Today’s Saturday Stumper

I found today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, easy going. This puzzle might be a good one for someone wanting to try their hand at solving a Newsday Saturday. With 1-D, three letters, “Mobile utility” crossing 13-A, five letters, “___ al Ajillo (garlicky entree),” I started (for once) in the upper left corner and went from there.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

14-D, nine letters, “2020s’ youthful ‘zero reaction.’” I have to admit that I find it refreshing to encounter something different. “Is that a Tilley hat?!” It wasn’t, but we had a fun conversation about hats.

16-A, ten letters, “Screen’s space savers.” This clue can’t be about patching holes in window screens, can it?

19-A, six letters, “Hamlet’s dagger.” I’m not sure if it’s meant as the giveaway I think it is.

27-D, ten letters, “Pandowdy cousin.” I have my seventh-grade English teacher to think for this answer, which was part of the joke he made again and again of the name of a girl in the class. This teacher also had fake stairs down pat.

32-D, four letters, “___ a primera vista.” At a glance, I misread this clue as asking for the name of a dish.

35-D, eight letters, “Velvety milk drinks.” The ways in which simple ingredients can be combined to make things that bear different names always has me looking slightly askance.

36-A, five letters, “Woman of Canadian extraction.” I must be on Matthew Sewell’s wavelength.

37-D, six letters, “Encyclopedia Brown, enduringly.” I got on an EB kick as a grownup, as these posts will attest.

41-A, five letters, “Bandleader autograph with a pentagram.” Oh — of course.

44-A, thirteen letters, “Unplanned minor meetings.” I found the start of this answer cleverly misleading, but I’m not sure that I was supposed to.

48-D, five letters, “Whom Woolf praised with ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.’” Yes, Virginia. My snark inspired by David Markson.

56-A, ten letters, “Unwritten endorsement.” Well, it might be written, kinda, or have been written, at some point, maybe, in the past, at least in a manner of speaking, no pun intended.

58-D, three letters, “What the tennis US Open is played on.” I don’t like cluing this answer in this way, even if I see it right away.

63-A, three letters, “LFB’s putative Wizard inspiration.” Got it, but I had to look it up to understand.

My favorite in this puzzle: 25-A, thirteen letters, “Soft numbers.” Because the clue sounds to me like the title of a John Ashbery poem.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.