Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Ben Zimmer, whose last Stumper proved exceedingly difficult for me. So too this one, but this one sparked more joy. Lots of clues I thought I would never be able to answer: for instance, 17-A, nine letters, “What NASA’s eHEALTH ONE device emulates.” But answer I did.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

5-D, six letters, “Summit.” Oof.

6-D, five letters, “Up-and-down address.” Nice.

8-D, nine letters, “Cutting-edge technology.” Somehow I’ve been familiar with the idea from childhood, so the technology might not be that cutting-edge.

9-D, seven letters, “Prizes for Wimbledon women’s champs.” If you say so.

10-D, six letters, “Beef also a beef cut?” The kind of clue whose answer I don’t understand for some time after I’ve written it in.

13-D, three letters, “Bosox great.” We were talking about him just the other day. His name and face were once on packages of Arnold bread.

14-A, nine letters, “Offer for privacy.” Another clue that left me ATSEA, at first.

19-A, fourteen letters, “Deep pan.” At least the answer couldn’t be STEWPOT.

20-D, five letters, “Aged beef?” Clever though it’s meant to be, I think this clue strains the meaning of the answer, which is not in any obvious way a beef.

26-D, five letters, “Up-and-down flights.” Clever.

34-D, eight letters, “Combat with light artillery.” I was not fooled.

35-A, three letters, “House support.” I was fooled, briefly.

38-A, letters, “Upper levels of a sort.” A novel answer, at least for me.

41-A, five letters, “Where gumbo comes from.” I like gumbo and think I should have known this. Now I do.

43-A, fourteen letters, “Cease suddenly.” An instance of subtle misdirection, or else I just misread it. To my ear it suggests an activity outside oneself, like the noise of cicadas, which, alas, isn’t going to cease suddenly or any other -ly any time soon.

My favorite in this puzzle: 53-A, three letters, “Antique letter opener.” Somewhere John Kennedy Toole might be smiling.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.