Happy winter! Covid cases are rising around the world, and we have a new strain in Europe. But as long as we have the crossword, being boxed in isn’t so out of the ordinary.

I pulled out 4D Where spiders get their information?: THEWEB because I got a chuckle out of it. It’s not just the image of spiders sitting at the computer looking things up, though anthropomorphism is evergreen comedy. But it’s also that spiders learn a lot through their webs. Spiders know when flies hit their webs and where the flies hit their webs because each piece has a different tone, according to National Geographic.

Today’s theme was nonsense.

1A Prattle: BLATHER.
19A Prattle: MUMBOJUMBO. This was the last one of the theme clues I solved. I was trying to catch up on time, so I had initially put GUMBOGUMBO, but that clearly wasn’t right.
25A Worthless talk: JIBBERJABBER. Back when I had AIM, I got an animated icon of Mr. T that had him say, “Got no time for jibba jabba.” Pretty cool.
48A Unintelligible jargon: GOBBLEDYGOOK.
57A Twaddle: BALDERDASH.
71A “Huh?” … or a possible response to 1-, 19-, 25-, 48- and 57-Across: SAYWHAT.

Finished this one in 8:47.