PUZZLE #11: Spirals 'n Arrows

PUZZLE #11

SPIRALS & ARROWS

This one's inspired by a puzzle I saw in the February 2015 issue of GAMES Magazine (which was itself inspired by a puzzle created by Mike Selinker): in it, there are a total of twenty-five 3x3 boxes that each contain a nine-letter word or phrase. Each word starts out in the center and "spirals out" to fill out the surrounding eight squares, following the thick light-grey line as it does so (In the above sample, the two spirals spell out "BE RELAXED" and "TEMPLATES"). There are also words that go across in straight lines, as pointed out by the arrowheads. For those, each word comes immediately after the last one, and once you reach the end of a line, just continue to the next arrowhead-marked row, or else it may seems to occasionally stop in the middle of a word. (Going back to the above sample, the word "EXAMPLE" spills over to the next arrowhead-marked row, and it's followed by the word "RESET")

Once you've completely filled in the grid, the dark-grey squares (the starting letter of each spiral) will spell out a clue that will lead you to the FINAL ANSWER.

SPIRALS
1) What spiral eyes represent in cartoons and anime
2) Type of graphics used in Q*Bert and Diablo
3) Confetti cousins
4) It may result from altitudes that are too high up
5) 1997 Samuel L. Jackson film set in Louisiana
6) British sitcom featuring Vyvyan the punk, with "The"
7) Small Sergio Aragonés cartoons found in the gutters of MAD Magazine
8) The killer in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
9) Spine sections
10) Entering computer data
11) Trade blockades
12) "_____ Boulevard" (Tiny Toons episode that spoofed Sunset Boulevard)
13) The only Speaker of the House to serve for five complete Congresses in a row
14) Residents of Greece's capital
15) Multiple copies of the Beatles' 7th album?
16) Netlike
17) New York's hockey team
18) "Ultimate Princess" Sonia Nevermind's kingdom from Danganronpa 2
19) Mario's first party member in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
20) Type of locally-owned store that Walmart seems to hate
21) Act as a referee, like in Spiral #22
22) John Cena's sport (and I use the term "sport" loosely...)
23) 1995 movie whose sequel, Be Cool, was released ten years later
24) Nestor the _____ Christmas Donkey
25) Old-timey nickname for a locomotive

LINES
* Actor Tom from Saving Private Ryan (no, the other Tom)
* Nothing, according to William Shakespeare

* Disneyland memento
* "Robot" and "Tact" suffix
* Spool of film
* Funny female bunny from Tiny Toon Adventures
* Preschoolers' channel that changed its name to Nick Jr. in 2009
* Big _____ (comic strip whose books are often read by kids)
* Part of BYOB
* What a Canadian penny is called in Quebec
* The lion who battles a witch in a wardrobe
* Bid welcome to
* Go from KitKat to Lollipop, for example
* Jafar or Judge Frollo
* One result when picking petals?
* Daffynition, for one
* Call of Duty: Black _____
* The "ugliest man who came to Troy" in the Iliad
* Old name of Thailand's Lopburi province
* Hairbrush alternative
* It precedes "Science" and "Mechanics" in magazines
* '50s Ford flop
* Eat a Peach brothers
* Elaborate festivals
* Every rose has one, according to Bret Michaels
* Scent from Fifi La Fume (could you tell I like Tiny Toons yet?)
* [Their mistake, not mine]
* Light up a flame
* 88 days, on Mercury
* Neither's partner

Once you've figured out the FINAL ANSWER, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net or itsredhead64@gmail.com and I'll put you on a list of solvers roughly two weeks from now. You can also use those email addresses to give me feedback on my puzzle or send me the FINAL ANSWER to last week's puzzle (which you can solve here with a hint here). If you want a version of this puzzle you can print out, click on "read more" for just that!