Foreign exchange fee / SUN 2-2-25 / Jeans popular in the 1980s / Sony co-founder Morita / Indigenous people's name for Mount Rainier / Your business start-up? / Fictional composer whose first three initials mean "A.S.A.P." / Seasoning brand that dropped the first part of its name in 2020 / Cartoon character inspired by W.C. Fields / Grim Grimm figure

1. 

a. 

the difference between the nominal and actual values of a currency

b. 

the charge payable for conversion of the less valuable currency

2. 

a percentage payable for the exchange of one currency into another

3. 

an allowance granted to compensate for differences in currency values, as on foreign bills of exchange

4.  an informal word for agiotage (collinsdictionary.com)

 

[28D: Seasoning brand that dropped the first part of its name in 2020]

"Make it stop." That was what I was thinking for much of the back half of this. I'd had enough. The sheer volume of these awkward / fussy two-letter squares, which have nothing linking them besides their two-letterness, was just exhausting. It is, to a certain extent, impressive that all the slash clues a. are familiar (or familiarish) phrases, and b. work for two different answers that are just a single letter apart. That does, admittedly, make the theme tighter and therefore more impressive than it would be otherwise. But solving this thing was an exercise in diminishing returns. The initial "oh! OK..." soon gave way to "oh ... there are a lot of these," which gave way to "oh ... is this it?" to "omg how many of these are there when will it end?!" Constructors often try to make up for weak (or one-dimensional) themes with volume, Volume, VOLUME, and that was definitely the case today. And the problem is that with this many 2fer squares ... not all of them work all that well. I mean, are the double-answers phrases supposed to make some kind of wacky sense when taken together. A SLIM SWIM, what is that? A QUICK BUICK is at least something I can imagine, but a PATH PATE is not. DUTCH DITCH really really doesn't work, as [Holland] is a noun and DUTCH is an adjective, and before you go saying "but Holland is functioning adjectivally," please keep in mind that the Holland Tunnel is not, in fact, a DUTCH DITCH, as it's located in New York City. Also, as I say, it's not At All clear that the two answers to the italicized theme clues are supposed to be taken as a single phrase. We have to endure a ridiculously enormous Roman numeral in order for this theme to "work." We have to endure the duplication of TOAST in order for this theme to "work." It's a stunt puzzle that gives no consideration to what it would actually feel like to solve it. You gotta ask yourself, would this be any fun to solve? For me, the answer, by about midway, was a pretty strong "no."

[Like GITANOS, AGIO was "popular in the 1980s"]

That's AGIO frequency over time. The blue is where Shortz took over. That little blip way way over on the right? That's us. If you're seeing AGIO eight (!) times a year, as they apparently were in the '80s, then AGIO probably quickly becomes second-nature, but in the year of our lord 2025, heaven help you. Help me. Actually, I at least had the experience of a few of those other blue blips, but as you can see it's been well over a decade. Eliminating crosswordese—great. Bringing it back after a loooong hiatus, when no one really knows it anymore—brutal. AKIO, on the other hand, has appeared solely under Shortz (the earlier administrations were far less tolerant of proper nouns), but even then, it's been about eight years (seven appearances total) (110D: Sony co-founder Morita). Putting AGIO and AKIO in the same grid after something like a combined 25-year absence ... is not a choice I'd make if I had the choice to make. Hey, have you heard this joke? AKIO and AGIO walk IN A BAR ... see, even *that* context doesn't work for IN A BAR. It's "INto A BAR." Bah.