Dave

@Bill I had PETAL until I couldn't make the crosses work, then changed it to SEPAL. Now a truly great Schroedinger puzzle trick would have been if both answers fit! And even more impressive, if TEPAL would also fit. But maybe that would just be gilding the lily.

@Lee I do crack almonds with my favorite nutcracker: a pair of channellock pliers. But I wouldn't touch unshelled cashews (if I could find them) with any nutcracker of mine. Their double shell contains an acidified version of urushiol, the active ingredient that causes poison ivy rash. Best to leave the cracking to those who know what they are doing.

@Aaron Yeah I got that. Interesting that it can be read two very different ways.

@Cherry But Spanish can also misdirect. I had SAL instead of French SEL in 22A until I got enough letters in SPICERUBS to figure out that A didn't belong.

@Jane Wheelaghan I very frequently do not know names of popular culture or sports figures, but I do know they are names. I filled in MIKE after getting M and K on crosses and knowing it to be a name. But when 10D wasn't working, I guessed someone named Brzezinski might be a MIKA instead. Same with NEAL and NEWELL - I know neither of these people, but happened to know someone named Neal Newell in my younger days, so I put these in as a (lucky) guess.

@John if you want to be excruciatingly accurate, the planets in the solar system and the Sun revolve around the center of mass of the system, called the barycenter - but where's the fun in that? Unless you want to clue barycenter, which would be a wicked crossword entry.

@Susan me too!

@Alana physicist was absent, left a note: "Gone fission"