Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell. I started with 6-D, six letters, “Microcomputer Woz admired” and 23-A, seven letters, “James Stewart’s whistleblower,” and for a moment I thought that this puzzle and I were on the same wavelength. Not quite. I worked on it (the puzzle, not the wavelength) some more, quit, went out to dinner with Elaine (pad ped and pad Thai, spicy no. 3), came back, took another swing, and everything fell into place. Spicy no. 3 FTW!

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, eleven letters, “Underscore?” Nicely colloquial.

8-D, three letters, “Cell progenitor.” Is this biology?

24-D, eleven letters, “Beyond beautiful.” A hilarious answer.

30-D, six letters, “Works.” I did not see this answer coming, not even after having its first letter.

32A, fifteen letters, “Fully exploit.” This clue fully exploits the fifteen columns of the puzzle.

35-D, eight letters, “Finish line.” Ha.

40-A, three letters, “Follow a stat.” Good grief.

41-A, eight letters, “Capsule contents.” My first smarty-pants guess was EPHEMERA. I was thinking of a time capsule.

43-D, five letters, “Above and below.” Sneaky, Stumper-y, and I’m happy that I caught on.

49-A, eight letters, “Where low-fat meat comes from.” A strange, surprising anwer.

54-A, nine letters, “Weblog with an Eyre Apparent exhibit post.” Excuse me: “weblog”? And said weblog hasn’t been updated since 2009. There are better ways to clue this answer.

My favorite in this puzzle: 8-D, eight letters, “Advice column.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.