Salamander named after an Aztec deity / SUN 2-4-24 / Qualifier for a date / North American fish with toxic roe / It's signed after a break / Shot in the arm, slangily / Anatomical stabilizer / One role in a classic interrogation trope

Constructor: Daniel Grinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (12ish minutes (I printed out a new puzzle for my wife before I wrote down the exact time, but it was about two minutes over my average)) 

THEME:"Punch Lines" — ugh, I don't even know what you call this. Clues are all [___ line?] and then the answer is a "line" one might say that is vaguely related to the word in the blank space:

Theme answers:

• "GUILTY AS CHARGED" (23A: Fault line?) (said by one who is at fault)
• "CAN'T COMPLAIN" (31A: Fine line?) (said by one who is fine)
• "TELL ME I'M PRETTY" (47A: Fishing line?) (said by someone fishing for a compliment)
• "SIX-INCH OR FOOTLONG?" (63A: Subway line?) (said by an employee at a Subway sandwich shop) (!?)
• "PLEASE BE SEATED" (81A: Assembly line?) (said by the principal, perhaps, at a school assembly, I assume)
• "YOU'RE THE BOSS" (98A: Power line?) (said to one in a position of power)
• "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN" (110A: Subject line?) (said of the Queen by her subject)
• "SIR, YES, SIR!" (15D: Private line?) (said by a private in the Army)
• "MAKE A WISH" (75D: Party line?) (said at a birthday party)

Word of the Day: FEIST (3D: One-named indie singer with the 2007 hit "1234") —

Leslie Feist (born February 13, 1976), known mononymously as Feist, is a Canadian indie pop singer-songwriter and guitarist, performing both as a solo artist and as a member of the indie rock group Broken Social Scene.

Feist launched her solo music career in 1999 with the release of Monarch. Her subsequent studio albums, Let It Die, released in 2004, and The Reminder, released in 2007, were critically acclaimed and commercially successful, selling over 2.5 million copies. The Reminder earned Feist four Grammy nominations, including a nomination for Best New Artist. She has received 11 Juno Awards, including two Artist of the Year. Her fourth studio album, Metals, was released in 2011. In 2012, Feist collaborated on a split EP with metal group Mastodon, releasing an interactive music video in the process.

She has released six studio albums as of 2023, Feist received three Juno awards at the 2012 ceremony: Artist of the Year, Adult Alternative Album of the Year for Metals, and Music DVD of the Year for her documentary Look at What the Light Did Now., additionally she was nominated for four Grammy Awards including Best Pop Vocal Album for The Reminder and Best New Artist. (wikipedia)

Well, I *can* complain, but this puzzle has made me so weary and depressed that I don't think I have the energy to do so at length. The theme is weak ... but also so convoluted, with such arbitrary, random-seeming answers, that it played slow. So the experience was ... slow and painful, just like the best dentist appointments. Again, the idea seems to be that quantity will make up for quality. Is your theme kinda meh? Well, just add an extra heaping of themers, that should ... solve ... it. The whole "line" thing doesn't quite work. Is the line said by you ("TELL ME I'M PRETTY") or by me, about you ("YOU'RE THE BOSS")? I guess it's just ... any line, which anyone, in any context, might say? Is the question "SIX-INCH OR FOOTLONG?" really so iconic, so deeply established in sandwich lore, that it can stand alone, as the Central Answer in a Sunday puzzle? Is it even a standard "line" at Subway? (I don't know if I've been in one in the past two decades, ever since my then-young daughter convinced me that they "smell weird.") Over and over again, I could not get from the theme clues to the various "lines," even with lots of letters in place, so completely made up did they seem—or so tenuous did the answers' connection seem to the clue. There's something so ugly and pathetic about "TELL ME I'M PRETTY ([Fishing line?]).  And I had "YOU'RE THE BEST!" instead of "YOU'RE THE BOSS" for way too long ([Power line?]). Why? Because why not? Do you know how far it is from "Assembly" to "PLEASE BE SEATED"!?!?!? I think of "Assembly" as something kids have in grammar school. But "PLEASE BE SEATED"? That seems too formal. We would all file in and already be seated before anything began. Oof. The worst part of the puzzle for me was encountering a Textbook Example of why I hate the repeated clue gimmick. [49D: Volunteer's declaration] = "I CAN"—yes, that makes sense. That answer does, in fact, go with that clue. But "ON IT"? "ON IT"???? There is nothing necessarily "volunteer"-ish at all about "ON IT" (29D: Volunteer's declaration). If you say "ON IT," you are declaring that you are taking care of something, but perhaps That Is Your Damn Job, not something you're "volunteering" to do. Also, you aren't volunteering if you say "ON IT." You are just ... declaring that you are doing it. "I CAN" is a volunteer's statement. "ON IT"? Bah, throw your repeated clue gimmick in the ocean. Please. Getting that second answer to "work" for the same clue usually involves some kind of torture.