Totally made-up corny poems, please keep them to yourself, especially if you want to also do a final trick but have no ability to stick the landing. This puzzle made me yearn for a "quip" theme or a word ladder or any of the AGEOLD themes that I normally don't care for but would have been glad to see today because at least they work. It's either three letters too long, or not too long at all (fits neatly in a square, inside the 15x15 grid structure). As I say in the theme description, nothing about that rebus square adequately represents the poem's being one syllable too long. The fact that the "LONG" bit at the end, with its attempt at bonus humor that totally misses the target, just put a miserable exclamation point on the whole thing. This took me way way longer than my average Saturday. And then SHYER for COYER really made the SW a struggle.
Found every single answer in the NW hard to get (except KURTZ and STS and UTZ). Had me doubting even KURTZ, which is not a great place for an English professor to be ( 23A: "Heart of Darkness" character who cries "The horror! The Horror!"). Here's Old Faithful's official web page, see how long it takes you to find the word "erupt". I also had ERUPTS before SPOUTS because of course I did, it's the better answer ( 20A: What Yellowstone's Old Faithful does about 17 times a day). There is simply no pleasure to be had in working that section out because your "aha" involves RHYE and RAE, meaningless pieces of trivia. But ICE, wow, that one was stuck there, and really made seeing HAIKU impossible. Actually that last one just ended up making the SW harder-didn't really have an effect on the RHYE / RAE section. I would've been somewhat quicker getting through this section if I could've remembered SERRANO sooner ( 31A: Pepper between jalapeño and cayenne on the Scoville heat scale), but the real added difficulty whammy came from *two* wrong answers that seemed to fit their clues perfectly: ICE for 28D: Finalize, as a deal ( INK) and (worse) SHYER for 38A: Less forward ( COYER).
I resent this kind of self-indulgent, no-concern-for-solving-pleasure, make-your-theme-work-at-all-costs construction. The very worst fill at the most important point in the puzzle-again, winning. The single worst part of this was where the totally unfathomable "word" from a non-famous Queen song title was sitting right next to a "high-earning Tik-Tok personality" (there's not one word of that phrase that isn't glistening with inanity), and then both of those ran straight through The Crucial Word in the damn "poem" (i.e. In a puzzle where I'm already struggling to put together your made-up poem, taking a trivia test just added to the pain. Further, this grid is gruesomely trivia-ridden. Difficult and completely unentertaining-there's a winning combination. There is nothing charming or amusing about any of this. This puzzle likes "jokes" that you get out of "1001 Jokes" book. This is the puzzle that wants to do a magic trick for you at parties. it's not funny and it doesn't quite work). Super hard, for various reasons, and then with the worst kind of corny humor (i.e. She is a member of the Democratic Party and served in the United States House of Representatives from 2001 to 2009, representing the 31st and 32nd congressional districts of California that include East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Solis previously served as the 25th United States Secretary of Labor from 2009 to 2013, as part of the administration of President Barack Obama. Hilda Lucia Solis ( / s oʊ ˈ l iː s/ born October 20, 1957) is an American politician and a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 1st district.
Word of the Day: HILDA Solis, Obama-era secretary of labor ( 27A). I get that it's "too long" in haiku terms, but what this "LONG" gag is doing at the end, I have no idea where "LONG" appears in its own square, making it, on the one hand, three letters (*not* one syllable) too long, and, on the other hand, not too long at all (i.e. THEME: it's a "poem" - " IT WOULD BE A SHAME / IF MY / HAIKU WERE / TO BE / ONE SYLLABLE TOO ".