The Monthly Digest

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Observer barred puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Gemelo 9 Plain

Solver difficulty rating

2.6 based on 48 votes (voting is now closed)

My thanks to everyone who voted on last week’s puzzle. The difficulty rating averaged out at a whopping 4.5 – just two solvers classed the puzzle as a 3, with the remainder being 4’s and 5’s (the latter being in a significant majority). You rated it as the most difficult Gemelo puzzle so far, and I concur – it was also harder than any plain Azed that I can remember. I wouldn’t disagree with those who suggested that the level of difficulty was greater than the enjoyment that resulted from solving the clues.

I suspect that today’s puzzle will have come as a relief to those who felt that the difficulty of Gemelo’s offerings might be on an inexorable upward trajectory, with the ‘constraint’ of each word in a clue having the same length as the answer probably helping to keep things in check. It was very clever, but once we had admired the setter’s skill all we were left to do was to solve a plain puzzle containing clues which were inevitably, given the restriction, in general a little pedestrian. I read a comment on a forum recently where a solver bemoaned the recent dearth of ‘specials’, and suggested that the puzzle had ‘morphed into just another Mephisto…with a monthly clue writing competition’ (this was before there wasn’t a competition in September!). The regular appearance of ‘specials’ has over many years helped Ximenes and Azed to stand out from the rest, but it is now over six months since the last one.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 33a, “Pretend comrade spawned animals without measure (another measure) (7)”. The wordplay has a three-letter word for ‘a swarm of young, esp of fishes just spawned’ (ie ‘spawned animals’) containing the names of two two-letter measures used by typesetters, the smaller preceding the larger; the answer is a relatively new addition to Chambers. The point of interest is the containment indicator ‘without’, which as a preposition meaning ‘outside’ is shown by Chambers as being ‘archaic’. Some editors (though not by any means all) take the view that while obsolete and archaic words must be flagged in some way when used as answers they can be used in wordplay without any such indication, but this makes no sense to me; I think that the solver should be able to expect any word or phrase not explicitly flagged in a clue to be part of  the current English language, at least as far as Chambers is concerned. In the current clue, there were plenty of alternatives to ‘without’, such as ‘housing’ or ‘keeping’. I believe there is a lot more scope for discretion when it comes to words with other classifications – I have no problem, for instance, with ‘wee’ (Scot), ‘bust’ (to demote, N Am) or ‘damsel’ (poetic).

Across

7a Year away from tabu hurt (4)
The single-letter abbreviation of the Latin word for ‘year’ is taken away from a word relatively new to Chambers meaning ‘forbidden under Islamic religious law’. Physiotherapists will tell you that ‘hurt’ is not the same as the answer here, but it can be.

12a Achieve “sincere regards” audibly (7)
The answer is made up of a four-letter word meaning ‘sincere’ and a homophone (‘audibly’) for a four-letter word meaning ‘regards’ (verb). The clue in isolation is ambiguous when it comes to the penultimate letter of the answer, but the crosser from 8d eliminates any doubt.

13a Naked belly – hello Islam! (5)
A five-letter informal word for a belly, deprived of its outermost letters (‘naked’), precedes a two-letter interjection which, depending on delivery, can express a wide range of emotions, one of these being surprise (‘hello[!]’). ‘Islam’ has a sense of ‘the followers of [Islam] considered as a group’, which makes it a very sound definition of the answer.

14a Parking boorish, unusual balloon (7)
A charade of the usual abbreviation for ‘parking’ and a word meaning ‘boorish’ leads to a verb shown by Chambers as ‘rare’.

18a Dutch brave about drink (5)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘Dutch’ is followed by the reversal (‘about’) of a verb meaning ‘[to] brave’.

22a Motoring society’s engaging language recalled anti-tank machines (8)
The two-letter abbreviation for a British ‘motoring society’ contains (‘engaging’) the reversal (‘recalled’) of a language of the Malayo-Polynesian family and the two-letter abbreviation for ‘anti-tank’.

26a Brief sense about North Tokyo title? (5)
The sort of sense that is also an adult male voice is shorn of its last letter (‘brief’) and put around (‘about’) the usual abbreviation for ‘North’.

28a Western courage shortly slowing villain (7)
A five-letter word for courage which has lost its last letter (‘shortly’) is reversed (‘western’) ahead of a three-letter abbreviation from the world of classical music for an Italian term meaning ‘with diminishing speed’ (ie ‘slowing’). I’m not keen on ‘western’ as a reversal indicator – Chambers gives a sense of ‘towards the west’, but the OED confirms that this is really ‘lying towards the west’, which certainly carries no suggestion of movement in a westerly direction.

31a Retired setter’s advance payment system’s folding (7)
The aggregation of a two-letter word for “setter’s” (as in ‘setter is’), a single-letter abbreviation for ‘advance’ and the four-letter name of a payment system inextricably linked with social security payments is reversed (‘retired’). The definition is perhaps on the minimalist side, but perfectly fair.

Down

2d Birdie, moggie twitch within Dundee (6)
A three-letter ‘moggie’ of a specific sex and a Scots word for a twitch or a tug combine to produce the answer.

4d Clan were dead, with line lost (4)
The five-letter past tense of a verb with a euphemistic sense of ‘to be dead’ surrenders the usual abbreviation for ‘line’ (‘with line lost’).

5d Greedy people losing weight lastly accept having record health (6)
A six-letter informal word for people with large appetites (and not just for krill) loses the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘weight’ and is followed by the final letter of ‘accept’ (‘lastly accept’). ‘Record’ in the definition is perhaps a bit of a stretch, but any six-letter alternative that I can think of would share its last three letters with the answer.

9d Wind over wing from Ohio (4)
That familiar two-letter bit of commercial jargon meaning ‘concerning’ (ie ‘over’) precedes the US (hence ‘from Ohio’) term for a wing of a building that gives it a particular shape. The ‘wind’ in the definition is a verb.

11d Before midday, bustle united Tinder (6)
A charade of a two-letter abbreviation for ‘before midday’, a three-letter word for ‘bustle’ or ‘fuss’, and the single-letter abbreviation for ‘united’ furnishes an answer which has nothing to do with a dating site and everything to do with kindling – this will not please those (myself included) who do not like to see words being deceptively given an initial capital letter to which they are not entitled in the cryptic reading of the clue.

15d Resident’s furiously delivered invective following Victorian socialist (9)
This is to my mind the neatest clue in the puzzle. A four-letter word for ‘furiously delivered invective’ follows an Australian informal term (‘Victorian’) for a socialist of a relatively extreme kind. 

27d Lagos notes who’ll claim Jesus wasn’t godly, being upset (5)
The word for a follower of Arius (or Areios) of Alexandria, a fourth-century presbyter, is reversed (‘being upset’). Arius was a controversial figure, and the support for his ideas forced Constantine the Great to convene the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), where all but two of the 318 bishops there present concluded that he was wrong, the result being that he and the dissenting pair were banished. His doctrine survived him and led to much strife between East and West; although virtually suppressed in the Roman Empire by Theodosius I and Valentinian II, it persisted in some areas and was revived in England by Samuel Clarke and William Whiston.

29d Fish head from fair cuts mass from mine (4)
The first letter of (‘head from’) ‘fair’ is inserted into (‘cuts’) the sort of naturally occurring mineral aggregate that might be extracted from a mine.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Observer barred puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Gemelo 8 Plain

Solver difficulty rating

4.5 based on 53 votes (voting is now closed)

The G-rating for Gemelo 7 was the same as for its two immediate predecessors, and I certainly would have struggled to spilt the three of them difficulty-wise.

I will be interested to see what you make of this week’s puzzle. To my taste, there were far too many clues where I found myself working backwards from the answer to the wordplay; on several occasions, after decrypting the latter, rather than thinking “Of course” I was saying to myself “Hmmm”. I appreciate that when many of the words in the grid are in everyday use it is perfectly reasonable for the setter to make the cryptic aspects of the clue – both definitions and wordplays – tricky, but it should still be possible to get the answer from the wordplay without performing too many mental contortions.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at a clue from Gemelo 7, “Custard apple, say, almost immediately out of fashion (5)” for ANONA. This raises a question which has often troubled me, and has prompted me to avoid the names of genera in my own puzzles wherever possible. ANONA is given by Chambers as ‘a tropical genus of dicotyledons, including custard apple, sweet-sop, and other edible fruits’, with GENUS being defined as ‘a taxonomic group of lower rank than a family, consisting of closely related species’. There’s no doubt that custard apples and sweet-sops belong to the group ANONA, but are they examples of ANONA? I don’t think they are, and I have never felt confident enough to use a definition which relies on something like this, but at the same time I think that we have to cut setters some slack in this area. When a solver looks up ANONA in Chambers and finds the definition given above, they will be in no doubt that they have the right answer.

Across

11a Fastidiousness, removing jacket with each drink (6, 2 words)
A six-letter word for ‘fastidiousness’ or ‘critical subtlety’ is deprived of its first and last letters (‘removing jacket’) and followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘each’, the result being the (3,3) answer.

12a Started dropping Australian after Stokes was out (5)
A five-letter word meaning ‘started’ (as a deer might have done from cover) without (‘dropping’) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘Australian’ follows (‘after’) the abbreviation for the CGS unit of kinematic viscosity (resistance to flow under the force of gravity), the stokes (not ‘Stokes’).

13a Plane returning empty, the craft perhaps fixed course (8)
A reversal (‘returning’) of three components – the word THE (from the clue) lacking its middle letter (empty), a three-letter word which (according to Chambers) shares a sense of ‘occupation’ with ‘craft’, and a three-letter word for the sort of fixed course someone with an occupation might get stuck in. The ‘perhaps’ makes me think that the setter himself may not have been entirely convinced about the ‘craft’ word, one of those situations where the various meanings of a pair of words are close to overlapping but it is hard to think of a sentence in which they would be truly interchangeable.

15a Question for Buddhist controlling study of the sacred language (6)
A four-letter word for ‘a nonsensical, logically unanswerable question given to students as a subject for meditation’ (‘question for Buddhist’) containing (‘controlling’) one of the two-letter abbreviations for the sort of ‘study of the sacred’ which constitutes a school subject. There are a lot of languages to choose from, but the one here belongs to two countries in East Asia.

17a Facetiously, one location where indicator is three feet back (3)
The three-letter abbreviation for the name of a particular British Crown Dependency whose symbol features three feet (associated with the motto “Whithersoever you throw it, it will stand”) is reversed (‘back’). It strikes me that ‘indicator’ is a bit of a stretch for ‘symbol’, and that the symbol includes three feet, but not just the feet.

18a Ponder newspaper article (8)
A (4,4) phrasal verb meaning ‘ponder’ shares its letters with a word meaning ‘a newspaper article begun on the front page and continued overleaf’. There isn’t enough distance between the two etymologically for my liking.

24a Increasingly highly valued letter-opener previously sent to palace? (6)
The wordplay requires us to imagine how one might have begun a letter to the old Queen (‘letter-opener previously sent to palace?’) had one chosen to address her by her cipher rather than her name (Brenda, if you’re a Private Eye reader).

25a Native American companion for Paul going west with Chinese (8)
The five-letter ‘companion for Paul’ is reversed (‘going west’) and followed by a word for the native Chinese people. My first thought on the companion was ‘Art’, but it turns out to be the name of a saint who accompanied Paul the Apostle on his second missionary journey (although  it seems that Paul refers to him by a different name in his letters to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians). A correspondent suggests a certain resemblance between this ‘companion for Paul’ and last week’s ‘Woody’ for STRODE.

Down

1d Black ice: two vessels getting close to disaster following a line (12)
The usual abbreviation for ‘black’ is followed by a four-letter word for a piece of ice prepared for sporting activity and two words (three letters and four letters) for the kind of vessel that would sail the seas (the former these days only seen in a compounded form describing a vessel which would have engaged in hostilities, with the Portuguese form thereof still posing a threat to bathers). The answer is a word coined by Adlai Stevenson. In January 1956, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said in a Life magazine interview when describing how the Eisenhower administration had kept the peace during several international conflicts that “You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war. Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.” The following month, in a speech in Hartford CT, Democratic presidential candidate Stevenson observed, “We hear the Secretary of State boasting of his ????????????—the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss.”

2d While happy with capital of Turkey, what about visiting Cyprus? (8)
A four-letter plural given by Chambers for the four-letter ‘standard monetary unit of Turkey’ (‘capital of Turkey’) and the usual two-letter interjection answering to ‘what[?]’ are reversed (‘about’) inside (‘visiting’, not an insertion indicator that I like) the IVR code for Cyprus. Adverbs can be difficult to define without resorting to another word with a ‘-ly’ ending, but I’m not sure that ‘while’ plus an adjective means the same as the corresponding adverb, with one relating to a state and the other to an event.

3d Produce young fish in container, that which may have caught them up (6)
A three-letter word for a container (a straw or rush basket) for fish, or for the 10 stone of fish contained therein, precedes the reversal (‘up’) of a word for something in which fish are often caught (‘that which may have caught them’).

4d Former president spending money – and very high note! (3)
There are an awful lot of former presidents (and one or two awful current ones), but here it is the surname of the president of South Africa between 1994 and 1999 which must lose (‘spending’) the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘money’ and the consecutive letters AND (from the clue).

5d I love your heart, regularly lost before the day starts (6)
Alternate letters (‘regularly lost’) from YOUR HEART follow the two letter abbreviation for the Latin phrase meaning ‘before the day’ (ie ‘before the day starts’, although that ‘repositioning’ indicator ‘starts’ sits rather uncomfortably at the end of the wordplay).

8d Preserve element of rule – first, don’t mention it to Klopp or Postecoglou? (12, 2 words)
Here we must assemble the components of the wordplay around the usual abbreviation for ‘rule’. Before it (‘first’) comes a German interjection with many senses including ‘please’ and “you’re welcome” (ie “don’t mention it to [former Liverpool manager Jurgen] Klopp”. After it are the word OR (from the clue) and the nickname of the Australian who has recently been appointed as the manager of Nottingham Forest (‘Postecoglou?’).

13d Skin designs earlier covering over armadillos (6)
An old five-letter spelling for the sort of skin designs that might be applied in a parlour with a name such as ‘Permanent Mistakes’ or ‘Pigment of Your Imagination’ contains (‘covering’) the usual cricketing abbreviation for ‘over’.

27d Spoil market without trouble (3)
It would be very easy to biff the wrong answer here, but the right word for ‘[to] spoil]’ is produced by taking a three-letter word meaning ‘trouble’ (as in “what troubles you?”) from the end of a six-letter word meaning ‘[to] market’.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Observer barred puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Gemelo 7 Plain

Solver difficulty rating

3.5 based on 45 votes (voting is now closed)

Please give your own G-rating for this Gemelo puzzle by clicking on the relevant star above, with one star representing a very straightforward solve by your own standards (Gentle) and five stars indicating a seriously tough one (Ghastly). If you accidentally select the wrong star, you can change your vote by simply clicking on a different one. Each solver will be using their own yardstick, but by reflecting the average solver rating for the preceding puzzles I hope to be able to give a good feel for the relative perceived difficulty of the latest offering. Note that hovering over the ‘graph’ icon will show you the full breakdown of votes for the current puzzle.

The consensus was that last week’s puzzle was of very similar difficulty to  the previous week’s ‘Oscars special’, its rating of 3.5 (based on 39 votes) being the same as that for G5. The scores comprised an equal number of 3’s and 4’s, with just a single 2. I couldn’t slide a cigarette paper between the two puzzles toughness-wise either, so that relative rating seems spot-on.

I thought that Gemelo 7 was both polished and entertaining. I suspect that, like me, those who have tackled all the puzzles in the series will be starting to get used to his style, including those definitions which are crafty but are also,  when combined with an accurate wordplay, sufficient to confirm that you have got the right answer. Just occasionally those definitions are a little too loose for my liking (and that of at least one regular correspondent), but I think that is something we will have to learn to live with.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 21d, “Not for the first time, violently pull tongue (6, 2 words)”. The wordplay involves a two-letter prefix denoting ‘again’ and a word meaning ‘to pull roughly and violently’ producing a (3,3) slang term for the tongue. However, the six-letter compound verb is not to be found in the dictionary and falls under the heading of ‘whimsical’. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that there is no indication in the clue either that the word does not exist or – in the alternative reading of the wordplay – that the setter is defining a prefix without any qualification (unlike the ‘opening for primitive’ in 32a). I do think that in this situation some indication of the setter’s fancy is required, eg “Conceivably not for the first time, violently pull tongue”.

Across

10a Where Douglas is turning against hard, venomous creature (6, 2 words)
The three-letter abbreviation for the island of which Douglas is the capital (‘where Douglas is’) is followed by the reversal (‘turning’) of a two-letter word which means (among many things) ‘against’, and the usual abbreviation for ‘hard’. The answer is (2,4).

12a Adult in trusted third party wearing Mussolini sticker? (8, 2 words)
The usual abbreviation for ‘adult’ is contained by the abbreviation for ‘trusted third party’, and the combination is itself contained by (‘wearing’) the four-letter title accorded by some to Benito Mussolini. The expression which answers to the minimalist definition is (4,4).

18a Use this to write good knock knock joke at last (8)
The usual abbreviation for ‘good’ is followed by two three-letter words meaning ‘knock’ (‘knock knock’) and the last letter of ‘joke’ (‘joke at last’).

19a “I’m barely going grey in retirement” I inanely suggest (6)
The reversal (‘in retirement’) of a three-letter word meaning ‘greyish brown’ is followed by I (from the clue) and the first and last letters (‘inanely’) of ‘suggest’.

23a Metal sent back by follower of LA rock (6)
A four-letter metallic element which has been reversed (‘sent back’) precedes a word which could be the ‘follower of LA’ when the ‘precursor of LA’ is SO. This reminds me of the bit in The Simpsons where Homer drives straight into a statue of a deer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BxWKuntYFQ).

25a Did White River finally flood? Almost smart to go first (8)
A three-letter English river that lives largely in Devon and the last letter (‘finally’) of ‘flood’ follow a five-letter word meaning ‘smart’ in the ‘fashionable’ sense which has lost its last letter (‘almost smart to go first’). The word ‘do’ in the definition has the meaning that it would in “I’m planning to do the walls purple”. Interesting fact of the day: the strongest claim to be the inventor of correcting fluid is Bette Nesmith Graham, who worked as a typist and made enough mistakes to want a quick way to correct her errors without retyping whole pages. She first produced the fluid in her kitchen (using a blender), didn’t tell anyone else about it for several years (for fear of being thought to be ‘cheating’), gave a few bottles to friends, started selling it (initially with the help of her son and his friends) as ‘Mistake Out’, and eventually handed over her company (and the product, now called ‘Liquid Paper’) to Gillette in exchange for $47.5m. She was a single mother, and her son was Michael Nesmith, who became one of The Monkees.

30a Almost certainly past anger, consuming Peanuts? (8, 3 words)
A four-letter archaic (‘past’) term for ‘anger’ or ‘injury’ contains (‘consuming’) a slang word for the sort of thing of which Charles Schulz’s strip is an example and for which Walt Disney was famous. The answer is (3,2,3) and is a rather more prosaic version of the splendid expression ‘All Lombard Street to a China orange’.

31a People navigating princes, it could be said? (6))
The first three letters of the answer here are a homophone for a four-letter word beginning with ‘h’ which, when applied attributively to the last three letters of the answer, could be taken to describe princes, especially the eldest of their sibling groups. Based on the Chambers entry for the answer, the definition is by example (not all of them are navigators) and implication (they navigate something specific), although this is not indicated in any way.

32a Area containing opening for primitive lizard (6)
A four-letter word for an area contains the two-letter prefix signifying ‘original’ or ‘primitive’ (ie ‘opening for primitive’).

Down

4d Peeled agave makes you fit (4)
I could see that I needed a six-letter word for an agave to lose its first and last letters (‘peeled’), but I got the answer from the definition and was reduced to doing a search in the electronic version of Chambers for words with those four letters in the middle. There were only four, and the only one which showed any promise turned out to be the Spanish word for the American aloe, Agave Americana.

6d Cottage or hut, or temporary dwelling that is beneath the two (6)
The setter had to stretch out the definition here in order to include the three noun expressions required in the surface reading. The wordplay has the familiar two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘that is’ following (‘beneath’) a word meaning ‘the two’.

11d Protestant unionist aboard Titanic? That wasn’t true (8)
The usual abbreviation for ‘unionist’ is contained by (‘aboard’) a word meaning ‘titanic’, and the combination is followed by a word which is used in conversation to mean that what you’ve just said most definitely isn’t true, as in “I really think a full English breakfast should include baked beans, ???”.

13d Irrational figures race to drop e.g. Paul? (8)
The symbol for one irrational number and the two-letter name (although Chambers calls it a symbol) given to another (ie ‘irrational figures) are followed by the name of a (2,5) classic horse race run at Doncaster which has been deprived of (‘to drop’) the letters EG. The definition by example is indicated by the question mark, which should immediately suggest that the ‘e.g.’ is part of the wordplay.

24d Head of editorial previously called about French release of the first folio (6)
The first letter (‘head’) of ‘editorial’, plus a three-letter word of French origin meaning ‘previously called’ containing (‘about’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘French’. Whilst I’m all in favour of setters making things interesting by using a variety of qualifications for words shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’, ‘Scots’ etc, I think it’s possible to go a bit too far. I solved a clue recently where a Shakespearean word was described in the definition as “Bill’s”; since the diminutive ‘Bill’ didn’t come into use until the late 17th century, I’d be very surprised if this is how the bard was known to his chums such as Eddie Spenser and Chris Marlowe. I’m similarly a little doubtful about ‘of the first folio’ (the reference being to the first folio of Shakespeare’s works, published in 1623), particularly given that the six-letter word here doesn’t actually appear therein.

28d Custard apple, say, almost immediately out of fashion (4)
A five-letter word for the genus which includes the custard apple has its last letter deleted (‘almost’) to produce  an ‘archaic or literary’ word meaning ‘immediately’.

29d Battle to fire first round (4)
In 28d a five-letter word lost its last letter, and here a five-letter word for a battle (shown as being obsolete by OED, but – perhaps surprisingly – not by Chambers) has its first letter omitted (‘to fire first’), the result being a familiar word for a round or a period of service in a particular place.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Observer barred puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Gemelo 6 Plain

Solver difficulty rating

3.5 based on 39 votes (voting is now closed)

Please give your own G-rating for this Gemelo puzzle by clicking on the relevant star above, with one star representing a very straightforward solve by your own standards (Gentle) and five stars indicating a seriously tough one (Ghastly). If you accidentally select the wrong star, you can change your vote by simply clicking on a different one. Each solver will be using their own yardstick, but by reflecting the average solver rating for the preceding puzzles I hope to be able to give a good feel for the relative perceived difficulty of the latest offering. Note that hovering over the ‘graph’ icon will show you the full breakdown of votes for the current puzzle.

The overwhelming view was that last week’s Oscar-themed puzzle was considerably less demanding than the previous week’s ‘plain’, its rating of 3.5 being well down on G5’s 4.2. The great majority of scores were 3’s and 4’s, with the odd 5 and the occasional 2 (G5 didn’t get any of them!). I agree completely with your assessment, and I gave it a 3-star rating compared to the previous week’s 4.

I think I’m starting to get attuned to the Gruffalo’s style – answers that are mainly familiar, definitions that are well-disguised and often oblique, and wordplays that are cunningly constructed. The clues themselves generally make good sense and have entertaining surface readings. Perhaps because I have eliminated link words from my own clues, I do feel that Gelato makes rather too much use of the word ‘of’ to connect definitions to wordplays. There are four clues in this puzzle (1a, 34a, 16d and 18d) in which the device has been employed to enhance the surface reading, and I feel that’s at least three too many; I appreciate that ‘of’ has several relevant meanings, such as ‘derived from’, but as Azed observed in the Slip for comp 1,728, “One thing that did strike me about the clues submitted was the unusually large number which included ‘of’ as a linking word between the definition and the cryptic part. I can see the justification for this, exploiting the dictionary definitions ‘proceeding or derived from; made from’ etc, but I’ve always felt unhappy about it and I notice that careful clue-writers tend to avoid it.”

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 20a, “Newspapers barely used long story from the east (7)”. The word USED (from the clue) deprived of its first and last letters (‘barely’) and the name of a long story written by Homer (during quiet periods at the nuclear power plant, I presume) are reversed (‘from the east’) to produce a word answering to ‘newspapers’. The point of interest here is the use of the word ‘barely’ to indicate the deletion of the first and last letters of a word.  Adverbial indicators are something of an elephant in the cruciverbal room, accepted to varying degrees but never openly discussed. Adverbs are often seen as anagram indicators, eg ‘randomly’, and here it seems reasonable for solvers to infer a word such as ‘arranged’. With an intermittent selection indicator such as ‘regularly’, we can probably be expected to add ‘selected’. But when it comes to a truncation indicator such as ‘endlessly’, what could we add that would produce an expression amounting to ‘with the end removed’? This does seem to me very close to the borders of acceptability. I would suggest that the same could be said of ‘barely’, were it not for the fact that the ‘nakedly’ sense of the word is shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’; this for me pushes it over the boundary.

Across

1a Keep bar of wine and broth, unusually (10)
A four-letter fortified wine is followed by a ‘now rare‘ six-letter word for a strong broth made of meat, fowl, etc, boiled and strained, of which ‘beef tea’ is a well-known form (for football fans with long memories, it is also the surname of a manager who had a great deal of success with Wolves, although rather less with  Birmingham City). The definition is sneaky – both words are nouns, the first being used attributively, so the answer is a bar to entering the keep.

10a Forward independent abridged novel about Cupid (7)
A two-letter interjection meaning ‘forward[!]’, the usual abbreviation for ‘independent’, and a five-letter word for a novel (which could perhaps be à clef or policier) missing its last letter (‘abridged’) are reversed (‘about’).

13a Inventor of dish losing face, admitting horror of main and the rest (8, 2 words)
We’re not talking about Delia Smith or Caesar Cardini here, rather the German microbiologist who invented the shallow glass dish with an overlapping cover which is used for growing cultures of bacteria. His surname, without its first letter (‘losing face’) contains (‘admitting’) a four-letter whale or sea-monster (‘horror of the main’). Be careful not to biff the other, and more familiar, Latin phrase with similar form and meaning.

23a Are speakers backing voting system to allocate fairly? (7)
A five-letter verb meaning ‘to speak’, which can have the sense of ‘are speakers’ when it is in the plural form of the present tense (as in ‘they are speakers’ as an alternative for ‘they speak’), follows (‘backing’) the two-letter abbreviation for a voting system which rewards parties in proportion to the total votes which they receive.

25a Cat to give up fish on reflection (8)
A five-letter word meaning ‘to give up’ (or ‘to send back’) and a three-letter fish resembling a pike are reversed (‘on reflection’). The ‘cat’ is the sort that might have been ‘hep’ back in the day.

30a Scent opportunity, primarily music with an American guitar? (8)
The wordplay is a charade of the first letter (‘primarily’) of ‘opportunity’, a three-letter type of music, the letters AN (from the clue) and the two-letter American spelling of a slang term for a guitar. I really only selected this clue so I could blow the dust off one of my better efforts, “Term for Hendrix, penned by American, avoided by Clapton? (5)”.

33a Producers of Grease painting that’s disappointing (7)
A three-letter word for a painting executed in a specific medium is followed by an interjection  which can mean “that’s disappointing”, particularly when preceded by ‘Aw’.

34a Spoilt sort of English Heritage group with enthusiast in attendance (10, 2 words)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘English’ and a two-letter abbreviation for the name of another, larger ‘[English] heritage group’ containing a three-letter word for an enthusiast (‘with enthusiast in’) are followed by a four-letter word for the total number of people attending a game (‘attendance’). The answer is (6,4).

Down

2d Damp men breaking free (5)
The two-letter abbreviation used to indicate those members of the armed services who do not hold commissions (‘men’) is contained by (‘breaking’) a verb which is often, as here, indicated in cryptics by ‘free’.

4d Nitrogen found in profitable strip of baked clay? (6)
The chemical symbol for nitrogen is contained by (‘found in’) a word meaning ‘profitable’ or ‘useful’. The ‘strip’ in the somewhat oblique definition is a verb.

5d Tap indicators after initially letting out Katrine, say (4)
The letters which you would find on taps in English-speaking countries (the one on the right coming first) follow (‘after’) the first letters (‘initially’) of ‘letting out’. The answer refers to a geographical feature, one example of which (to be found in the Trossachs) is called Katrine.

7d Crush possible rule for letters getting written up (6, 2 words)
There is a definite whiff of Azed to this clue, where a (2,4) expression which the letters of properties might include in the information supplied to potential tenants is reversed (‘written up’) to produce the (4,2) answer.

9d Egg taken from kiwi bird (12, 2 words)
This is a neat one, a five-letter word for the egg of a lobster or crayfish (who knew?) being taken from another name for the kiwi fruit.

15d Stewing skinless fruit (6)
A word for ‘stewing in a closed pan’ must be stripped of its first and last letters (‘skinless’) to produce the answer.

16d Indian side of Pakistan right to ignore borders (6)
The three-letter abbreviation given by Chambers for ‘Pakistan’ is followed by a five-letter word meaning ‘adhering to what is right’ from which the first and last letters have been lost (‘to ignore borders’). The answer is the name of a side dish which is very likely to be found on the menu of an Indian restaurant in the UK.

22d ‘Vile, formerly’? ‘Viol, formerly’ recalled a good deal more (6)
When it comes to musical instruments in cryptic crosswords, solvers need to know about the KIT (a small pocket violin), the LUR or LURE (a long curved Bronze Age trumpet) and the viol ‘formerly used in Shetland’ which appears here, of which there are three spellings, although only two of these are of any use to setters. In this instance, it is the two-letter version which is reversed (‘recalled’) and followed by a word meaning ‘a good deal more’, specifically in a sentence such as “I couldn’t get over it – there must have been 100 éclairs and then ????”.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Observer barred puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Gemelo 5 Plain

Solver difficulty rating

3.5 based on 43 votes (voting is now closed)

Please give your own G-rating for this Gemelo puzzle by clicking on the relevant star above, with one star representing a very straightforward solve by your own standards (Gentle) and five stars indicating a seriously tough one (Ghastly). If you accidentally select the wrong star, you can change your vote by simply clicking on a different one. Each solver will be using their own yardstick, but by reflecting the average solver rating for the preceding puzzles I hope in the coming weeks to be able to give a good feel for the relative perceived difficulty of the latest offering. Note that hovering over the ‘graph’ icon will show you the full breakdown of votes for the current puzzle.

Last week’s puzzle achieved an average G-rating of 4.2 – no 1’s or 2’s (Mark Goodliffe clearly wasn’t among the voters), a handful of 3’s, and plenty of 4’s and 5’s. That struck me as being a very fair assessment. It will be interesting to see how the rating for this week’s puzzle compares.

For myself, I thought that the puzzle was very clever and Showcased (geddit?) the setter’s skills, but I’d rather have a ‘special’ that demands something different from the solver as well as the setter – the most recent puzzle of that type was Azed 2,750, since which we’ve had 24 ‘straight’ solves. The clues were generally sound, but the twisting and twiddling required to accommodate the film titles resulted in occasional looseness, and anyone who wasn’t keen on the deceptive capitalization of letters in a couple of clues last week will have been close to apoplexy this time around. I’ve covered the normal 8+8 clues below, but just let me know if you’d like me to comment or provide assistance on any others.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 18a, “Covered in grime from Shakespeare in Love missing cheerio, sadly (6)”. This is an anagram (‘sadly’) of CHEERIO without (‘missing’) the usual single-letter representation of ‘love’, the answer being a Shakespearean word meaning ‘smoky’ or ‘grimy’. The question here surrounds the fairness of the italicized text ‘Shakespeare in Love‘. The formatting appears to mark these three words out as a single unit, but in the cryptic reading they belong to three different parts of the clue – ‘Shakespeare’ is part of the definition, ‘in’ is a link from the definition to the wordplay, and ‘love’ marks the start of that wordplay. Is it desirable for clues to feature typography such as this which is clearly intended to deceive the solver? In general, I would say ‘no’; however, there is a theme running through every clue in this puzzle, with all the film titles being shown in italics. I think that it is therefore reasonable in this specific instance to expect the solver to mentally remove the italics en masse and also to be prepared to eliminate unwarranted capitals when addressing the cryptic readings. The clues that I’ve commented on below are shown without the italics.

Across

13a Is Argo’s final ordeal almost providing line of brightness? (6)
The letters IS (from the clue), the last letter (‘final’) of ‘Argo’, and a four-letter word for one heck of an ordeal, lacking its last letter (‘almost’), combine to produce a word for a contour line linking places receiving equal amounts of sunshine.

14a How Gigi might represent one performance by way of reply? (8, 2 words)
When the word GIGI is cryptically manipulated by the (2,6) answer, it could furnish (ie ‘How Gigi might represent’) a (1,3) expression equating to ‘one performance’.

21a Obscure Eastern cut including coat from Ben-Hur (7)
The usual abbreviation for ‘Eastern’ and a four-letter word for ‘cut’ (as I hope that my lawn will be by the end of the day) contain (‘including’) the outer letters (‘coat’) from ‘Ben-Hur’. When the film debuted in 1959, Mort Sahl famously observed, “Love him, hated Hur”.

23a Ed’s spare Green Book joke (7)
A charade of a three-letter word for ‘green’, the single-letter abbreviation for ‘book’, and a three-letter word for a joke, almost always seen in a question along the lines of “Have you heard the ??? about the bishop and the crossword setter?” The answer is shown by Chambers as being Spenserian, hence the “Ed’s”.

26a Makes up for deficiencies while screening Lawrence of Arabia, initially carrying on (6)
A matryoshka of a clue, where a two-letter word for ‘while’ contains (‘screening’) the initials of Mr Lawrence (and, latterly, of his alter ego Mr Shaw), which themselves contain (‘carrying’) the letters ON (from the clue).

27a Characters beyond the first three in Rebecca rejected at all times (3)
The letters (‘characters’) in the word ‘Rebecca’ which are not within (‘beyond’) the first three positions in the alphabet (‘the first three’) are reversed (‘rejected’).

29a Written fragments of An American in Paris: the lost act (8)
The letters AN (from the clue) are followed by the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘American’, a French word for ‘the’ (in Paris: the’) and an anagram (‘lost’) of ACT.

33a Cult figure, burning to quit Oliver!, remains unchanged in this year (6)
A four-letter word for ‘burning’ is omitted from (‘to quit’) OLIVER, with the residue preceding a two-letter word meaning ‘remains unchanged’ and an abbreviation of the Latin for ‘in this year’.

Down

2d Overthrow barb with note supporting reaction to The Sting? (8, 2 words)
A five-letter word for a barb comes before the usual abbreviation for ‘note’ after (‘supporting’) a two-letter interjection which would be a likely response to a sting from a wasp or the like.

3d Reserve fund for opposite of The Sound of Music (4)
A double definition clue; determining whether ‘an interval of silence in music’ is the ‘opposite of the sound of music’ is left to the reader as an exercise.

5d Mock title of what would have been cut in The Life of Emile Zola? (7, 2 words)
The (3,4) answer satisfies the definition and also describes what, for a nineteenth century author, would have been essential tools of their trade, and would invariably feature a cut to enable variation in the flow of ink.

7d Pieces of eight distributed, having lost Grand Hotel manuscript (5)
An anagram (‘distributed’) of EIGHT, without (‘having lost’) the usual abbreviation for ‘grand’ and the letter represented in the NATO phonetic alphabet by ‘Hotel’, is followed by the two-letter abbreviation for ‘manuscript’.

12d He sculpted it, a nuisance about to upset stunts from Wings? (10)
A reversal (‘to upset’) of five elements – the two-letter abbreviation of the Latin for ‘he sculpted’, the letters IT (from the clue), the letter A (from the clue), a four-letter ‘nuisance’, and a single-letter abbreviation for ‘about’ (one of those which appears in Chambers but I have never seen ‘in the wild’).

19d Where paper is polled ahead of English Patient (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘with close-cut hair’ or ‘polled’ precedes the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘English’ and a word for a person under medical treatment. The answer is shown as hyphenated, 4-4, by the OED, but Chambers gives it as a single word. 

20d Uplift Terms of Endearment alumni and staff in no way (7, 3 words)
A reversal (‘uplift’) of the last letters (‘terms’) of ‘Endearment’ and ‘alumni’ and a five-letter word for the sort of staff that might change hands several times in the course of a single lap.

22d Unfortunate struggle to cut Casablanca’s climax and make an impact (6)
A three-letter ‘struggle’ or ‘conflict’ deprived of (‘to cut’) the last letter (‘climax’) of ‘Casablanca’ combines with a word that has a figurative meaning of ‘to make a deep or irremovable impression’ (in which sense it usually appears in the passive voice)  to produce a noun which might, somewhat tautologically, be seen preceded by an epithet such as ‘miserable’.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Observer barred puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Gemelo 4 Plain

Solver difficulty rating

4.2 based on 45 votes (voting is now closed)

Starting today, you have the opportunity to give your own G-rating for each Gemelo puzzle by clicking on the relevant star above, with one star representing a very straightforward solve by your own standards (Gentle) and five stars indicating a seriously tough one (Ghastly). If you accidentally select the wrong star, you can change your vote by simply clicking on a different one. Each solver will be using their own yardstick, but by reflecting the average solver rating for the preceding puzzles I hope in the coming weeks to be able to give a good feel for the relative perceived difficulty of the latest offering.

This seemed to me a pretty challenging puzzle, and I was grateful for the three long anagrams (I chose to cheat on one of them, thus revealing a suitably reproachful answer). Once again, the proportion of obscure words was relatively low, but some devious definitions and wily wordplays proved a more than adequate counterbalance. The grammatical accuracy of the clueing in today’s puzzle struck me as being extremely high – a second look at a couple of things that didn’t look quite right at first glance confirmed that they were absolutely fine. If there are any clues which I haven’t covered below that you would like assistance or views on, just let me know.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 14d, “Take up stuffing duck, not having the sauce? (8)”. The wordplay here involves a reversal (‘up’) of a four-letter word meaning ‘take’ or ‘carry’ (often associated with ‘bag’) being put inside (‘stuffing’) the name of a particular kind of duck. The point of interest is the definition, the question being how far a setter can twist the words of an oblique definition to improve the surface reading. Chambers gives ‘the sauce’ as a US informal term for alcoholic drink, although I think it would be familiar to most UK solvers. I very much doubt whether in conversation we would refer to an abstainer as ‘not having the sauce’, rather something like ‘staying off the sauce’, but that doesn’t matter in the least. What is important in the cryptic reading of the definition is that what the setter has written could reasonably be interpreted as leading to the answer, not that it has to be a natural way of indicating it. Since ‘have’ has a wide variety of meanings, including ‘take’ and ‘accept’, someone ‘not having the sauce’ could surely be abstaining from alcoholic drink. Similarly with ‘never trying hard stuff’, but note that something like ‘never striking the bottle’ would not be acceptable – ‘hitting the bottle’ is the expression here, and replacing one word in it with a synonym destroys the figurative sense. Whether ‘never hitting the bottle’ would be a valid description of an abstainer is itself questionable, since the phrase refers to drinking alcohol excessively, not to having the odd dram.

Across

1a Lover of language cheers (8)
The sight of ‘cheers’ in a cryptic clue always make me think TA, but the interjection which follows the three-letter name of an international language developed from Esperanto does not mean ‘thanks!’ but ‘cheerio!’ or (for older readers) ‘TTFN’.

10a Teachers may use these unearned powers to ignore government (6)
A seven-letter word for powers which have been inherited rather than earned (or for the insignia of royalty) is deprived of (‘to ignore’) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘government’.

15a Move to and fro, avoiding hot light that’s been abandoned (6)
A seven-letter word for ‘move to and fro’ (originally from the world of weaving) loses (‘avoiding’) the usual abbreviation for ‘hot’. The answer is shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’, hence the qualifier “that’s been abandoned”.

16a New rubber involving clubs, secondly diamonds, and hearts (6)
The wordplay yields the usual abbreviation for ‘new’, a three-letter type of rubber extracted from a central American tree containing the usual abbreviation for ‘clubs’, and the second letter (‘secondly’) of ‘diamonds’.

20a Fish that is out of time (4)
The (2,3) Latin phrase meaning ‘that is’ surrenders (‘out of’) the usual abbreviation for ‘time’.

21a Primate Mark losing south-east and half of London(4)
The nine-letter name of a particular punctuation mark loses both the usual abbreviation for ‘south-east’ and the first half of ‘London’.

24a Like notable lion’s old relative, swallowing another one? (6)
A three-letter ‘pet name for a grandmother'(‘old relative’) contains (‘swallowing’) an obsolete term for an uncle (‘another one’, ie another old relative, ‘old’ in this instance referring to the word’s obsoleteness). The answer comes from the name of the valley which the large and ferocious lion of Greek myth called home before it had the misfortune to meet up with Heracles. King Eurystheus had charged Heracles with the task of dispatching the said feline, which had become a scourge of the area; it was a labour which didn’t sound unduly challenging until it turned out that the enormous beast had an impenetrable golden hide, and that firing arrows at it simply made it angrier. And it was pretty angry to start with. Heracles blocked up one of the entrances to the lion’s cave before lobbing an early form of smoke bomb through the other one; when the lion duly emerged (by this time bordering on incandescence), Heracles (in the words of Ned Flanders) “gave its noggin a floggin’” and then throttled it. This feat of bare-handed lion-strangling put the wind up Eurystheus sufficiently that he communicated all future labours to Heracles through an intermediary, declining to meet him in person. The RSPCA’s response to the events is unknown.

29a Behold interior to clipped front claws (6)
One of those two-letter interjections meaning ‘behold!’ is contained by (‘interior to’) a word for ‘front’ (of the brass neck variety) which has been shorn of its last letter (‘clipped’).

32a Perhaps olive stuffed with herb for amusement of a crowd? (8)
A four-letter word for something of which an olive is but one example contains (‘stuffed by’) the name of an umbelliferous herb related to the parsnip. My remarks in Setters’ Corner about the definition in 14d are equally applicable here, the ‘crowd’ being one more than the number of people constituting ‘company’ in a familiar saying.

Down

2d Irrational number had to follow round number (6)
A two-letter irrational number (slightly bigger than the crowd in 32a) and a three-letter word meaning ‘had’ in the sense of ‘consumed’ come after (‘to follow’) the letter of the alphabet which could be described as a ’round’. I remember a time when ETHER seemed to be invariably defined in cryptic clues by ‘number’, but I don’t remember seeing it for the answer here.

4d Card game’s mark is hedging so far (5)
A three-letter word for the cross on the ice at curling or the ‘hob’ at quoits (“game’s mark”) contains (‘is hedging’) a two-letter word meaning ‘so far’, often indicated in crosswords by ‘like’. The nicely-disguised definition is a verb in the cryptic reading.

5d Opposition means to expel peer for his costume? (6)
An eleven-letter word for ‘any means of counteraction’ (‘opposition means’) gives up a five-letter word for a noble equal in rank to an earl (‘peer’), the result being something which is traditionally used to trim the ceremonial robes of the aristocracy.

6d Short notch in willow plant (7)
A four-letter word for a notch (or police station) without its last letter (‘short’) is contained by an alternative spelling of a word for a willow, shown as obsolete by the OED, and derived from the Latin word for the tree (with which it shares the first three letters).

7d Choice of 200 monkeys no longer adopted (4)
A double definition clue, although I’m not sure that I much care for ‘of’ being used to link the two definitions, suggesting an asymmetry that doesn’t exist. The first definition is an adjective (and the nickname of PG Wodehouse), while the second requires the solver to work out what 200 monkeys would be, given that one ‘monkey’ is £500.

12d Ascendant prophet adjusting position of university theologians (6)
The name of an Old Testament prophet to be found sandwiched between Ruth and Kings is reversed (‘ascendant’) and the usual abbreviation for ‘university’ is relocated within it (‘adjusting position of university’).

23d Test circuit board (6)
The wordplay is a charade of a two-letter ‘circuit’ with a single binary output (the highest value of any of its inputs) and a word for a board in the wooden sense. Apparently in the British timber trade such a thing is understood to be 9 inches wide, not more than 3 inches thick, and at least 6 feet long. If shorter, it is a ???-end; if not more than 7 inches wide, it is a batten.  I imagine that if it exceeds the stated dimensions, it is considered a big ????.

27d Keen to cut lines for Bollywood title? (4)
A six-letter word meaning ‘keen’ or ‘piercing’ loses (‘to cut’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘lines’ to produce a title which I believe is bestowed on celebrated or revered figures (such as Bollywood stars) regardless of their gender.

(definitions are underlined)