Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Stella Zawistowski, is another Stumper that I thought would have me beat. I started late Friday afternoon and had the puzzle less than half done when we went to our favorite (Thai) restaurant for dinner. We were lucky that we arrived shortly before a table of fourteen did. When I went back to the puzzle after dinner, the rest of the it fell into place. Thank you, pad woon sen and panang curry, both “spicy number three.” The scale goes from zero to five.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

5-D, six letters, “Phone battery saver.” Never heard of it.

6-D, eleven letters, “Unoriginal writing.” That’s pretty strained. I know, it’s a Stumper. But it’s pretty strained.

17-A, ten letters, “Circular skill.” Just one example of this puzzle’s obliqueness.

24-D, eleven letters, “Early target for Edison electrification.” Makes sense.

25-A, thirteen letters, “They act as a pair.” So not obvious, at least to me, and so clever.

25-D, four letters, “Transparent flute feature.” Nicely defamiliarizing.

30-A, five letters, “Ring figures.” ZEROS? Is that the plural of zero?

32-D, four letters, “European cardinal that sounds sapped.” I thought it had to be some four-letter bird.

38-D, four letters, “Hog’s grunt.” Ha!

39-A, five letters, “Word from the Hebrew for ‘one who understands.’” Surprised that this is what the word means. I thought it referred to would-bes.

40-A, thirteen letters, “Acquisitional power.” Lordy.

45-A, four letters, “Story starter.” My first guess was ONCE.

50-D, four letters, “Minor diamond.” I was thinking of baseball, or trying to.

My favorite in this puzzle: 11-D, ten letters, “Capital an hour’s drive from Vienna.” Because I knew the answer (thanks to music) and because the answer opened up a whole bunch of puzzle.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.