Constructor: Ada Nicolle
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: SEMORDNILAPS (21D: Words that form other words when read backward) —
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I loved this puzzle, best puzzle I've done all week, except for two answers that ... well, I question their general familiarity. Really really question. They were fun to piece together, but seemed ... yeah, extremely off the beaten path. The first is the Word of the Day, SEMORDNILAPS, which, well, whoever coined that must really hate intelligibility because you cannot say it without sounding like you're trying to imitate some space alien language. Seems rather typical for a word nerd to prize cleverness ("it's PALINDROME backward, get it!") over functionality. It's actually an interesting phenomenon that should have a name, but this one is terrible. The only good thing about this name is that it helped me solve this crossword puzzle; that is, after a while, I realized that the gibberish I was looking at was going to be PALINDROME spelled backward (+ S). So I guess that counts as an "aha" moment, which is cool, but it was followed immediately by an "oh come on" moment. This is just another example of how, crossword / Wordle / Quordle obsession, I am actually an outsider in the world of Puzzle & Game People (the ones who Gotta Love 'Em All). The word "SEMORDNILAP(S)" was coined by a "recreational linguist" (!?) and only appeared in print for the first time in 1961 (and probably hasn't appeared much since). So ... I liked the "aha" moment and I liked learning a new *concept* but man I hate this word and also it is 100% obscure, if ever a word was obscure.
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: SEMORDNILAPS (21D: Words that form other words when read backward) —
This is a close relative of the palindrome, a string of letters that reads the same backwards as forwards (“Madam, I’m Adam”; “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!”; “Was it a car or a cat I saw?”).
In a semordnilap the text is likewise reversed but it must turn into something different. For example, if you reverse “diaper” you get “repaid”, and if you invert “desserts” the word “stressed” appears. A more complicated example is “deliver no evil”, but you can probably invent better ones for yourself.
As semordnilap is palindromes written backwards, it’s a self-referential word, one that encapsulates within itself the thing it represents. You could hardly say that it’s common, but many earnest palindromists have accidentally discovered it, and it has some small circulation among word wizards and elsewhere.
Derrida particularly favors the figure of a “headstrong dog,” possibly because dog, a semordnilap for god, helps him to configure an immanent versus transcendent ontology.—Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times, by Nicole Shukin, 2009. (World Wide Words) (my emph.)
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Also, to my mind, obscure, is the Romeo & Juliet quote (37A: Response to thumb-biting in "Romeo and Juliet" => "DO YOU QUARREL, SIR?"). Is this ... a famous quote? I could piece it together fairly easily, but ... is this just before Tybalt kills Mercutio (after Romeo steps in to try to stop the fight)? [looks it up] ... oof, no, it's from Act I scene i and is said by some minor character named Gregory (?!??!). I never teach this play, so the specifics are gone from my brain. Gregory? Gregory? Who is Gregory? How did this question become famous? Was there some pop culture moment that I missed, something that brought the quote to the forefront of general knowledge? Looks like "Gregory" is one of the Capulet servants and "has a tendency toward wordplay"—I wonder if he enjoys SEMORDNILAPS (or whatever they were calling them back then?). If I search "DO YOU QUARREL, SIR?" all the hits I get are just Shakespeare sites telling me it's from I.i of R&J. I can quote R&J a bunch, but this is not among the quotes I can quote. Luckily, this puzzle was so easy overall that neither of these (to me) obscurities created real trouble. And I learned a (terrible) word. And the Shakespeare quote is colorful and energetic, if nothing else, which brings me back to my initial point, which is that I loved this puzzle. More on that ... now.
I had NOEL for 1A: Merry air, but that got me nothing, so I wiped it and used LAGS and I'M IN to get LILT, and I was off like a shot. The Friday whoosh-whoosh feeling was in full effect for much of the solving experience. BIG IF TRUE! That was when I knew I was in. "I'M IN!" The fantastic juxtaposition of GET RICH QUICK and ATROCIOUS sent my hurtling down in the center, where HOT DOG BUN awaited me. STATS SANS STEP ended up being a staircase to the SE, which allowed DREAM TEAM to drop down and helped me pick up KETTLE DRUM and CHEAP DATE (great answers both). After working out the reverse palindrome thingie (can't bring myself to type that dumb word again), I just had those small corners in the NE and SW, and I was a little worried that they would somehow be my undoing (small corners on Saturdays can sneak up and kill you). But no. DRONE MUSIC before NOISE MUSIC (11D: Experimental nonmelodic genre), but OSLO took care of that. UNMOVABLE before IMMOVABLE ... shrug, not very interesting a mistake, but it happened. SW corner was easier. "MAY I COME IN?" (great answer) was too easy, and I had so much in place so quickly down there that ROSA PARKS went in without my even having to look at the clue. Wrote in the "B" in BIERS as my last letter and didn't get the "Congratulations!" messages, so panicked. After scanning the grid, I discovered an obvious typo (meant to type in METE and entered MENE (?) instead—I wish all mistakes were as easy to find as MENE crossing ISNN).
I knew MAUI because my wife is from NZ and "Polynesian mythology" is kinda in-the-general-culture down there (7D: Trickster in Polynesian mythology). I bought my daughter a picture book about the trickster MAUI when she was little. I didn't know a bunch of the other names in the grid today (NINA, EDDIE) but they were easy to get from crosses. No real trouble spots beyond the two big ones I've already covered. Overall, I just adored this one, and only wrote about the stuff I didn't like because my ignorance is more interesting (to me) than my prowess, and also I don't actually *hate* hate those two answers. They *do* involve two things I generally like (Shakespeare and wordplay). I just can't remember the last time I saw either a Shakespeare or a wordplay answer that was as ??? as those were. But if you're gonna expose me to obscurities, this is how you do it—make them at least colorful, and put them in a grid that is, in all other respects, a blast.