[QUOTE=mister_e]soldered in the wrong way is my best bet OR simply you revert Vcc and GND on your PCB layout. There's no chance that VBat short to GND is the explosion cause.

Those were the first two things I checked. I must have a bum IC. I pulled it from another circuit board (which was never given power), so maybe there was too much soldering going on. Thanks for the bit about SQW!

I'll post the results of a second attempt in the next few.