TUESDAY PUZZLE — Today Peter Gordon presents a very specific sort of puzzle — if your knowledge of a couple of extremely particular topics matches his, you’re going to roll right through it. The other 99 percent of you, come sit over here by me and we will work it out. If you knew all the answers to all the clues every time, where would the fun be?

Today’s Theme

There is an explainer paragraph at the top of the puzzle in print (and, I’m told, in the notepad online). This tells you we’re looking for a quotation from a best-selling writer whose name, at some point in our history, has appeared in a Times puzzle. At 1D. And he has a hypercritical brother-in-law. And did I mention that this quotation isn’t specifically even from one of his or her books? Why, with that information as well as a monocle, we shall solve this in the time it takes to boil an egg, eh, what?

I jest.

In fact, as explained below by Mr. Gordon in his note, the only way (I think) that any of this would add up is if you’d heard this writer relay this story on one podcast episode. The podcast is “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know,” a sort of reverse reboot of “What’s My Line?” where a panel debunks or learns new things from guest contestants, and the writer in question isn’t even a regular, it was just a unique cosmic moment in time. The whole kaboodle started in Mr. Gordon’s noodle while he was out with his labradoodle.

There’s nothing helpful in the cluing, either for the author, who appears at 1A this time, or the three-part, grid-spanning quotation at 24A, 38A and 52A. At each of the four sites: See blurb. Fortunately, there are 73 other entries here waiting to knit together enough evidence for us to fill in this quip.