The New York Times crossword puzzle

Across

1 Podcasters’ needs

5 Meaty pasta sauce

9 “Hey, by the way …”

14 Apple with multiple cores

15 Eurasian river

16 Abstain from

17 *Job for a coxswain with rowdy rowers?

20 What’s tolerated by every body?

21 Natural hairstyles

22 Poorly

23 *Review for a so-so bakery?

26 2007 Michael Moore documentary about health care

28 “You’ve got ___ nerve!”

29 Melody

30 It’s often in stock

34 Chose a course

37 Dorothy Parker quality

38 *Person who assigns the order of opening presents?

40 “Yes,” in Japanese

41 Check box of last resort

43 Norse protector of humankind

44 Complain querulously

45 Kyrgyzstan mountain range

47 Extremist sects

49 *Completes a superhero transformation?

54 And others too numerous to mention

55 Nary a soul

56 Island nation whose currency is the tala

60 Preschool teacher’s mantra … or a hint to the answers to the starred clues

63 Have a nibble of

64 Brazilian berry

65 She, on the Seine

66 Expression that might accompany a mustache twirl

67 Word repeated in a 1956 Doris Day single

68 Brighter times

Down

1 It’s catching

2 “Not sure yet”

3 Something to make or break

4 “Magic that works,” per Vonnegut

5 Runner on the ground?

6 Like an excited crowd

7 Social blunder

8 Marine leader?

9 Small ice cream order

10 Ad ___

11 “Never mind what I just said!”

12 One of the Astaires

13 Caterwauls

18 Cozy corner

19 Romantic attraction, slangily, with “the”

24 Its name means “waterless place” in Mongolian

25 Hype (up)

26 Something to follow, in cards

27 “If so, then …”

29 Number of graduates in the first class at West Point (1802)

31 Poetic frequency

32 Utmost

33 Writer Umberto

35 Buds go in them

36 Dance floor flourish

38 Less sharp, as footage

39 Animal whose brain has the most gray matter of any mammal

42 They’re raised in Chi-Town

44 Found innocent

46 Part of, as a plot

48 “___-daisy!”

49 Tales of daring

50 Frome of fiction

51 Classical cover-ups

52 Chilling

53 Labor activist Chavez

57 “___ 18” (novel by Leon Uris)

58 Exclusively

59 Wrinkles in time?

61 Its ways are numbered: Abbr.

62 O.S.S. successor

No. 0110