Notes for Gemelo 25
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 25
This puzzle is available at https://cdn.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/media/documents/obs.GEMELO.20260222.pdf.
Solver difficulty rating
2.3 based on 39 votes (voting is now closed)
Thanks to all those who gave a rating for last week’s special based on the letter A – the average, derived from 49 votes, was a chunky 3.8, which I think reflected in particular the almost complete absence of any obvious toeholds.
For my money, Gemelo’s return to unconstrained mode resulted in a much more entertaining puzzle, with a good variety of clues. Some tricky ones, for sure, but also a few easier ones to get us started. I’ll be interested to see how solvers rate it in comparison with last week’s offering. When it came to picking out the clues for these notes I had plenty to choose from, so if there any not shown below which you would like me to comment on, just let me know.
Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 22d, “Worcester’s most convenient way to support organ installed by Edward Elgar, originally (6)”. Here the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘street’ follows (‘to support’) the two-letter abbreviation for the pink organ favoured by those with an interest in economic rather than showbiz affairs contained (‘installed’) by the first letters (‘originally’) of ‘Edward Elgar’. The reason for picking out this clue is that it features a particular bête noire of mine, the indirect abbreviation (or ‘indir’). ‘Way’ is perfectly acceptable for ‘street’, and ‘street’ is valid for ST, but a way is not a ST. Abbreviations come in two flavours: some are very much part of the language, while others are used only in writing, and then in a specific context. The abbreviation CD, for instance, falls into the former group – you would say “I’ve got that CD” rather than “I’ve got that compact disc”, and abbreviations like CD and GP have a life of their own, such that to all intents and purposes they are nouns (and they are given as such by Collins, although not by Chambers). I have no problem with ‘recording medium’ for CD or ‘doctor’ for GP. The other class of abbreviations have restricted scope and are not part of the language – D for ‘diamonds’ relates specifically to playing cards, and not even a bridge player would say “I played the ace of D”. Similarly, abbreviations like RD and ST relate specifically to maps (and thus addresses), and would never be used in any other context, for example “He lives in my St”. I strongly believe that this type of abbreviation should be indicated only by using the unabbreviated form.
Across
9a Nothing, say, stopping one being mouthy? (7)
The usual single-letter representation of ‘nothing’ is followed by a five-letter word meaning ‘say’ containing (‘stopping’) the Roman numeral representing ‘one’. The definition is somewhat whimsical (hence the question mark). OED gives a great many meanings for the verb ‘stop’, but I’m not sure that any of them justify its use as a containment (rather than an insertion) indicator.
12a Order of business that’s lost me (4)
A six-letter word for “one’s calling or business” is deprived of (“that’s lost”) the consecutive letters ME (from the clue). The definition might feel slightly off the mark, but Chambers does give ‘order’ as (among many other things) ‘grade, degree, rank or position, especially in a hierarchy’, so I think it’s fine.
14a Running backwards, glimpse local shelving book (6)
A reversal (‘backwards’) of a four-letter word for the sort of glance that might be sneaky and a three-letter word for a ‘local’ (such as the Queen Vic) missing (‘shelving’) the usual abbreviation for ‘book’. The answer often refers these days to the cost associated with running something, but it can also describe the running itself.
18a Experts in women’s clothing at parade around square (11, 2 words)
The three-letter article of women’s clothing often (too often, some might say) indicated by ‘support’ is followed by a two-letter preposition with a similar meaning to ‘at’ when followed by a location (typically one or the other is appropriate in any given situation) and a five-letter word meaning ‘[to] parade’ as a peacock might do containing (‘around’) the usual abbreviation for ‘square’. The answer is (6,5).
20a Shakespeare’s vague fellow can notice a lot (11)
A four-letter word for ‘[the] can’, with similarly transatlantic provenance, is followed by a two-letter ‘notice’ (“Bill Stickers will be Prosecuted” / “Bill Stickers is innocent”) and ‘a lot’ of sheets of paper. The answer is hyphenated 4-1-6.
23a Some brought round rival case of chocolate beer (8, 3 words)
A reversal (‘brought round’) of a three-letter word for a rival or enemy, the first and last letters (‘case’) of ‘chocolate’, and the three-letter abbreviation for a strong pale ale specially formulated to survive the long sea voyage to India, where the heat made local brewing impractical in the late eighteenth century.
26a Much loved black Indo European family touring island (8)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘black’ and the abbreviation for ‘Indo-European’ are followed by a word for an appellation which can also mean ‘a family or clan’ containing (‘touring’, not a favourite of mine) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘island’. The answer is hyphenated 4-4, and its definition should have been qualified with ‘French’ or the like, since it appears under a headword shown as ‘French’. This means that it has not been assimilated into the English language, and such words and phrases, just like those shown as being Scottish (cf ‘auld’), need to flagged as such when used as answers.
29a Unusual place for pig’s second trough (4)
A charade of the usual abbreviation for ‘second’ and a three-letter word for an inclined trough used for washing ore furnishes two possible answers, and the letter by which the two differ is unchecked. One is an ‘old spelling’ of the familiar three-letter word for a pig’s place, and the other is shown as a rare spelling, so it is surely the variant with a Y which Gemelo intends us to select. I have a feeling that he may not have spotted the old spelling, which is not cross-referenced under the three-letter headword, since one could make a good case for either answer fitting the bill.
30a Cabbage one found in alley (4)
A double definition, the first one relating to a less common spelling of the name for a curly cabbage and the second to the kind of thing which when playing long alley skittles in the pubs of Leicestershire we would try to knock down with ‘cheeses’ (solid pieces of wood shaped like barrels) – though the targets were never known by the name here. Incidentally, the OED gives seventeen different spellings through the ages, none of which is the one in Chambers. In the second definition I would have preferred “one’s” to ‘one’, which looks suspiciously like a pronoun.
31a Confused dummy grabbing nearly all undealt cards (7, 3 words)
A three-letter ‘dummy’ or ‘fool’ contains (‘grabbing’) the five-letter word for what remains of a pack after the hands have been dealt (and also for a claw) without its last letter (‘nearly all’). The answer is (2,1,4). Of course, there wouldn’t be a dummy while there were still cards undealt, but we can let that pass.
Down
1d Music from Michigan’s second city? (6)
A two-letter informal abbreviation (of the entirely acceptable kind – see Setter’s Corner) of a word for a second (as in ‘hold on a second’) and a four-letter word for a city (which seems slightly counterintuitive, but Chambers gives ‘city’ as ‘a large ????’) combine to produce the term for a type of music which originated in Michigan’s first city. Incidentally, when Berry Gordy started his own record label in 1959, he apparently wanted to call it ‘Tammy’ after the Debbie Reynolds hit song of the same name, but Tony March had already established a label of that name in Youngstown, Ohio, so he decided on ‘Tamla’ instead…and the rest is history.
7d Outline of fish, almost entirely covered in gold (6)
A five-letter freshwater fish (that one might associate with rods and poles) shorn of its last letter (‘almost entirely’) is contained by (‘covered in’) the chemical symbol for gold.
19d American entering appeal with his taxman about Bollywood title? (7)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘American’ is put inside (‘entering’) a two-letter term for ‘[sex] appeal’ originally associated with Clara Bow (from the film of that name) and the three-letter abbreviation for the US tax service (ie ‘his taxman’ – another abbreviation which passes the ‘life of its own’ test), with the whole lot then being reversed (‘about’).
20d Japanese rises topped hills to the west (6)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘Japanese’ (a relatively recent addition to Chambers, though I’ve no idea what prompted its inclusion) is followed by a six-letter word meaning ‘rises [up]’ stripped of its first letter (‘topped’).
21d Rainy and hot day ultimately passed up (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘hot’ precedes the last letter (‘ultimately’) of ‘day’ and a reversal (‘up’) of a word meaning ‘passed’ in the sense of ‘deceased’.
24d Irrational rule for what to put next to 1a? (5)
The name of the symbol for a two-letter irrational number representing a well-known geometric ratio is followed by a three-letter rule. The answer might be set alongside that for 1a on a table in an Indian restaurant.
(definitions are underlined)
Why does Gemelo have ‘to the west’ in 20dn? Jebels are in Arab countries according to Chambers and is that the west? Also what is ‘rises’ doing? Presumably it’s the definition (or is that ‘hills’?)? So we could surely cut the whole of ‘hills to the west’? Evidently I’m missing something.
The ‘rises’ is part of the wordplay, yielding the six-letter word which has to be ‘topped’ and put after the J.
Regarding the definition, the problem that Gemelo had to deal with is that Chambers gives the answer as ‘in Arab countries, a hill or a mountain’, so ‘hills’ is barely adequate, but ‘Arabian hills’ would make for a nonsensical surface reading; ‘hills’ alone wouldn’t be significantly better. Since the Arab countries are to the west of Japan, the definition ‘hills to the west’ enables him to ‘enhance’ the definition and achieve a surface reading that suggests the Japanese rises are rising above the hills to the west. As a definition, though, it’s certainly on the weak side.
Hi Doc
Generally not too diff, and fun, but some help with 2d would be appreciated
Hi Kev
2d One looking to receive transfer at First Direct. A four-letter word for ‘[some]one looking’, perhaps into the future, contains (‘to receive’) the first letter of ‘transfer’ (‘transfer at First’). The answer is a verb.
Hope that helps!
Diawl Doc, sometimes I am twp!
Re 29a. Could the inclusion of unusual mean that he requires the old spelling in fact?
Hi Buzzer
I’m going to ‘name names’ for the sake of clarity.
Under the entry for sty[1], Chambers gives ‘or rarely stye‘. The terms ‘unusual’ and ‘rare’ come to much the same thing.
Under the separate headword stie, Chambers has ‘an old spelling of sty[1,3]’. If this were the intended entry, Gemelo would have used one of many ‘old’ qualifiers such as ‘neglected’ or ‘outdated’. I have never seen an obsolete or archaic spelling of a word qualified as ‘unusual’.
An additional consideration is that since ‘stie’ is not listed under the entry for ‘sty’ it may not even have entered into the setter’s thinking; I feel that he might have used a different clue had he spotted the potential ambiguity.
For these reasons, I would be very surprised indeed if the expected answer were not STYE, although it would perhaps be harsh if STIE were to be marked wrong.
Could you please explain the “French farm” reference in 1A?
Chambers: mas a house or farm in the south of France.
I don’t understand your comment about “stopping” in 9a. Definition 12 for stop in Chambers is “restrain” which you have as a containment indicator (restraining,restrains) in your clinical data list.
Chambers manages to cram in a lot of words (and thus definitions), but this does mean that many of the definitions are extremely brief. With verbs, in particular, one cannot safely infer transitivity, so if A is shown as having a meaning B, and the entry for B shows a meaning of C, A does not necessarily have a meaning of C. So one meaning of ‘confess’ is ‘to admit’, and one meaning of ‘admit’ is ‘to let in’, but ‘confess’ cannot mean ‘let in’. That’s a clear-cut situation, but in other instances the meanings of A and C appear closer, and that is when I refer to the OED to get examples of the usage of the verb in question. With ‘stop’, there is plenty of evidence supporting its use as an insertion indicator with its sense of ‘plugging a gap’, but no clear evidence that it can suggest constriction rather than the presentation of a barrier preventing progress of various sorts. ‘Restrain’, on the other hand, has a sense of ‘to restrict, limit, confine’. It’s a fine line, but I wouldn’t use ‘stop’ in this sense myself; because it will be familiar to solvers as an insertion indicator, I would need clear evidence to deploy it in a cryptically counterintuitive sense.
I take a similar view regarding ‘enter’, which based on the Chambers definitions of ‘to admit’ and ‘to take possession of’ could have claims to indicate containment as well as insertion.
It’s worth noting that in his 1500 ‘Ship of Fools’ competition Azed awarded third prize to a clue that used ‘stop’ as a containment indicator. 😉
😀 I find it more acceptable in a clue-writing comp than in a puzzle, since the writer has the opportunity to justify their use of the word (I wonder if the author of that clue felt the need to include in their explanation of the clue a reference to that Chambers definition?)
I see that the third-placed clue in Azed comp 1741 employs ‘entering’ as a containment indicator, but I certainly wouldn’t use it in that way in a puzzle.
I can’t recall Azed ever using ‘stops/stopping’ to indicate containment, and I think it’s fair to say that he was always inclined to accept what I would consider ‘marginal’ indicators where Chambers provided ostensible support. The NATO phonetic alphabet was a different matter…
It’s fair to say that there are other indicators of borderline validity in the containment/insertion list on this site, but they are all ‘one-way’ indicators and thus less likely to provoke an adverse reaction in solvers.
From the time when I started entering the Azed comp, I began noting down unusual containment and inserting indicators used by Azed himself. ‘Stopping’ appears in both of my lists, so it’s safe to assume Azed used it as a containment indicator at some point between early 1998 and Feb 2001, the date of the ‘Ship of Fools’ comp. There are one or two indicators in my anagrind list in particular that I don’t recall anyone but Azed ever using and that don’t feature in your list, “ensemble” being one example.
As regards the two-way containment/insertion indicators that feature in your list, would you not consider “chopping” as an insertion indicator to be a borderline case?
That’s interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever considered ‘ensemble’ (the imperative verb, I presume – I’m not sure how the adjective would work), but for me it falls into the same category as ‘order’, which to suggest rearrangement surely needs to be ‘reorder’. That said, I note that ‘assembled’ is in my list – I have marked it as a candidate for removal at the next review, to be replaced by ‘reassembled’!
I think that ‘chops’ for insertion based on chop[1] in Chambers is decidedly iffy, which is probably why I’ve never used it myself. I’m sure it was included as a result of my trawl of Azed slips when I first produced several of the lists, and will have come from Dr Young’s clue “Name belonging to best chops?” for FINGERLICKIN’ (I’d like to see how many people could cold solve that one!).Even if you accept that a knife is contained by a carrot at the point of chopping, it only stays that way momentarily; and the subject of the verb is, in any case, normally the person wielding the chopper. ‘Chop’ is, I think, for the chop…
I didn’t automatically include all the indicators from successful clues, and some were so dodgy that I may have persuaded myself to include one or two that seemed to just scrape over the bar but which I certainly wouldn’t accept now, nine years on.
I feel that the advanced containment indicator from chop[3], ‘to eat’, is fine.
Hi Doc, Should 6d not say ‘….what record producers do’ ?
Hi Alex
It surely should, well spotted! I moved fairly swiftly over that one, but ought to have seen the inconsistency in number between ‘go’ and ‘does’.
Your guidance for 18A includes the preposition that goes into the answer …
Thanks for the post. The puzzle was nice mix.
Not any more it doesn’t! Thanks for pointing that out, the sort of error that I never spot when I read the notes through prior to pressing the button.
I used to typeset a monthly magazine here in Dublin. I could spot typos and errors in the articles received, but was hopeless at spotting my own typos. It’s difficult to edit our own work as we tend to see what we know we typed and not what we actually typed.
France, India, Spain … I miss Azed’s love affair with Scotland.
As for the ‘stopping’, I’ve heard Brits say the were stopping at a certain hotel when we Irish would say ‘staying’.
At one time I remember having a ‘Scotometer’ on the Azed blogs, which was often registering two or three, though I can’t remember what the peak reading was.
I think the English tend to use ‘staying’ and the more informal ‘stopping’ almost interchangeably, although if a Scot says that someone is ‘staying’ somewhere it generally means they are living there.