Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is one hard puzzle. I’d call it a six on the Mohs Hardness Scale. You should really use a glass plate, knife blade, or maybe a steel nail to scratch its surface. I used a pencil and eraser, and to my surprise, they worked. The northeast and southwest: fairly doable. The northwest and southeast: better with the nail.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, eight letters, “Less than lucid.” I’m surprised to see that it’s a word.

6-A, three letters, “They take their turns in clubs.” The obvious (I think) answer doesn’t work.

9-A, five letters, “Lent direction.” Or misdirection.

11-D, ten letters, “Poetic ‘King of Kings.’” Gone but not forgotten.

14-A, nine letters, “Loud lament.” Not the first time I’ve seen the answer in a puzzle, but it’s still unobvious to me.

27-A, fourteen letters, “What you'll see in the latest Indy Jones film.” I want to rephrase: what a viewer will see, or what someone else will see. I don’t plan to see it. I knew what the clue was asking about, but figuring out the eighth and ninth letters made me a bit crazy.

29-D, ten letters, “Sudden burst.” I thought first of water: OUTPOURING.

34-A, three letters, “Ashley Walker Bush, in 2006.” Guessable, but who cares? Maybe she’s a friend of the constructor.

39-A, seven letters, “Six-stanza form for Dante.” And for John Ashbery, among other poets. Caution: the link is a spoiler.

45-A, fourteen letters, “Where lessons are prepared.” I thought of the smoke-drenched teachers’s lounge of my high school.

54-D, four letters, “Brand now ‘Even Gravy-er!’” I thought this had to be YARC (Yet Another Ragú Clue).

My favorite in this puzzle: 8-D, four letters, “Something often driven in December.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.