Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Lars G. Doubleday, aka Doug Peterson and Brad Wilber, whose last Stumper appeared last October. (The alias is an anagram of the names Bradley and Douglas.) It’s another one of those puzzles that (for me) began to look impossible on paper but became doable when I switched to an online version. I turned on Autocheck and finished the puzzle with only two or three letters that needed more than one try. What really surprised me is that guesses I was reluctant to try on paper — 1-A, ten letters, “Grey’s Anatomy production company”; 27-D, ten letters, “Succeeds at mediation” — turned out to be correct on the screen. Maybe I don’t need training wheels after all.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, four letters, “Org. finding places for unwanted toys.” I was not fooled.

4-D, three letters, “Early word in Sarandon’s Wikipedia entry.” A very odd clue. Does someone just have a thing for Susan Sarandon?

10-D, nine letters, “Network purchases.” Another reluctant guess that turned out to be correct.

12-D, ten letters, “Marked by turpitude.” Something to do with morals, eh?

25-A, five letters, “The Road to Wealth author.” I thought it had to be GETTY, having seen a book titled something like that in the Getty Museum gift shop. No, that was How to Be Rich.

26-D, ten letters, “Bit of paste.” I was thinking about the red sauce I’m going to make this afternoon.

30-A, eleven letters, “Doesn’t curb one’s enthusiasm.” The answer brings back a happy moment from teaching. (Stefan Hagemann, I’m thinking of you.)

31-D, nine letters, “Coiner of ‘sellyfish’ and ‘nectacled’.” Just gets on my nerves.

35-A, four letters, “Dickinson’s percher ‘in the soul.’” Stay right there.

38-A, eleven letters, “Copenhagen premiere on 1879.” There might be an argument to make here.

48-D, four letters, “Layout measure.” You were going to say ACRE, no?

52-A, ten letters, “Band of the soundtrack of The Hunger Games.” I’ve never seen THG, but I guessed the answer from the first letter.

My favorite in this puzzle: 37-A, three letters, “Space Needle’s midpoint.” Wherever it is, you could never really see it from Frasier Crane’s apartment.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.