Pepper between jalapeño and cayenne on the Scoville heat scale / THU 4-29-21 / Addison high-earning Tik-Tok personality / A group of them is called un archipel

Constructor: Adam Wagner

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: it's a "poem" — "IT WOULD BE A SHAME / IF MY / HAIKU WERE / TO BE / ONE SYLLABLE TOO [LONG]" ... 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. you fit it in the grid) ... I get that it's "too long" in haiku terms, but what this "LONG" gag is doing at the end, I have no idea

Theme answers:

• PRO[LONG]ED (47D: Extended the duration of)

Word of the Day: HILDA Solis, Obama-era secretary of labor (27A) —

Hilda Lucia Solis (/soʊˈliːs/; born October 20, 1957) is an American politician and a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 1st district. Solis previously served as the 25th United States Secretary of Labor from 2009 to 2013, as part of the administration of PresidentBarack Obama. 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. (wikipedia)

Just an awful chore. Super hard, for various reasons, and then with the worst kind of corny humor (i.e. it's not funny and it doesn't quite work). This is the puzzle that wants to do a magic trick for you at parties. This puzzle likes "jokes" that you get out of "1001 Jokes" book. There is nothing charming or amusing about any of this. *And* it was extra-hard. Difficult and completely unentertaining—there's a winning combination. Further, this grid is gruesomely trivia-ridden. Just name after name name. In a puzzle where I'm already struggling to put together your made-up poem, taking a trivia test just added to the pain. 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. HAIKU). The very worst fill at the most important point in the puzzle—again, winning. I resent this kind of self-indulgent, no-concern-for-solving-pleasure, make-your-theme-work-at-all-costs construction. 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). Actually that last one just ended up making the SW harder—didn't really have an effect on the RHYE / RAE section. But ICE, wow, that one was stuck there, and really made seeing HAIKU impossible. Had ADIEU in HAIKU's place for a bit. Later considered AEIOU (!?). Just no idea. There is simply no pleasure to be had in working that section out because your "aha" involves RHYE and RAE, meaningless pieces of trivia. A huge HAIRBALL, that part of the grid.