Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by the puzzle’s editor Stan Newman, composing as “Lester Ruff.” As usual, I didn’t find this puzzle significantly easier than a regular Stumper. Indeed, I stumbled around to find a couple of starting points that led nowhere: 60-A, three letters, “TV planet where humor is forbidden” and 22-D, three letters, “Easter precursor.”

And then I saw 1-D, four letters, “Romney’s former firm ___ Capital.” Elaine was working as a word processor there when we met, until she became horrified by what she was typing — pages about downsizing and outsourcing — and quit. All of which is to say that I knew 1-D, and I-D opened up the rest of the puzzle, each answer leading to others with nary a hitch.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

17-A, eight letters, “Glut.” Noun? Verb?

21-A, seven letters, “Polish place.” City? Furniture item?

15-D, three letters, “Tributary lines.” I was really thinking that there might be a very short word having to do rivers.

31-A, eleven letters, “Charles III greeter, 7/5/24.” Okay, whatever.

32-A, three letters, “2010s head of State initials.” Read carefully.

36-A, eleven letters, “Sportscast's replay ‘pen.’” A pretty macho name for what is, after all, a writing instrument.

36-D, seven letters, “First to commercialize laptops (1985).” How long ago that seems.

54-D, three letters, “____ Brum (auto accessory).” Brum? I thought this must be some foreign-car item.

55-D, three letters, “Continuously reduced.” Clever.

My favorite in this puzzle: 7-D, seven letters, “Needle holder.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.