Possible Clues:

• Nit-picking
• Academic takes exercise with daughter, the old buffoon!
• Over-concerned with correctness
• Dance pit built by finicky sort
• By the way of 29 across with a class of a caper at last
• Nitpicking editor opposed to having computer around
• Showing off one's learning
• Academic
• Abstruse
• Fussy Italian poet's end brought forward in film