The New York Times

ACROSS

1 Enthusiastic

assent

5 Certain service

9 Packs (down)

14 Important

leadership skill

16 Classic neogrotesque typeface

17 “Losing some illusions … perhaps to acquire others,” per Virginia Woolf

18 Gloomy and drab

19 Cause of an early

lead, maybe

20 Like a spitball

21 Darth Vader’s childhood nickname

22 Author who wrote “The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit”

24 Sticky stuff

25 Hardly

mainstream

28 Pluto, e.g.

29 Sudden sensation

30 Cutesy “I beg

your pardon?”

34 “What a shocker”

35 “Heaven forbid!”

36 Singer Mitchell

37 Shapiro of NPR

38 John B.

Goodenough is the oldest person ever to get one (at age 97)

42 Travel guess, for

short

43 Joyous song

46 “Ambient 1: Music for Airports” musician

47 Candy cooked until it reaches the hard-crack stage

50 Approach

53 Tell all

54 Strutting one’s

stuff

55 Kind of moment

worth recording

56 Xenomorphs, e.g.

57 Cart contents

58 What air is not for

an anaerobe

59 Looked at

suspiciously

DOWN

1 Throw on the

couch

2 Angel said to have visited Joseph Smith

3 Like shunga

woodblock prints

4 What breaks as it

first comes out

5 “The Pinkprint”

rapper

6 Belligerent,

slangily

7 “Put a sock in it!”

Edited by Will Shortz No. 1015

8 500 letters?

9 “I did it!”

10 Like Mars

11 Psychological

trick

12 It’s just the beginning of the story

13 Sneaky sort

15 Model (for)

20 Composer Anton who used the 12tone technique

23 Main component in the Chinese street food jianbing

26 Children’s classic originally written in German

27 Nov. 11 honoree

29 Sauce whose name derives from “pound” in Italian

31 Double curve

32 Crowdsourced

Q&A site

33 The Promised

Land

34 Honest-togoodness

35 Fall apart

36 Zippy resort

rental

39 Joint application?

40 Tempt

41 Took inventory?

44 Home with a view

45 Unembellished,

as the truth

48 Bit of deception

49 Lodge group

51 Loud bugling, e.g.

52 Concerning

54 Appearing ill or

exhausted, say