Constructor: Chris A. McGlothin
Relative difficulty: HARD
THEME: Philately
Word of the Day: 45A PARDO (Longtime late-night announcer) —
Dominick George "Don" Pardo (born February 22, 1918) is an American radio and television Saturday Night Live.[1]announcer. He is known as the voice of the long-running late night sketch comedy show.
Pardo is noted for his long association with NBC, working as the announcer for early incarnations of such notable shows as The Price Is Right, Jeopardy!, and NBC Nightly News.[2] He has been the announcer of Saturday Night Live for all but one of its seasons. He continues to provide voiceover services during the program's opening montage, several years after his official retirement from NBC. [from wikipedia]
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Hello, Rexworld. This is treedweller, filling in for Rex. Mostly filling, anyway. This was one of those Saturdays when my weak areas were exposed and it took a handful of googles to get the whole grid. I eventually used APBS (48D They're issued to cruisers, briefly) to get PUTS THE KIBOSH ON (56A Vetoes), and the whole bottom section soon after, but lack of familiarity with the Pulitzer winners of my youth left me stranded up top and sent me to the interwebs. 
I once collected stamps, but my hazy memory of that time only gave me a lot of bad guesses when it came to the roughly seventeen postage-related clues. And a confident mistake at "odds" for BETS (29A They're often taken on horses) left me struggling to cadge some sleep (instead of CAUGHT A FEW WINKS @ 8D Grabbed some sack time).But once I got a little traction, the grid steadily filled up and, as with many late-week puzzles, it mostly seems natural and obvious in retrospect. Totally fair for a Saturday, anyway.
Bullets:
- 22D Hiawatha's grandmother in "The Song of Hiawatha" NOKOMIS— Wiki informs me The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem, in trochaic tetrameter, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, featuring an Indian hero. It was a Noko-miss for me.
- 31A ". . . we'll ___ a cup o' kindness . . .": Burns TAK— This was obviously some kind of elision. I had no idea. Turns out, it's from Auld Lang Syne, a song I know about eleven words to — including the three in the title, but not including TAK'.
- 26D Lab growth need DOG FOOD— I totally fell for the feint and was stumped when neither agar-agar, petri dish, nor medium would fit.
- 30D Father of 38-Across/38A Son of 30-Down ARES/EROS— I started out thinking biblically, since it seemed the most likely source of four-letter names, and spent a lot of time trying to make Amos and Enos work before trying the Greeks.
- 39A " ___ wise guy, eh?" SOA— This made me CRINGE (33A Quail) a bit. Tried it for a while as "Oh, a" before abandoning it and getting it from crosses later.
Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld