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 44

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/9585e14a-2630-4cb5-83e4-575bfbeaaa87/file/puzzle.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

2.5 based on 39 votes (voting is now closed)

You gave Gemelo 43 an average difficulty rating of 2.4, the same as that of its predecessor; I rated it slightly lower at 2.2, probably because I got a flying start with the two entries across the top and the one down the left-hand side.

This puzzle was not without its challenges, but, like other recent Gemelos, it offered several toeholds to the solver. A pleasant solve, but when are we going to get the promised clue-writing competition? Surely there has been time enough to get all the necessary arrangements set up, tested, and ready for launch. And to get a Gemelo bookplate produced, of course, though I feel that any trophy should probably be virtual.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 19d, “Dismissal after Stokes bowled over (7)”. A six-letter slang word for dismissal, specifically in the phrase ‘to get the ??????’, originally used to describe the dismissal or rejection of a lover, follows the usual abbreviation for ‘Stokes’ – well, actually for ‘stokes’. The July poll confirmed that many solvers are not bothered about words in clues being given false capitals, as with ‘stokes’ here, but I do feel that part of the setter’s art is wherever possible to misdirect while providing a cryptic reading which can be interpreted exactly as it is written. Sometimes it can be almost impossible to manoeuvre the word which requires a capital in the surface reading but not in the cryptic reading to the start of a sentence, and in such instances I have sympathy with the setter who adds a false capital, but often a bit of shuffling around is possible. The clue under consideration could have been written, for instance, as “Stokes, prior to dismissal, bowled over”. In these situations, I would encourage setters to look at how they can legitimately ‘hide’ the initial capital before resorting to the inclusion of a false capital.

Across

1a Dangerous habit of passing on tea in M&S from the back (12)
Gemelo starts off with a crafty wordplay where a five-letter ‘informal’ word for ‘passing’ or ‘approving’ follows (‘on’) a three-letter word for ‘tea’, the letters IN (from the clue), and the letters M and S reversed (‘from the back’). The answer is hyphenated, 5-7, and – since Chambers  does not show the verbal noun – should ideally have been defined as a present participle by ‘pursuing dangerous habit’ or similar.

14a Led by power, classic Avenger rejects first picks (7)
I initially thought that the ‘classic Avenger’ who loses their first letter (‘rejects first’) and follows the usual abbreviation for ‘power’ might be John Steed, Cathy Gale or Emma Peel (I’m afraid that David Keel and Tara King don’t qualify as ‘classic’), but it turns out that we have to go back much further than the 1960s to find the daughter of Agamemnon who helped her brother Orestes to avenge their father’s murder. The name puts me in mind of the winning clue for TREACLE in Ximenes comp 997 by ‘Mrs B. Lewis’ (the pseudonym of Dorothy Taylor, which was subsequently used by Colin Dexter for Morse’s sidekick), “Material for a black confection that might become ???????”, with its reference to Eugene O’Neill’s reworking of the story.

17a Do without occasionally antiwar Christian (5)
A name for the first note of the scale, now almost invariably called ‘do’, contains (‘without’) alternate letters selected from ‘antiwar’ (ie ‘antiwar occasionally’).

20a Aardvark hater turned corner (8)
The (5-3) answer is the result of an anagram (‘turned’) of HATER plus a word meaning ‘to take or use selfishly’, although whether ‘corner’ is a valid synonym is open to question. A ‘corner’ involves a syndicate buying up all the available stock in the market or available supply of a commodity, thus forcing speculative sellers into a corner, such that they can only fulfil their obligations by buying from the corner-men at an inflated price. The term ‘to corner’ can certainly be used figuratively in a broadly similar context, eg ‘he cornered the market in scented tie-clips’, but I’ve never seen it used in a wider sense. The Chambers Thesaurus does give the word here under the verb ‘corner’, but, as I have noted before, many of the synonyms in that work range from distinctly questionable to just plain wrong.

22a Vast number from Pakistan and India, and smaller number from East in opposition (8)
A three-letter word for 100,000 rupees or an indefinitely vast number (‘vast number from Pakistan’), the letter represented in the IRSA by ‘India’, and a four-letter word for ‘something small of its type’ are all reversed (‘from East’).

26a Caterpillar falling short on account of being late (5)
The word ON (from the clue) missing its last letter (‘falling short’) precedes a shortened form of an eight-letter ‘account of a dead person’ (ie ‘account of being late’, where ‘being’ has the meaning of ‘person’).

29a Filling food carried by Yodel? (8)
A four-letter word which can describe food generally – although among nautical folk it is usually either ‘hard’ (ships’ biscuit) or ‘soft’ (bread) – is contained by a verb which broadly describes what a yodeller would do (hence the question mark). The Yodel brand ceased to exist on 17 July this year, so I hope the food arrives ok. Still, it could have been with Evri…

34a Ultimately, hint to crack puzzle proves incorrect (6)
The last letter (‘ultimately’) of ‘hint’ is contained by (‘cracks’) the name for the sort of puzzle where a word or words are represented by a combination of pictures, sometimes with single letters crossed out or added. I remember that there used to be a pop-themed puzzle of this type every week in Disc magazine, the one for Captain Beefheart being particularly memorable.

Down

4d Deny access after one loses head (6)
I’m afraid that this clue is unsound – as the wordplay is written, it can only be the four-letter word for ‘[a means of] access’ which loses its first letter (‘head’). The intended interpretation, though, is that this four-letter word comes after the word ONE, lacking its first letter – this would correctly be indicated by something along the lines of ‘Deny access, faced with one losing head’. While the word ‘after’ in the surface reading is a conjunction, in order to achieve the required juxtaposition in the cryptic reading it must be a preposition, but a preposition cannot introduce a main clause – it must relate the subject to the object, as in ‘driver behind learner loses patience’, which can only mean that the driver is losing patience. In crosswordese, the use of a participle instead of a main verb offers the setter welcome ambiguity: ‘driver behind learner losing patience’ could mean that either the driver or the learner loses patience – although in normal language we would take this example to mean ‘[a] driver behind [a] learner [is] losing patience’, it could also legitimately be interpreted as ‘[a] driver [is] behind [a] learner losing patience’.

7d Chuck about what’s inside of dried mud (7)
An anagram (‘about’) of CHUCK is followed by the word ‘what’ deprived of its first and last letters, ie “what’s inside”. The word ‘of’, required by the definition, rather spoils the surface reading.

12d Shake can (4)
A double-definition clue, the first definition wherein prompted a regular correspondent to suggest that “James Bond might raise an eyebrow” about the clue, given his very clear views about how a Martini should be prepared. Absolutely right, although in a non-physical sense both ‘shake’ and the answer have a shared meaning of ‘rouse’, so the clue is fine.

16d Fruit provider to go around every trustee (9)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to go’, or euphemistically speaking ‘to answer the call of nature’, contains (‘around’) a four-letter word meaning ‘every’ and a two-letter abbreviation for ‘trustee’. The answer is (5-4).

21d Extremely dim bully clinging to one stone (7)
A four-letter word of US origin meaning ‘to subject to cruel horseplay’, particularly used in relation to the practices of college students, containing (‘clinging to’) the Roman numeral representing ‘one’ is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘stone’. Do ‘dim’ and the four-letter adjective from which the answer is formed share a meaning? Just about, I would say.

23d Definitely not Iron Man’s core breaking circuit (6, 2 words)
The chemical symbol for iron and the middle letter (‘core’) of ‘Man’ are contained by the sort of logic circuit that delivers an ON only if all its inputs are OFF. The answer is (2,4).

25d American constitution restricting Express and associated organs (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘American’ precedes a three-letter abbreviation from the world of chemistry which has come to figuratively represent the essence or constitution of a thing, containing (‘restricting’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘express’.

27d Casually throw old purse to pay broken Australian (4)
A quadruple-definition clue which relies on the second, third, fourth and fifth headwords in Chambers. Incorporating the first, sixth and seventh headwords is left to the reader as an exercise…go on, there hasn’t been a clue writing comp for ages…

(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 43

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/fde6ae09-c8a8-4b99-874e-f0a12993345d/file/puzzle.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

2.4 based on 40 votes (voting is now closed)

My thanks to the 41 readers who gave their difficulty ratings for G42 (the biggest solver sample that I can remember). Your average rating was 2.4, and looking at my printed copy of the puzzle I see that I had written ‘2.3’ beside it, so I think it’s fair to say the general feeling was that it was close to (if perhaps a tidge below) the middle of the Gemelo difficulty spectrum.

Today’s Gemelo puzzle struck me as being more like an Azed than last week’s ‘Azed’. There weren’t perhaps the generous dollops of wit that we came to expect from Azed in his prime, and the misdirection relied more on misleading surfaces and concealment of the breaks between definition and wordplay than on innovative definitions, but the soundness, accessibility and interesting surface readings were all there. I thought this was an enjoyable crossword, just right for a breakfast-time solve along with a couple of slices of Toastie, but you may feel differently about the puzzle or, indeed, your accompaniment of choice.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look not at a clue but at the grid. An unusual feature this week is the presence of two five-letter entries (7d/27d) containing no unchecked letters (‘unches’). The rules for unching in barred puzzles dictate that there should be no unchecked letters in entries of 3 letters; no more than one unchecked letter in 4/5-letter entries; no more than two in 6/7-letter entries, no more than three in 8-letter entries, and no more than a third of the letters unchecked in entries of 9 or more letters. You will note that the rule for 8-letter entries is something of an anomaly, allowing more than a third of the letters to be unchecked; Azed has always limited himself to two unches in such entries, but on occasion Gemelo avails himself of the extra unchecked letter (thus demonstrating that there is such a thing as a free unch).

It is unusual for setters to include fully checked entries of four or five letters in a grid, but it is not wrong. As Azed has noted in the past, not using the entire ‘unch allowance’ causes extra difficulty for the setter, not the solver, so the fact that, for instance, the 8-letter entry at 3d in today’s crossword includes only one unch is not an issue. I will say, though, that solvers in general (myself included) don’t like to see more than a couple of fully-checked entries in any barred puzzle, because the answer simply emerges without the need to solve the clue; as a general principle, fully checked entries of four or more letters should be avoided where possible. The situation can be rather different in themed puzzles – practically speaking, an ‘unch’ in an entry is a letter which is not checked by the solution to an intersecting clue, hence unclued entries and solutions which are mutilated prior to entry cannot truly be counted as providing ‘checkers’, and a five-letter entry that has no cells barred off but which intersects an unclued entry effectively contains one unchecked letter.

Across

1a Nonsense from preachers renouncing vermouth (4)
A metonym for preachers collectively (this being a likely place from which to preach) is deprived of (‘renouncing’) the informal two-letter term applied to Italian vermouth. I wonder what a suitable metonym for all things cruciverbal might be  – ‘the grid’?

11a Look inside bank for worm (7)
A three-letter word for ‘look’ or ‘appearance’ is contained by (‘inside’) a word meaning ‘[to] bank’ – in reality, these are ‘crossword synonyms’ which I doubt could ever be used interchangeably in real life but which have a shared meaning of ’tilt’. The answer is (4-3).

13a Something found under mail not about to be returned (5)
We had the same answer in Gemelo 41, where the clue was ‘Guide in stuffed jacket’. A simpler wordplay here has the letters NOT (from the clue) and a two-letter abbreviation of the Latin word for ‘about’ being reversed (‘returned’).

16a What Superman’s named cape that doesn’t use better silk cloth (5)
Superman’s real (yes, I do know…) surname (“What Superman’s named”) is followed by the letters CAPE from which a word meaning ‘[to] better’ has been removed (ie “that doesn’t use better”).

17a Old me adopting new name for fruit (9, 2 words)
The usual abbreviation for ‘old’ and the name of our setter, containing (‘adopting’) the usual abbreviation for ‘new’, are followed by the single-letter abbreviation for ‘name’, yielding the (4,5) answer. Given that phrases such as ‘geometrical progression’ and ‘judgement of Solomon’ are rather too long, this is Gemelo’s only realistic chance to use all of his letters in order, although in a 13×11 grid he could squeeze in ‘double-meaning’ and ‘complementing’, which include him (spread out 1-4-1) in reverse order. It is hard to think about clues which reference the setter’s name or pseudonym without being reminded of Dr Eddie Young’s (winning, I need hardly add) entry for AZ comp 1,775 (ROUGH-AND-READY) – “A hard tussle with Dr E. Young plainly winning”. I’m even prepared to overlook the plural verb ‘tussle’ as an anagram indicator, given that it’s something that the judge was known to allow and there aren’t too many alternatives (I can’t come up with one) which would work.

26a Blast of pan-pipes featuring in short form of jazz (9)
A six-letter word for ‘a type of Andean Pan-pipes’ (Chambers has the word hyphenated with an initial capital, while Collins gives ‘panpipes’ and ‘Pan pipes’) is contained by a four-letter word for a particular type of jazz, missing its last letter (‘short’). Based on the earlier New Orleans style, this form of jazz thrived in the middle part of the last century, and still remains popular, although sadly the death of  Chris Barber in 2021 (he had retired at the age of 89 two years earlier) meant that the last of the great British exponents of the genre had gone.

30a Devious excursion uncovered jelly (4)
Hands up everyone who got this from the definition and worked back to the six-letter word for a ‘devious excursion’ which loses its first and last letters (‘uncovered’). I’ll have to put my hand down now so I can carry on typing.

31a Melting ice mostly dogging a building designer carving out arch (10)
The word ICE without its last letter (‘mostly’) follows (‘dogging’, which may bring back memories for anyone who watched Peter Kay’s Car Share) a three-letter word often cryptically indicated by ‘a’ (as in ‘three pounds a punnet’) and a nine-letter word for a building designer without (‘carving out’) the consecutive letters ARCH.

35a Where scholars may read scripture in the morning paper (4)
A two-letter abbreviation for a school subject likely to involve reading scripture and a two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘in the morning’ combine to produce the answer.

Down

5d Time where preacher sat up and presented Lamentations (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘time’ and a three-letter word for a place where a preacher would have sat are reversed (‘up’). But surely a worshipper would sit there, the preacher being more at home in the location referenced in 1a? Nowadays, yes, but Chambers gives another meaning of the word as ‘formerly a place for a preacher or reader’, hence the past tense ‘sat’.

7d Drum kit almost breaking on account of drummer initially going the wrong way (5)
The word KIT missing its last letter (‘almost’) is contained by (‘breaking’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘on account of’ and the first letter (‘initially’) of ‘drummer’, the whole lot being reversed (‘going the wrong way’).

12d River dam’s last part taken out (6)
A charade of the three-letter name of a river in south-west England, the last letter of ‘dam’ (“dam’s last”), and the two-letter abbreviation for ‘part’.

18d Reporter‘s notorious, abruptly U-turning to right (8)
A six-letter word meaning ‘notorious’ or ‘downright’ (invariably in my experience used pejoratively) is shorn of its last letter (‘abruptly’) and reversed (‘U-turning’) ahead of the letters TO (from the clue) and the usual abbreviation for ‘right’.

21d Quickly win section of course (6)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘section’ is followed by a slang term meaning ‘of course’.

24d Very able to move? (6)
An unassuming sort of &lit, the usual abbreviation for ‘very’ preceding a word meaning ‘able to move [nimbly]’ to produce a completely different word meaning ‘having the ability to move about’.

27d Begin to split into opposing camps after politician quits (5)
An eight-letter word meaning ‘to split into opposing camps’ loses a three-letter informal term for a politician or political activist, only to be found in more recent editions of Chambers (‘after politician quits’).

(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 42

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/fece4c35-65d3-4703-8cec-8a42492f8620/file/puzzle.pdf. Note that 24d should be enumerated as (6, 2 words) rather than (6).

Solver difficulty rating

2.4 based on 41 votes (voting is now closed)

We had a significant disagreement over the difficulty of last week’s puzzle – your average rating of 2.6 was a long way short of my assessment of 3.6. This suggests either that you’re getting better at solving Gemelo’s puzzles or I’m getting worse. Or, very likely, both!

This puzzle was a bit of a mixture – some neat and well-constructed clues like 25a and 5d, but a few that looked to have been put together rather quickly (4a, 24d). Overall, I thought it was an enjoyable solve, and there were enough of the easier clue types (anagrams, hiddens) to provide entrées to all parts of the grid. One or two of the wordplays were certainly quite tricky to unravel even when you had the likely answer. I’ve put my assessment of its difficulty in a sealed envelope (well, I’ve written it down), and I look forward to seeing how your score for this puzzle compares both to that for G41 and to my rating.

Having had time to reflect on 24d, specifically the strange choice of first word, I wonder if it was originally ‘Manchester’ and at some relatively late point in the editorial process it was decided that the step from there to the first three letters of the answer was an unreasonable one; I cannot believe that Gemelo would have written the clue as it was published.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 23a, “Spooner’s become famous for some tennis (7, 2 words)”. The answer is a (3,4) spoonerism of a (3,4) phrase meaning ‘become famous’ or ‘acquire celebrity’. Spoonerisms are the Marmite of the crossword world, and if you ask a group of solvers to name their pet hates the spoonerism is sure to feature in more than one list. I’ve never really understood this – it seems to me that one spoonerism clue can add a bit of variety to a puzzle, particularly a blocked puzzle where there are several long, multi-word answers which otherwise will be clued using anagrams or by separately defining their component parts. However, in my view it is very important that the spoonerism:

(i) clearly ‘works’, such that swapping the two sounds gives the answer (as here)
(ii) is consonantal (as here) rather than vocalic (eg ‘bride sword’ for ‘broadside’)
(iii) is fairly indicated, eg “Spooner’s” (as here) rather than “don’s”
(iv) forms part of a coherent surface reading (as here) rather than the clue being just a definition and a ‘Spooner’ wordplay which have been stuck together without regard to the overall effect

Across

13a Long story requiring energy after introduction (5)
A four-letter word for a tale or story has the usual abbreviation for ‘energy’ inserted after its first letter (ie ‘requiring energy after introduction’).

17a Briefly disparage a Roman house (6)
A six-letter word meaning ‘disparage’, missing its last letter (‘briefly’), is followed by the letter A (from the clue).

19a String instrument originally covered in extremely erodent yellow pigment (7)
A familiar six-letter ‘string instrument’ has its first letter (‘originally’) replaced by (‘covered in’) the first and last letters (‘extremely’) of ‘erodent’. This is one of those clues where the surface reading has been optimized to the detriment of the wordplay – ‘covered by’ could certainly indicate one pair of letters being obscured by another; ‘covered with’ would probably be borderline; but ‘covered in’ (to my way of thinking, at least) doesn’t suggest that the thing covered has been rendered invisible.

25a Set forth conclusion of report in full (6)
The last letter (‘conclusion’) of ‘report’ is contained by a word meaning ‘full’ in the sense of ‘glutted’.

29a Ways to move Scottish children (5)
The first definition refers to ways of walking, while the second is Walter Scott’s version of a Scots word for children of the brattish variety (“A’ the ?????? o’ boys and lasses wad be crying at Madge Wildfire’s tail” – Heart of Midlothian)

30a Irish girl provided that idea (5)
A charade of a three-letter piece of Irish slang for a girl or young woman, especially a girlfriend (as in “that’s me ???”), and a word meaning ‘provided that’.

34a Vase that’s from ancient Egypt but can work (4)
A seven-letter word for an ancient Egyptian vase, except for (‘but’) the consecutive letters CAN. The vase is named after an ancient city, founded according to Homeric myth by Menelaus, and named after ???????, the pilot of his ship, who died there after being bitten by a serpent.  In that particular city, Osiris was worshipped in the form of a jar representing his body, topped with a lid representing the human head of the god. The unfortunate pilot also gave his name to the star (the second-brightest in the night sky) which was the rudder in the ancient constellation Argo and is now part of the group Carina.

Down

1d Certainly soft waste to give one locally (12, 5 words)
A three-letter word for a fool (‘[a] soft’) is followed by a four-letter word for the chief form in which nitrogenous waste is excreted, a three-letter word meaning ‘to give’ in the sense of ‘yield’ or ‘sink’, and a two-letter dialect form (‘locally’) of ‘one’.

2d Free country welcoming national poll (6)
A country with two capitals (well, only one actually, but what you think that is may depend on where you live), containing (‘welcoming’) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘national’, precedes a three-letter word meaning ‘with close-cut hair’ or ‘polled’. But surely, you say, ‘polled’ and ‘poll’ aren’t the same thing? They can be, as witnessed by the definition of the adjective ‘poll’ in Chambers, and the term ‘deed poll’, a deed made and executed by one party only, so called because the paper or parchment was ‘polled’ or cut even, not indented.

5d Avoided prison, not quite caught in act (8)
A five-letter slang term for prison (the name of a noted jail in Southwark, opened 1144, burned down 1780) without its last letter (‘not quite’) is contained by (‘caught in’) a four-letter word for an act (often of a heroic kind).

6d Senior rabbis with article in Times (6)
A two-letter (indefinite) article is contained by a word meaning ‘times’. If the result of the June poll is anything to go by, only 18% of solvers will have taken exception to ‘times’ being written as ‘Times’.

12d Approval somehow isn’t lost by government (10)
An anagram (‘somehow’) of ISNT is removed from (‘lost by’) a 14-letter word for a government.

18d What covered Roman soldier‘s face when climbing (5)
A three-letter word for the face (as seen in police photographs of their regular ‘clients’) and a two-letter word meaning (among other things) ‘when’ are reversed (‘climbing’).

26d Shadow Home Secretary going around centre for injured (5)
The past tense of a three-letter informal word meaning ‘injure’ (particularly used to describe an unpleasant but unspecified act of revenge – “I’m going to ??? you for this”) has the two-letter abbreviation for ‘Home Secretary’ surrounding its middle letter (‘going around centre’).

28d Chat about shape of Cheerios cereal (4)
A three-letter informal, and perhaps rather dated, word for ‘chat’, a shortened form of ‘all ??? and gaiters’, is reversed (‘about’) ahead of the letter which represents the shape of a single Cheerio. Determining whether it can legitimately be indicated by ‘shape of Cheerios [plural]’ is, as they say, left to the reader as an exercise.

(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 41

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/de89a49b-1e63-467a-bf03-afe8c6edbc1b/file/puzzle.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

2.6 based on 34 votes (voting is now closed)

You gave last week’s ‘Two truths and a lie’ an average difficulty rating of 3.1, suggesting that this was one of Gemelo’s less challenging ‘specials’. I rated it as 2.9 in terms of getting a complete grid, but I put that up to 3.2 for a complete solve, which included fully parsing all the ‘lie’ clues, so we are very much in agreement.

This puzzle seemed to me to have received more ‘polishing’ than some in recent times, and included several wordplays that were pretty tricky to resolve. Plenty of clever clues to enjoy, and, while there were a couple of indicators that struck me as borderline, when it came to relatively obscure definitions within the wordplay you could as usual be confident that Gemelo would wherever possible have supplied a definition that is given verbatim by Chambers (eg ‘white paint’ in 12a,  ‘daughter’ in 2d, ‘blindfold’ in 9d, etc). I did feel that there were rather too many indicators in the infinitive (‘to evict’ in 1a, ‘to adopt’ in 15a, along with three others) – there’s nothing inherently wrong with this device, but I do prefer to see it used sparingly.

Note that ‘Lousiana’ in 34a should read ‘Louisiana’, although perhaps Gemelo has been there and didn’t think much of it.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 31a, “American finally cut into flower with vigour (7)”. The wordplay here has the two-letter abbreviation for ‘United States’ (‘American’) and the last letter (‘finally’) of ‘cut’ put inside (‘into’) the name of a particular flower, which invariably makes me think of Lonnie Donegan’s My Old Man’s a Dustman: “My dustbin’s full of ??????. Well, throw them away then! I can’t, ????’s wearing them.”

The point of interest is the insertion indicator ‘into’. The principle of an insertion indicator is that it suggests a state where one component is contained by another,  as in “English in pub suffer” for BEAR. The indicator in this example could equally well be ‘inside’, but I don’t think that ‘English into pub’ is valid; in real life, the only verb that can be inferred in such a phrase is an inflexion of ‘to be’, so ‘English is/are into pub’, but while this  might suggest an enthusiasm for the pub, it certainly doesn’t indicate containment by it. Something like ‘going into’ or ‘put into’ is required, but these verbal forms cannot reasonably be inferred.  For the clue here, I would prefer something like “American beginning to tackle flower borders with vigour”.

Across

1a Do nothing to evict quiet relative (6)
An eight-letter word meaning ‘to stop changing or progressing’ is deprived of (‘to evict’) a two-letter interjection meaning ‘[be] quiet[!]’, perhaps a shortened form of ‘whist’ – or ‘wheest’, as the Scots have it.

12a One pressed shirt with white paint tipped on it (7)
A three-letter informal term for a particular type of informal shirt has a reversal (‘tipped’) of a word for ‘white paint for the face’ put in front of (‘on’) it. I ‘m not convinced that ‘tipped’ can legitimately indicate reversal in an across clue, though.

17a Ed’s clever book opening well (5)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘book’ is put inside (‘opening’) a word for ‘well’ which is most often seen in combination with ‘hearty’. Needless to say, ‘Ed’ is Ed Spenser.

24a King, perhaps, to take pieces a lot (5)
The ‘chess and cards’ abbreviation for king precedes a word that means ‘to take [up] pieces’, where ‘pieces’ are guns, and the letter A (from the clue). The last definition of the answer in Chambers is the relevant one.

28a Fail to cook enough ginger on the counter to cut open (7)
A three-letter word for ‘ginger’ (as a hair colour) is reversed (‘on the counter’) inside (‘to cut’) a word meaning ‘[to] open’, as one might open a parcel.

30a People attempt Native American language around part of California (8)
A three-letter word for an attempt (“I’ll give it a ???”) is followed by a three-letter Native American language (or an Australian pick-up truck) containing (‘around’) the two letters representing a part of California that will be familiar to all.

32a What can be read as being “Satanic” in manuscript? (5)
I’m not sure that &lit (‘all in one’) clues are Gemelo’s strongest suit, and this one hasn’t persuaded me otherwise. A three-letter word which can mean ‘evil’ (‘Satanic’) is contained by the two-letter abbreviation for ‘manuscript’. The clue as a whole is a reference to William Blake’s poem And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time, which does not exist as a manuscript, having been relief-etched by Blake as part of the preface to his work Milton.

34a Boxers, maybe reds, skipping town in Lousiana (6)
A ten-letter word for red wines associated with a particular area of France loses (‘skipping’) an informal US (‘in Louisiana’) term for a town.

Down

3d Guide in stuffed jacket (5)
A (3,2) phrasal verb meaning ‘to exert an influence over’ (‘guide’) leads directly to the answer.

4d What covers onion up in one paste (6)
A three-letter word for an item of headgear (ie ‘what covers onion’) is reversed (‘up’) ahead of IN (from the clue) and the Roman numeral representing ‘one’.

5d Armour-wearer in American Psycho screened by Channel One at first (9)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘American’ is followed by a three-letter adjective answering to ‘psycho’, contained (‘screened’) by a four-letter word for a channel (typically one carrying water) and the first letter (‘at first’) of ‘One’.

7d Express willingness to shift electronic music equipment, in departure for Broadway? (7)
A five-letter word meaning ‘express willingness’ (or ‘propose to give’), losing (‘to shift’) the usual abbreviation for ‘electronic’, combines with a short form of a nine-letter word for a piece of equipment used to make sounds louder to produce a (3-4), ‘chiefly North American’, term for ‘an exit road from a main thoroughfare’, which is also the name of a fine album by the Pat Metheny Group.

9d Blindfold wrapped around western scarecrow once (5)
One of those clues where you need to know either the ‘obsolete or dialect’ word for a scarecrow or the four-letter word meaning ‘to blindfold’ which contains (‘around’) the usual abbreviation for ‘western’, or a search in Chambers may be indicated. The ‘blindfold’ word could be cryptically indicated by ‘observe lake’.

15d Dance away with triumphant shout (9)
A 3+3+3 charade of a word meaning ‘distant’ or ‘away’ (the latter might seem a stretch, but the required sense is there in Chambers under the entry for ‘away’), a word meaning ‘with’, and the sort of triumphant shout that might greet a goal for either team in New Jersey later today.

23d New financial institution shortly experiencing rise and fall (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘new’ and a six-letter word for ‘a financial institution owned by its customers’, without its last letter (‘shortly’), are reversed (‘experiencing a rise’). The definition is craftily disguised.

29d Elizabeth‘s French degree (4)
The wordplay leads to a (1,2,1) abbreviation of a degree awarded in France. The word in the middle is an archaic contraction of the preposition ‘en’ and the article ‘les’, so it translates as ‘Bachelor of the Sciences’.

(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 40 Two truths and a lie

Solver difficulty rating

3.1 based on 35 votes (voting is now closed)

Thanks to everyone who gave their view on Gemelo 39 – the average of the 35 difficulty ratings was 2.5, right in the middle of the spectrum. I’ve started making a note of my own assessment as soon as I complete the solve: my rating for G39 was 2.4, so we are in agreement!

I must confess to being slightly underwhelmed by this ‘special’, the main problem I think being that the definitions in the ‘lie’ clues were sufficient to confirm the antonym without the need to solve the clues. The normal clues were easier than those in the average Gemelo ‘plain’, which meant that some of them lacked the craftiness which we have come to expect from the G-man. That said, it was a perfectly good crossword, and perhaps I’m being a little harsh on it because I didn’t get my eight hours last night due to a certain sporting event (clue: “Even Haaland couldn’t get them there – families devastated around Norway (9)”).  I’ll be interested to hear what you thought of it

At the end of these notes I have listed the ‘lie’ clues together with the lengths of their answers.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 8d, “Drunk soldiers shunning institute without a bar (7)”. The answer is an anagram (‘drunk’) of SOLDIERS without (‘shunning’) the usual abbreviation for ‘institute’. The point of interest is the word ‘shunning’, which belongs to a small group of indicators including ‘avoiding’, ‘snubbing’ and ‘spurning’. In the list of deletion indicators on this site, ‘avoiding’ is shown as being valid for either expulsion (‘X avoiding Y’ = X-Y) or departure (‘Y avoiding X’ = X-Y), while the others are shown as indicating departure only. Leaving aside obsolete senses of the words, this feels inconsistent, since they all mean pretty much the same thing. It seems to me that they should be treated similarly to ‘escaping’, ie  the thing doing the avoiding is staying away from the thing avoided, and they are therefore departure indicators. I’m not convinced that (in cruciverbal terms) a longer string can ‘avoid’ (‘shun’ etc) a shorter one, since the verb carries no suggestion of anything being cast out – one can avoid a particular pub, but the pub cannot avoid you. My current thinking is to tidy things up at the next round of data updates by changing ‘avoiding’ to be a departure-only indicator. Incidentally, while ‘rebuffing’ might on the face of it seem to belong to the same group, Chambers gives a meaning of ‘to repulse or reject’ to go along with ‘to snub’, so it is surely valid for both expulsion and departure.

Across

11a Predator in court immediately left (7, 2 words)
A charade of a three-letter word for a court (and for barristers or advocates collectively), a familiar three-letter word meaning ‘immediately’, and the usual abbreviation for ‘left’. The answer is (4,3).

12a Who’s not decent and not won over Colt? (7, 2 words)
A reversal of a three-letter word meaning ‘and not’ and the abbreviation for ‘won’ (the Korean monetary unit) is followed by a three-letter word for something exemplified by a Colt Peacemaker, Python, or M1911. The answer is (5,2) and contains an apostrophe.

14a What’s inserted internally, removing restrictions? (5)
In this &lit clue you can take your pick from two seven-letter words for something that is inserted internally; they differ only in the first letter, and the first and last letters must be deleted (‘removing restrictions’) in order to produce the (hyphenated) answer, loosely defined by the whole clue. I think it’s a fair bet that Gemelo had the P-word in mind.

24a Impassivity of Troy surrounded by strength (12)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘troy’ is contained (‘surrounded’) by an eight-letter word for ‘strength’ or ‘firmness’.

26a Elite avoiding low-down venture (3)
I could equally well have chosen this as the example for Setters’ Corner, since a six-letter word for the elite (often of the landed variety) loses (‘avoiding’, here used to signal expulsion) a three-letter word for ‘low-down’ that often appears in cryptics indicated by ‘information’ or ‘dope’.

29a Mexican’s certainly taking to American colonnades (5)
A two-letter word of agreement that might be heard in Mexico (although I’m not sure that it’s used on its own there very often) contains (‘taking’) the letters TO (from the clue) and the single-letter abbreviation for ‘American’.

31a Fuss when someone at the table covers up American banquets (7)
The six-letter answer is produced when the designation of one of the players at the bridge table replaces (‘covers up’) the two characters representing ‘American’ in the word FUSS. 

33a Ringing tone‘s complex sound (5)
A double-definition clue, where Chambers gives one word as ‘ringing sound’ and the other as ‘complex tone’ – Gemelo has swapped them round just to confuse us.

Down

1d Welcome growth hormone frequently saving lean person looking for progress (9)
A two-letter informal word of greeting, often seen in emails, and the abbreviation for ‘growth hormone’ are followed by the two-letter abbreviation for ‘frequently’ containing (‘saving’) a three-letter word meaning ‘lean’ or ‘recline’. The answer is (4-5).

3d Where Italian might dip two fingers (5)
The three-letter informal name for the sea wherein an Italian might take a dip is followed by the Roman numerals representing ‘two’.

6d Winds may not, at first, impair a flowering plant (12)
A six-letter word for winds ‘blowing toward the thermal equator and deflected westward by the eastward rotation of the earth’ precedes a four-letter word meaning ‘may not’, the first letter (‘at first’) of ‘impair’, and the letter A (from the clue).

9d Pool clothing with one’s sons, socially acceptable during rides (9)
The usual abbreviation for ‘with’, a two-letter word meaning “one’s” (as in “One’s presently residing at Windsor Castle”) , the usual abbreviation for ‘sons’, and the single-letter term coined by Alan Ross to describe socially acceptable language are all contained by (‘during’) a four-letter word meaning ‘rides’ or ‘has a seat on’.

22d Get former convict to fall short (6)
An obsolete seven-letter word meaning ‘[to] convict’ loses its last letter (‘to fall short’), the result being a familiar word meaning ‘get’ or ‘reach’.

27d In the past, did pound certainly save Oxford University? (4)
A (3,3) phrase meaning ‘certainly’ without (‘save’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘Oxford University’ yields a four-letter obsolete word. But this word is a past participle, not a past tense, so although it can mean ‘pounded’ (as in ‘was pounded’) it can’t mean ‘did pound’. The phrase here always makes me thing of the game show hosted at its peak by Matthew Kelly, where contestants were invited to demonstrate their somewhat unusual skills to the viewing public. The challenge I remember best was the two German lads who were blindfolded and had to identify the make and model of cars by hearing their doors being closed (they scored five out of five); I couldn’t find a clip of that one online, but I found another pair of Germans (no coincidence – the British show was based on the German original Wetten, Dass…?) whose talents were arguably even wackier.

28d Pair following cue in God of War (4)
A clever clue, where the wordplay yields the names of the two letters following Q (‘cue’) in the alphabet.

(definitions are underlined; definitions of opposites are shown in red)

The Lies

Across: 6 (7 letters); 12 (7, 2 words, apostrophe); 18 (13); 24 (9); 31 (6); 32 (6).
Down: 2 (4); 4 (4); 7 (5); 13 (3); 21 (6); 25 (8);