Southernmost team in the NBA / SAT 11-2-2019 / 2008 Lil Wayne hit whose title is slang for lots of money / One-point throw in horseshoes / Mourner in the Book of Ruth / Longtime CBS drama spinoff / Org. that operates the Large Hadron Collider

Constructor: Paolo Pasco + Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: easy-ish (3:53)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SEMORDNILAP (Reversible word) —

definition: A word, phrase, or sentence that has the property of forming another word, phrase, or sentence when its letters are reversed. A semordnilap differs from a palindrome in that the word or phrase resulting from the reversal is different from the original word or phrase. 

etymology: A reverse spelling of palindromes. "Semordnilap", according to author O.V. Michaelsen, was probably first used by recreational linguist Dmitri Borgmann, cited by Martin Gardner in the revised edition of C. C. Bombaugh's Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature (1961). The underlying concept (but not the term) is found at least as far back as Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno (1889). [wiktionary]

• • •

Once again, it's me, indie constructor Christopher Adams filling in for Rex. Always happy to do so, and I seem to have good luck with blogging puzzles that are NOT TOO BAD at worst. And this one, by two of my constructing idols, definitely falls into that camp. Perhaps not the flashiest of puzzles, but it has most of what I want out of puzzles. First and foremost, that grid is clean. I'm a huge believer in the idea that a puzzle is only as good as the worst entries, and there's almost nothing that made me scowl while solving. Maybe QUIK or IN LEAGUE, which looks weird in the grid without "with", but I'm really grasping at straws here.

Oftentimes, with solidly-filled grids, it can be hard to work in a lot of good answers, since a good chunk of the effort is spent on establishing the floor, not raising the ceiling. But there's some solid work here: I WILL NOT and COME AT ME stacked in the NE, NOT TOO BAD and DREAM DATE in the SE, and MIAMI HEAT, SEMORDNILAP, and FRACTAL (I'm biased here) elsewhere. More flash comes from the clues, especially [Commanding lead?] for ACTOR DIRECTOR and [Cooler filled with juice?] for ELECTRIC FAN. In both cases, the ? gives some of the game away, but it was still fun figuring out those clues even knowing that those words were all being used in a second context different from the natural surface reading.

"A woman is alive / You do not take her for a sign in NACRE (52A: Shell material) on a stone"

Anyway, as noted above, I had a reasonably quick solve; I had the luck of knowing A MILLI (1A: 2008 Lil Wayne hit whose title is slang for lots of money) immediately, but even if I didn't, the downs weren't terribly tricky, and AT BIRTH / MIAMI HEAT / LAN / IRAQ (well, 3/4 of that; see later) would have been gimmes even without the first letter in position. (For that matter, TIN EAR and BANANA would also have gimmes if I'd bothered to look at those first; I usually hit the top row first to try to get starting letters and then go through all the downs off that, especially when solving on paper.) After knocking out that corner, SEMORDNILAP was a nice jump into the middle, and very little from there offered any resistance. Finished around where ELECTRIC FAN connects the NE to the middle; I had MEAN for NORM and both SHARE (confusing retweets and shares) and CHIRP before CHEEP, and figured both were wrong and left that to the end to untangle. And, coming back to that area with a fresh mind after finishing the rest helped; the errors quickly corrected themselves, and that was that.

Olio:

• (Woman's name that's an anagram of two men's names) EDNA — Can we stop with these types of clues? For starters, they're not helpful at all until you have most / all of the letters in; i.e. not helpful, period. They're also just pretty lazy, imo. And for some reason you almost always only see these clues for women's names, as if there's no other way to clue these names. Knowing Paolo and Erik, I'm sure they had an awesome clue highlighting an Edna that, if you don't know, you should (and you'd be glad to learn about them). But still disappointing to see this clue on their puzzle; one of the few things I didn't like.
• (Despot with a nuclear arsenal) KIM — Can we also stop with this? Like, there's plenty of ways to clue this without invoking existential despair and the weariness of world politics. If I wanted to be reminded of that, I'd look at any other page of the Times (not that I read the dead tree version, but I digress). Again, tentatively putting this on the editors; knowing the constructors (and especially Erik and his work w/ the crossword collaboration Facebook group), I'd wager the submitted clue involved a woman, a person of color, or both (Chloe Kim, anyone?).
• (Cardiologist's favorite vegetable?) BEET — Not going to say that we need to stop with this (it's not as bad as those awful "apt name for a (profession)" clues), but I wouldn't be disappointed if I never saw another of these clues again. Also, slight demerits for this crossing BEAT POET, if only because this clue is punning off of BEAT and it's an implicit dupe.
• (Modern-day home of where the biblical Abraham was born) IRAQ — I'd count myself as a speed-solver, but Paolo and Erik are both much better than me, imo. Still, this clue was one where I didn't take as much time as most people. I didn't read the entire clue until writing this—while solving, I only saw "modern" and "biblical" and dropped in IRA?, then looked at the cross on the last letter. To be sure, there's occasional pitfalls to not reading the entire clue—and I've definitely had that happen before—but when it works, it's a real time-saver.
• (Jack Nicholson's classic line "You can't handle the truth", for one) AD LIB — didn't know this, but easy to figure out with a few crosses, and something fun to learn. This is the sort of interesting clue I like to see in puzzles, and that more constructors / outlets should use.
• (2008 Lil Wayne hit whose title is slang for lots of money) A MILLI — nothing to say about this song, I just wanna stay on the soapbox a little longer and say that not only is this entry perfectly fair for crosswords, but that there ought to be more fresh, modern stuff like this. Too often it feels like crosswords embrace older stuff, which can be off-putting to younger solvers; it's certainly better when everybody can see themselves reflected in the puzzles, and if us younger folk can embrace the opportunity to learn about Nita Naldi or Anouk Aimee or whoever, then older folk can certainly do the same with Lil Wayne and such.

Yours in puzzling, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

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