The New York Times Crossword

Answers below

ACROSS

1 Enthusiastic assent 5 Certain service 9 Packs (down) 14 Important leadership skill 16 Classic neo-grotesque 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 night blue 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!” 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 12-tone 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-to-goodness 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