A.F.L. All-Time Team member with a law degree / SUN 1-15-23 / Phenomenon also known as data decay / One of many in the Disney Morgue / Turn from an old pallet into a bookcase for example / Old-timey listen / Hawaiian fish also called a wahoo / Convict in old slang

Constructor: Michael Schlossberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Abridged Too Far"— theme answers are literary works that contain circled squares; those squares contain names of other literary works (with, obviously, much shorter titles, hence "abridged"); theme clues can be applied to *either* work, and the whole theme is summed up by the phrase TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT (121A: "In a nutshell" ... or an alternative title for this puzzle?):

Theme answers:

• "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM" ("MEDEA") (23A: "Play about love and heartbreak in ancient Greece [1605, 431 B.C.]")
• "THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS" ("HEIDI") (37A: "Timeless children's classic about country dwellers' friendships [1908, 1881]")
• "CRIME AND PUNISHMENT" ("DUNE") (64A: "Magnum opus about a young man, family and the concept of free will [1866, 1965]")
• "THE CATCHER IN THE RYE" ("HATCHET") ("Hatchet"???????????) (76A: "Coming-of-age novel about a teenage boy and his isolation [1951, 1986]")
• "FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS" ("OTHELLO") (102A: "Tale about soldiers and treachery in southern Europe [1940, 1603]")

Word of the Day: RON MIX (104D: A.F.L. All-Time Team member with a law degree) —

Ronald Jack Mix (born March 10, 1938) is an American former professional football player who was an offensive tackle. He is a member of the American Football League (AFL) All-Time Team, and was inducted into the  Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.

Mix attended the University of Southern California, where he was an All American. Upon graduation, he played right tackle and guard for the AFL's Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers (1960–69) and the National Football League (NFL) Oakland Raiders (1971). An eight-time AFL All-Star (1961–68) and a nine-time All-AFL (1960–68) selection, he is also a member of the Los Angeles Chargers Hall of Fame. [...] 

Mix went to the University of San Diego Law School in the off-season and earned a Juris Doctor degree in 1971. He was nicknamed "The Intellectual Assassin" for his combination of intellectual excellence with his style of physical play. (wikipedia)

[Me at work ... Olive ... doing something ...]

[They're coming ...]

This one felt forced. Very forced. Forced by its very nature (i.e. you gotta make one clue for two often exceedingly different works). Further, "Abridged Too Far" doesn't really get at what's going on here. I get the pun (on the book / movie "A Bridge Too Far"), but ... and I get the basic idea of "abridgment," in that one title is a shorter title made from the letters of the longer title ... OK ... but is "Too Far" supposed to convey that the works are not actually alike? Is it undermining the very idea of "abridgment"? Is it a joke? It ... feels like you just wanted the pun on "A Bridge Too Far" and decided "sure, that works, I guess" ... so again we're back to my initial feeling about the theme as a whole: "forced." This is one of those Sunday puzzles that's got a title as well as a revealer, and they seem to be working at cross-purposes. The revealer feels much more apt, largely because it doesn't have the dumb / confusing "Too Far" part on it, so it doesn't seem to be winking at or otherwise offering ironic commentary on the very idea of the theme. There's definitely a certain amount of creativity on display here—finding the works inside of works and then finding ways to clue them both that are at least vaguely plausible. But every time I got an answer, I just kinda squinted and thought "uh ... sure ... I guess." I just had to trust that the clues were accurate some of the time, as I don't really know the plots of "THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS" or "HEIDI" or even "DUNE" that well. But at least those are genuinely classic, exceedingly famous pieces of writing ... which brings me to the most forced thing in this forced puzzle, and that is ... "HATCHET." What on god's green earth is that? The distance between the fame of Every Other Work Of Literature in this theme and "HATCHET" is ... I can't see that far. It's a gulf. An abyss. An unfathomable void. "HATCHET?" This 53yo professor of literature who was very much alive (and very much a "teenage boy") in 1986 has zero idea. Nil. None. My not knowing a work is unremarkable in and of itself. But you can't have a themer be ttttthhhhiiiisssssssss much of an outlier, fame-wise. It's way too jarring. Every work involved in a theme like this should have at least an "oh yeah I've heard of that" level of fame (esp. if literally all the other themers have that level of fame and then some). Truly ... head-shakingly weird choice for an "abridgment." 

Speaking of jarring ... TREPID (56A: Timid). I literally said out loud "oh no, no no no, it can't be TREPID, can it?" And it was. Some words should be hurled into the sea, and that is one of them. "Intrepid" = wordful. "TREPID" = immoral, unlawful, bottom-of-the-sea-worthy. The other word that had me wondering "what?" was WHEATEN (112A: Yellow-brown shade). I know an actor named Wil Wheaton, with an "O." And a Wheaton College. But that is the extent of my "Wheaton" familiarity. WHEATEN ... if you say so. WHEATEN is that no-good kid that OATEN is always hanging out with. WHEATEN makes me feel warmly protective of OATEN (a word I never see anywhere but crosswords). But I have every faith that WHEATEN is the color that the puzzle says it is. A NUTSY-sounding color, but a color nonetheless. I'm also just gonna trust the puzzle that BITROT is a thing (82A: Phenomenon also known as data decay).