must be a hint, but no, it uses a battery, singular.

47-D, five letters, “Freeman, at Shawshank’s end.” Are there rules about spoilers in crosswords? “Kane’s Rosebud”?

My favorite in this puzzle, sneaky in a Stumper-y way: 5-A, ten letters, “Rats, for instance.” But I’m not sure that the clue is accurate.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.