| GAMECHANGER | Industry-disrupting idea, or a hint to the slow transformation happening in the starts of the starred clues' answers |
| KIDFRIENDLY | Suitable for the whole family, or an apt description of the first words of the answers to the starre |
| OWLS | The slow transformation of birds of the night (4) |
| BRAKE | It is applied to the slow-down (5) |
| LONGANDSHORTOFIT | General idea ... or a hint to the clue/answer pairings at 14-, 29-, 39-, 41- and 53-Across |
| WHOLEHOG | With 49-Across, Southern cooking tradition that can be described by the transformation happening in this puzzle |
| WILSON | Former prime minister in slow transformation (6) |
| SUNRISESUNSET | Classic Broadway show tune, or a hint to the word ladder revealed by the answers to the eight starre |
| ATE | Word that homophonically forms a familiar word when attached to the end of the answer to each starre |
| SILENTS | Many Greta Garbo films, and what you'll find at the intersections of four pairs of answers to starre |
| SEED | Word for a grain, kernel, nut, pip, stone or other sown propagule or embryo of a plant, thus a beginning, origin of an idea or a source; or, one of a contest's top contenders, scattered throughout a t |
| LECARRE | Author of the 1974 novel found in the starts of the starred answers |
| GOER | An energetic person; a fast car; a feasible idea; or, a regular attender of a church or a cinema, for example (4) |
| MOONSHOT | Nothing in the start of the week to photograph at space launch (8) |
| INFUSION | Something poured in or introduced, whether inspiration, liquid over herbs, a new quality or the slow intravenous drip of a solution into a vein (8) |
| WHOM | Pronoun in the starts of many letters |
| FACT | No fiction in the start of the first act (4) |
| MUDSLINGING | Dirty tactics, and a cryptic hint to what's happening in the shaded squares |
| ASCENSION | The ___ (Heavenly happening in The New Testament illustrated in one of Notre Dame Cathedral's stained glass windows) |
| MOURN | Regret for old city in the start of week (5) |
