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 32

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/d245187e-bd90-4fb4-a969-8bf2cd7acd4d/file/puzzle.pdf.

The notes for solvers read: “The Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended. One answer is an abbreviation.“

Solver difficulty rating

1.8 based on 42 votes (voting is now closed)

This week’s puzzle was a cruciverbal horse of a very different colour, and I suspect that in consequence we will see the biggest gap in difficulty ratings yet between any pair of consecutive Gemelos. It struck me as being serviceable, but distinctly lacking in inspiration (as witnessed by 25a and 35a among others). As correspondent Jim points out, the enumeration for 1d should read ’12, 2 words’.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 31a, “Dessert eaten by visitor tonight (7)”. A very straightforward ‘hidden’ clue where the answer, an Italian frozen dessert, is contained by the words ‘visitor tonight’. Nothing to see here? Well, it might appear that any valid containment/insertion indicator could be used in such a clue, but I don’t believe this is so. In the relevant section of The Setting Room, we suggest that in ‘hidden’ clues “many Container and Contents Indicators can be used; the important thing is to select those which describe a steady state rather than a single action, so ‘held by’ is good, but ‘grabbed by’ is not. The clue “Man held by cha-cha partner (4)” works nicely for CHAP, while “Man grabbed by cha-cha partner (4)” doesn’t – for as long as the CHA-CHA PARTNER has existed, the CHAP has been (held) there.” Similarly, ‘eaten by’ indicates a single action, and therefore isn’t – strictly speaking – valid, while ‘inside’ (or, perhaps, ‘enjoyed by’) would describe a persistent state.

Across 

4a Like RIP TORN at chippie! (9)
A film buff like Gemelo would have liked the idea of the American actor (Elmore Rual) ‘Rip’ Torn deceptively straddling the definition and wordplay, but since the cryptic reading requires his first name to appear in capitals, there was little alternative but to put his surname in capitals too – whilst adding unwarranted capitals to a word is considered acceptable, deceptively removing them, eg writing ‘nice’ when you mean ‘Nice’, is not allowed). The wordplay involves an anagram (‘torn’) of AT CHIPPIE.

11a How one may stand a book about e.g. Wilde, Oscar (6)
The letter A (from the clue) and the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘book’ contain (‘about’) the ‘Wilde’ who was a pop star in the 1980s before launching a parallel career as a garden designer, in which role she was responsible (together with Richard Lucas) for the ‘Cumbrian Fellside Garden’ that won a Gold award at the 2005 Chelsea Flower Show. The whole lot is followed by the letter corresponding to ‘Oscar’ in the Police Alphabet. I’m not sure whether one can actually ‘stand ??????’, but the definition of the answer in Chambers suggests that it’s possible, so no problem there. The word itself is one of those for which a number of etymologies have been proposed, none of them convincing; the earliest example recorded by OED shows the expression as ‘in kenebowe’.

14a Antique grey amulet with either half removed (4)
An eight-letter word for ‘an African charm, amulet or spell’ has either its first or second half removed (they are the same) to produce a word shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’, hence the ‘antique’.

15a Country club admitting Gemelo? It doesn’t fly (4)
The two-letter abbreviation for ‘European Union’ contains (‘admitting’) the two-letter pronoun used objectively by Gemelo, the result being an alternative spelling of a creature that doesn’t fly but, as Michael Parkinson found out to his cost, does bite. I think that ‘Country club’ is perhaps a slight stretch, but crosswords would be pretty dull if setters weren’t allowed a bit of licence now and then.

19a Performer returned rubbish Chaplin prop? (7)
A reversal (‘returned’) of a three-letter word for ‘rubbish’ or ‘nonsense’ and the sort of thing typically carried by Charlie Chaplin.

25a Sympathiser who might drop bread into water? (10)
The ‘bread’ that might be dropped into the water is of the pecuniary sort, and would be expected to bring good luck, at least to the next person who raised the bucket.

29a Asian coppers with mass appeal after scrapping external post (4)
An eight-letter word meaning ‘with mass appeal’ has the letters POST removed from the outside (ie ‘after scrapping external post’). The coppers are from Afghanistan.

34a Clamp that is trapping fairly soft bone (6)
There’s an Italian theme to this wordplay, where the two-letter abbreviation of the Latin phrase meaning ‘that is’ contains (‘trapping’) the two-letter abbreviation of the musical term meaning ‘moderately soft’ and the two-letter anatomical term for a bone, a word taken directly from Latin. Looking up ‘clamp’ in Chambers will confirm the accuracy of the definition.

35a Small computers other than Kindle products? (9)
A three-letter word meaning ‘other than’ is followed by a (1-5) term for the sorts of thing that might be read on a Kindle.

Down

3d Golf club faction under discussion (5)
A homophone (‘under discussion’) for a word meaning ‘a faction’ or ‘an exclusive group of people’ yields something that would have been in your bag along with your niblick and your spoon (not to mention your baffy and your bulger). I could accept ‘in discussion’ to indicate the homophone, but ‘under discussion’ is surely an example of the surface reading being improved to the fatal detriment of the cryptic interpretation.

4d In high definition this organ would be picked up (3)
When placed inside the two-letter abbreviation for ‘high definition’ the answer would produce a five-letter word meaning ‘picked up’

6d Where mausoleum is beneath brown terracotta figure (7)
The four-letter name of a place in India which is the site of a mausoleum (‘where mausoleum is’) follows (‘beneath’) a crossword regular meaning ‘brown’ . There are a great many mausoleums in the world, and therefore I would have liked to see some sort of qualification, such as ‘magnificent’, to indicate that this is not just a mausoleum, it’s the Taj Mahal.

7d Detective beginning to grill wife when husband eats from trough? (7)
A mega-charade of the two-letter abbreviation for the sort of detective exemplified by Magnum, the first letter of (‘beginning to’) ‘grill’, the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘wife’, a two-letter word meaning ‘when’, and the usual abbreviation for ‘husband’. Phew!

17d Italian football team picked up extremely famous person with no ethics (9)
The four-letter name of the Italian football team whose roll of honour is probably headed by Francesco Totti (aka ‘Er Bimbo di Oro‘) is reversed (‘picked up’) ahead of a (1-4) adjective applied to a celebrity of the most prominent kind.

27d Russian measure supplanting volt at first (4)
A five-letter Russian measure of length is deprived of (‘supplanting’) the usual abbreviation for ‘volt’. These days, ‘supplant’ invariably carries a sense of forcible replacement, but Chambers gives ‘oust’ as a synonym; the OED suggests that in reality the ‘expulsion-only’ meanings are ‘obsolete’, ‘rare’, or both.

28d Retired actor ignoring his three performers (4)
A seven-letter archaic (‘retired’) term for an actor loses (‘ignoring’) the consecutive letters HIS (from the clue).

(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 31 – ‘Two Faces’

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/be48e2b9-5791-45a0-a150-5decfdfe9e15/file/puzzle.pdf.

The special instructions read:

Two Faces – Ambiguity in clues is a fascination of mine. In this puzzle, each clue gives an answer to its own entry, but also to a later entry of the same length. Someone once said this kind of puzzle is like the optical illusion of two faces and a vase – change how you look at each clue, and something completely different appears.

Solver difficulty rating

4.8 based on 41 votes (voting is now closed)

This puzzle was a remarkable achievement; whether you find solving it highly entertaining or a bit of a trial I will be interested to hear. I certainly would be surprised if your difficulty rating is lower than the 3.3 received by last week’s puzzle. Solving (including parsing all the clues twice, as it were) and blogging the crossword in my allocated time window was a challenge, but I was unable to suppress a laugh when I worked out the wordplay for the second answer to 4d. I could have picked out pretty much every clue for comment; below I have covered a few (highlighting both definitions, in line with the note underneath the comments) and included at the end a checklist of where the second entry for each clue goes in the grid. Please ask if you are unsure about the parsing of any other clues – the requirement to yield a second answer inevitably meant that both cryptic readings were stretched out of shape, sometimes to breaking point.

Note that there are only two eight-letter entries (clue 12a), and one is shown as ‘2 words’, so if you can get either answer you can put it straight in the grid. There are also only two twelve-letter entries, two ten-letter entries (both ‘2 words’) and two three-letter entries. Remember that the clue always appears at the earlier of the possible two positions – this means, in the extreme instance, that the clue at 27d can only be for the entries at 27d and 28d.

Setters’ Corner: I gave some thought a while ago to the possibility of producing a puzzle on these lines. I concluded that it was probably not going to be feasible, and certainly wasn’t going to be achievable using the sort of clues that I would want to write. Gemelo has demonstrated that it is possible, but this puzzle hasn’t made me regret not giving it a go – I’m happy that the fearsome mountain has been conquered, and I’m also happy that it wasn’t me that had to make the ascent. How much better, though, would this puzzle have been if at the end of it we had been challenged to write a clue of the same type for a word selected by Gemelo plus a word of our own choice? Roll on the new clue-writing comp, where his cleverness will be given extra purpose.

Across

1a Change or e.g. flip half removed feature of Adrian Meronk’s course? (6)
The two clues are parsed in the same way except that in [A] the fodder to be rearranged (indicated by the imperative verb ‘change’) is OR EG plus FLIP with the second half removed, and in [B] it is OR EG plus FLIP with the first half removed. Adrian Meronk is a Polish sportsperson of the drivin’, chippin’ and putttin’ kind.

6a One that’s successfully run through firm skin of toro after running around, and apples, each cored and stewed? (6)
A: The words AND and APPLES have their central letter or letters removed (‘cored’) before being jumbled (‘stewed’). B: The two-letter abbreviation for someone that’s successfully run for parliament is put inside (‘through’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘company’ (rather too indirect for my liking) and a reversal (‘after running around’) of the outer letters (‘skin’) of ‘toro’.

12a Left-hand sides of some printed editions, and king with means of escape, perhaps to get on record? (8)
A: The wordplay has the single-letter regal abbreviation for ‘king’ and a three-letter word (all capitals) representing an appeal for help (‘means of escape, perhaps’) containing (‘to get’) a four-letter word meaning ‘on record’, as in ‘the biggest parsnip on record’. B: The first letters (‘left-hand sides’) of five words in the clue are followed by a three-letter word for a means of escape, as in ‘That gives me an ???’.

18a What’s shortly getting loose garments on plump? Article randomly inked, it’s concealing initiator of trouble (10, 2 words)
A: A single-letter ‘article’ is followed by an anagram (‘randomly’) of INKED ITS containing (‘concealing’) the first letter (‘initiator’) of ‘trouble’; the answer is (6,4). B: A six-letter word meaning ‘putting loose garments on’ deprived of its last letter (‘shortly’) follows (‘on’) a five-letter word meaning ‘plump’; the answer is (5,5).

19a Tie where one goes for horses, only using odds for a few? (5)
A: The word TIE has the Roman numeral representing ‘one’ replaced by the first, third and fifth letters of ‘horses’ (ie ‘one goes for horses, using only odds’). B: The wordplay is a second definition of a sort, being the name of a famous English racecourse, although the last six words of the clue add nothing to this reading.

31a What’s lost and has gone from Dear Hansen – one striking on wing? (4)
A: The letters AND HAS when rearranged (‘lost’) are removed (in the order in which they occur) from DEAR HANSEN to leave the answer. B: The word ONE (from the clue) missing (‘striking’) ON is followed by a three-letter word for a wing (also a small commercial vehicle). The answer is the word missing from the three-word title of an American musical.

Down

4d What’s spoken by Persian, briefly following before (from old language) returning, is R (5)
The single-letter abbreviations for ‘following’ (‘briefly following’) and ‘before’ (from the Latin ‘ante’, hence ‘from old language’) are followed by a reversal (‘returning’) of IS R. B: The sound that you might associate with a Persian cat (ie “what’s spoken by Persian”) without its last letter (‘briefly’) comes after (‘following’) a reversal (‘returning’) of an archaic (ie ‘from old language’) word meaning ‘before’.

14d Perhaps blazing star one at left and right stops, with sensei’s clothing lifted (7)
A reversal (‘lifted’) of a familiar three-letter star with the first and last letters of ‘one’ inside (ie ‘[that] one at left and right stops’) plus a two-letter word for a judo or karate costume (“sensei’s clothing’). B: The Roman numeral representing ‘one’ and the word AT, inside the usual abbreviations for ‘left’ and ‘right’ (ie ‘[that] left and right stops’, ‘stops’ in this reading being used as a containment indicator), with a reversal ‘lifted’ of the first and last letters (‘clothing’) of ‘sensei’ tacked onto the end.

(definitions of entries at the numbered locations are underlined; definitions of second entries are in red)

Locations of second entries

The second entry for the clue labelled 1a is at 33a; 6a – 22a; 11a – 3d; 12a – 30a; 13a – 15d; 17a – 26a; 18a – 24a; 19a – 8d; 21a – 32a; 23a – 25d; 29a – 10d; 31a – 6d; 2d – 9d; 4d – 24d; 5d – 21d; 7d – 20d; 14d – 16d; 27d – 28d.

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 30 Plain

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/fe077ba5-9912-4369-94fe-08acd0cd9e76/file/puzzle.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

3.3 based on 41 votes (voting is now closed)

Your average difficulty rating for G29 was 2.6 (43 votes), which was almost a full point down on the (tough, in my view) G28, and confirmed my view that this fine puzzle was pitched at the right level for a barred ‘plain’.

This was another excellent puzzle, with some very nice surfaces and plenty of clever misdirection; I will be interested to see how you rate it toughness-wise in comparison to G29 (2.6) and G28 (3.5). Incidentally, the subject of undesirable repetition came up in regard to last week’s Azed puzzle, where, for instance, JE and STENO were repeated, the former in wordplays and the latter in answers; the word ‘dropping’ appears, somewhat unusually, in three separate clues in today’s puzzle, but in each instance the word has a different significance as far as the cryptic reading of the clue is concerned, and hence there is no issue whatsoever.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clues 33a, “Engineers welcoming – after changing bit – Avon Gorge (6)”, and 7d, “Wait outside possibly reading The Woman in White? (5)”. In the first of these,  the familiar two-letter abbreviation indicated by ‘engineers’ contains (‘welcoming’) the word AVON (from the clue) with one letter changed; in the second, a four-letter word meaning ‘wait’ (almost invariably, except in Scotland, followed by “one’s time”) contains (‘outside’) a single letter indicated by ‘possibly reading’. What these clues have in common are the sort of neat touches that help to elevate a puzzle above the mundane – the ‘changing bit’ indicates a 0 being changed to a 1, or vice versa, while the ‘possibly reading’ refers to the Three R’s, reading, writing and arithmetic (in the words of Ralph Wiggum, “Me fail English? That’s unpossible”). Do these constructions stand up to close analysis? Suffice to say that in my view neither is close to being unfair, but both add a little extra to the crossword – I feel sure that Azed would approve.

Across

1a Slate size of incorporated jam sandwiches (8)
The three-letter abbreviation for ‘incorporated’ is ‘sandwiched’ by a five-letter verb meaning ‘squeeze’ or ‘jam’. I didn’t remember (or had never encountered) the particular size of slate required here, but I was helped by knowing that ‘queens’ were big ones.  My first Latin master drummed into us that every common noun ending in ‘-as’ (eg ‘veritas’, ‘libertas’, the ‘a’ being long, as in ‘class’) was of the feminine gender, via the memorable tag line  “all -ases are feminine”, and it seems that the same can be said of nearly all Welsh slate sizes, which include ‘wide countesses’ and ‘broad ladies’.

10a Founder of US state directed towards flag (6)
The four-letter surname of a famous Quaker who founded a US province (now one of the 50 states) is followed by a two-letter word meaning ‘directed towards’. King Charles II owed the founder’s late father (Admiral William) a few quid, a debt which he discharged by transferring in 1681 a little patch of land in North America to the chap here, who at a stroke became the world’s largest private, non-royal landowner. The recipient initially wanted to call his territory ‘New Wales’, with the Latin word for ‘forests’ being a possible alternative. The king didn’t think much of ‘New Wales’, and decided on the Latin word, prefixed, in honour of the founder’s father, with the Admiral’s surname. He could not be prevailed upon to omit this prefix, much to the chagrin of the son, a modest man who reasonably enough assumed that people would think he had named his modest 45,000 or so square miles after himself.

12a Join network, needing preliminary acceptance (7)
A four-letter word for a network of the anatomical kind follows the commercial abbreviation for ‘acceptance’ (ie ‘needing preliminary acceptance’).

14a Long story short, they’re found in skeletons (4)
The long story which must be made ‘short’ by the removal of its last letter is any such tale on the lines of Homer’s epic about the siege of Troy.

28a Otter’s dropping fish; keeping cool (7)
The sort of five-letter fish which might be proverbially used to variously catch a mackerel, a herring or a whale (lordy!) contains (‘keeping’) a two-letter word for ‘cool’ in its sense of ‘fashionable’.

31a Husbands no longer extend warning about daughter (7)
A two-letter word meaning ‘extend’ (as in ‘the path extends from the gateway to the front door’) is followed by a four-letter ‘warning’ containing the usual abbreviation for ‘daughter’. The required sense of the answer is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic’, hence the ‘no longer’.

32a New means of expression, having lost first stone (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘new’ precedes a six-letter word for a means of expression or an opening through which something such as a gas can escape, deprived of its initial letter (‘having lost first’).

34a Mock Constantine’s grass (4)
A double-definition clue, where ‘mock’ seems perhaps a little mild for the slang word meaning ‘to treat with contempt’, while ‘Constantine’ is a place rather than a person.

Down

5d Watch faceless fairy, ready to come in? (8, 2 words)
A six-letter word for a watch or watchman (as well as a period of watch duty, take your pick) without its first letter (‘faceless’) combines with a three-letter French word for a fairy to produce the (5,3) answer. ‘Ready’ in the definition has the sense of ‘ready money’.

6d Right idiots, rolling drunk (6)
The two-letter informal word meaning ‘[all] right’ and a four-letter word for the sort of idiots that a nurse used to go round schools looking for are reversed (‘rolling’).

13d Birdbrain lacking help from wings? (4)
A clever &lit, which has a seven-letter word for a person ‘lacking intelligence or sense’ losing (‘lacking’) a familiar three-letter word for ‘help’ from its outside, the result being a creature with the brain of a bird which doesn’t receive much help from its wings when it comes to getting off the ground.

15d What connects, briefly, French physicist & French novelist? (9)
Another &lit of sorts, perhaps rather less neat than 13d. The surname of the French physicist after whom the SI unit of electric current is named, missing its last letter (‘briefly’), is followed by the patronyme de plume  of the French author also known as Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil.

18d Stroke, roughly, tailless rats (8)
A five-letter word for a characteristic feature or (less commonly) a stroke is followed by a (2,2) phrase meaning ‘roughly’ or ‘approximately’, from which the last letter has been removed (‘tailless’).

19d Disciple dropping ad revenue for property owner (8, 2 words)
An eight-letter word for a disciple has the consecutive letters AD moved downwards (‘dropping’) in order to produce the (4,4) solution.

25d Screechers dropping resistance with no loud cries (5)
A (4,4) term for a particular group of screechers (perhaps ‘hooters’ would be fairer to their vocal skills) loses (‘dropping’) the usual abbreviation for ‘resistance’ and the consecutive letters NO (from the clue).

27d What might happen when sleeping with Italian, in brief (5)
A three-letter abbreviation for a phenomenon which accompanies particular phases of sleep (‘What might happen when sleeping’) and the usual abbreviation for the sort of ‘Italian’ that used to be very popular with gin combine to produce the answer. I did idly wonder how this inventive clue might be modified to indicate the plural of the solution here, but quickly thought better of it.

(definitions are underlined)