Heroine Prior of the Divergent series / WED 6-15-22 / Epitome of slowness / Start of a punny quip with two correct answers / Where shampoo was invented / Come under fire literally or figuratively / Fictional character who dreams about Heffalumps

Constructor: Rob Baker

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: a quip puzzle with an either/or square at the end... — the quip is "NOMATTER HOW MUCH / YOU / PUSH THE ENVELOPE / IT'S / STILL STATION(A/E)RY" (17A: Start of a punny quip with two correct answers) 

Word of the Day: LOU Rawls (11D: Singer Rawls) —

Louis Allen Rawls (December 1, 1933 – January 6, 2006) was an American record producer, singer, composer and actor. Rawls released more than 60 albums, sold more than 40 million records, and had numerous charting singles, most notably his song "You'll Never Find Another Love like Mine". He worked as a film, television, and voice actor. He was also a three-time Grammy-winner, all for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. (wikipedia)

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You can probably guess that this puzzle was not in any way shape or form for me. You couldn't invent a less for-me puzzle if you tried (please don't try). The one thing I will give this puzzle, from an originality point of view, is that it is a slight step up from your usual quip puzzle, at a structural / conceptual level, because of the ambiguous single square, which turns the the pun into a puzzle element instead of just leaving it sitting there sadly. Pun becomes Schrödinger square! I have to acknowledge that that is an original thing. I do not have to admit that I enjoyed that thing. Let me rephrase that. I could've enjoyed this pun, the way I "enjoy" any pun the puzzle throws at me. Maybe it's a groaner, maybe it's cute. The point is, it's a single pun, and, well, if the pun is part of the theme, then there will be other puns to move on to. But here, the entire (eeeeennnnntttttiiiiirrrrreeeee) puzzle rests on this one pun, which is to say a single square. Everything exists and is in the service of that one square. Which is to say, in this case, nearly all solving pleasure is sacrificed for that one square. Plus (worse), the puzzle ends up playing not only less pleasurable but tougher precisely because there are no theme answers. The quip parts don't have any punch. They are just doled out symmetrically to lead you to the end. And they are (or were, for me) much harder to pick up than theme answers because they don't have any answer integrity; that is, their clues are just [Here's more quip], which is to say they're essentially clueless, and they don't stand alone as phrases, so you have to work crosses like made just to make any grammatical sense of them. And then the crosses themselves of course aren't terribly lovely, for lots of reasons, not least of which is the fact that they are restricted and compromised by the damn quip. When I saw those largish 6x6-ish sections on the sides (E and W), I knew things were gonna get dicey in there. Short Downs up top and below, you can blow through those, but that middle part was way slower going. Anyway, it was a slog, for sure, and then I get to the big payoff, which I don't mind, actually. It's a cute little joke. But it doesn't feel like it should be asked to hold up An Entire Puzzle. The trip does not seem worth the destination. If the trip had been a lot more scenic, maybe. But that wasn't the case.

Just as it was predictable that I wasn't gonna love this one, it feels very predictable (to me) where the trouble spots were. First, COOLTO (25A: Aloof with), which, in addition to being one of the worst pieces of fill in the grid (imagine variants and you'll see how absurd COOLTO is ... KINDTO CRUELTO RUDETO GENEROUSTO ad inf.) was also deeply ambiguous. Which is to say I wrote in COLDTO. Not sure if that's the road less traveled there, but it Definitely made a difference. The "L" from COLD to immediately because LSATS in the cross (26D: Some exams). LIT OUT became absolutely impossible to see, and thus FERRIED remained mysterious as well (34A: Traveled to an island, say). I actually turned FANNIE Mae into SALLIE Mae at some point just to see if I could jolt that whole area into some kind of order (34D: ___ Mae (mortgage company)). Eventually, it all got settled, but ... lots of slog for no payoff (though LITOUT, in general, is a great 6-letter answer). Other predictable slowness: TRIS (47D: Heroine Prior of the "Divergent" series). "Divergent" already feels like part of a "teen trilogy" juggernaut / nightmare that washed over the world in the '00s and now is probably not behind us but feels behind me because my daughter finally grew out of that stuff. Anyway, actually knowing the names of characters involved in said trilogies? Unlikely. Also, in this case things were more difficult than they should've been because I kept reading "Prior" as a word, not a name ("'Heroine prior to the "Divergent" series?' What?"). But it's one answer, so I'm not mad at all. Just (predictably) shrugging. This clue made me miss TRIS Speaker clues, which used to roam the grid in large herds during the early Miocene era of crosswords (look him up! Hall-of-Fame, baby). 

Last predictable screw-up came at 41D: Come under fire, literally or figuratively (TAKE FLAK). Well, I thought they meant *literally* literally, so after TAKE, I threw down HEAT. If you put something literally "under fire" (so, broil it, I guess), then that thing ... takes heat. I mean, literally, it does. Sigh. TAKE ___ really got me, esp. alongside TRIS. Nothing else really caused trouble. It was just slow-going with very little joy along the way. This puzzle was a long walk ... through a place with no trees and lots of traffic ... culminating at a bench that's near a big tree that kind of looks like a yeti but also kind of like Abraham Lincoln. I mean, the tree is pretty cool to look at, I guess, but no way I'm taking that walk again.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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