I had THALBERG in there at one point (Irving Thalberg was a Hollywood producer who died young and then they named an Academy Award after him, I think) (yes, he died of pneumonia 85 years ago this Tuesday he was 37). You'd think that Greta THUNBERG, a very well-known human being, would've been all I needed down there, but my brain refuses to remember the letters between 'T' and 'BERG' ( 39A: She was Time magazine's 2019 Person of the Year).

The stupid second (ugh) clue was down there, so no help. I don't know what a 'nudnik' is because it's not the 1940s or whenever anyone used that word, so PESTERS was blocked to me ( 43A: Acts like a nudnik to). NE was easiest, then SE, then NW, then SW, where I finished, and where I had my sole moment of 'oh no, am I going to finish?' It was a brief moment, but it happened. I solved this in near-perfect clockwise fashion. sorry to RAMBLE ON, it's just sometimes grids contain hidden stories and I have to work them out, however gruesome they happen to be. Kind of a violent vibe to the NW, with its BURGLAR that gets interrupted and takes hostages and then tells those hostages to GRAB A SEAT and then when the cops show he STABBED them in their KEVLAR vests, putting the hostages at RISK-I hope they were not UNSAVED. 'RUN A RACE,' however, that one really needs a good lawyer to plead its case. ' GRAB A SEAT!,' you might actually say to someone. Sometimes you get something very coherent and stand-alone-worthy like GRAB A SEAT. RUN A RACE, btw, total 'eat-a-sandwich' answer. I did not RUN A RACE through this one, but I moved pretty methodically and without any really noteworthy resistance. Never should've dropped that 'n.' Huge mistake. I mean, it's got 'turd' in it, not an auspicious letter combo. Man, 'Saturday' is one of those words where if you look at it too much, it looks crazy and wrong.

Rat race cash cow crossword