Leaf-wrapped Turkish wrap / 7-30-23 / Bit of Old Norse / Publicly makes fun of, slangily, with "on" / Social movement that Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed "the most American thing in America" / Sliced into thin strips as carrots / Verb for a biblical cup / Leaf-wrapped Mexican dish / Choctaw word for "people," as seen in a U.S. state name / Periwinkle by another name

Constructor: John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Doing Front Flips"— spoonerisms of a sort, where the "fronts" of two words in a familiar phrase are "flipped," creating wackiness:

Theme answers:

• MISTER BUNNY MAGS (23A: "Hugh Hefner was quite the media mogul. They called him ...")
• WEARABLE THING TO TASTE (38A: "I know they've had them on all day, but let the kids eat their candy. After all, a Ring Pop is a ...")
• GEEKS BEARING GRIFTS (56A: "Do you really trust these Bitcoiners? Beware ...")
• WHEN IT PAINS IT ROARS (78A: "That poor lion has a mighty toothache. Boy, ...")
• THREE MARE SQUEALS A DAY (94A: "Enjoy your stay on our horse farm. Hope it's not too noisy. You can expect ...")
• THRONE'S STOWAWAY (114A: "Can you believe I sneaked into Buckingham Palace in a trunk and saw the king? I was a ...")

Word of the Day: CHAUTAUQUA (19A: Social movement that Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed "the most American thing in America") —

Chautauqua (/ʃəˈtɔːkwə/ shə-TAW-kwə) is an adult education and social movement in the United States that peaked in popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt said that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America". [...] Lectures were the mainstay of the Chautauqua. Until 1917, they dominated the circuit Chautauqua programs. The reform speech and the inspirational talk were the two main types of lecture until 1913. Later topics included current events, travel, and stories, often with a comedic twist. [...]

The most prolific speaker (often booked in the same venues with three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan) was Russell Conwell, who delivered his famous "Acres of Diamonds" speech 5,000 times to audiences on the Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits, which had this theme:

Get rich, young man, for money is power and power ought to be in the hands of good people. I say you have no right to be poor.  

Grimaced at the first "front flip" and that was pretty much that. One of those days when the gimmick is just gonna be cornball spoonerisms and you just have to endure. Long day's journey into blight. The one upside was that despite being long (i.e despite the grid's being your typical big 21x Sunday), the journey was not, in fact, long. Ridiculously easy puzzle from start to finish. Maybe that's your reward for dealing with this conceptually flat theme. It's just spoonerisms. That's it. And to make them ... work? ... apparently full paragraph-length clues are required. Tortured premises that require pages and pages (seemingly) to set up, and all for very little payoff. Dadjoke and subdadjoke payoff. I will say that the clue on GEEKS BEARING GRIFTS almost redeemed this puzzle in my eyes. That is a zinger, an all-timer, a truth-telling theme answer if ever there was one. Bravo there. The rest, er, I'd rather not relive it. There was too much animal suffering (squealing mares? pained lions? what the hell?) and too much ... too much. Trying too hard. So very hard. For so very little. But again, love the epic dunk on Bitcoin. Here for it, for sure.