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 46

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/f77a147b-684b-42fd-8393-ba43c5f70891/file/puzzle.pdf.

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 (Gnarly). Note that hovering over the ‘graph’ icon will show you the full breakdown of votes for the current puzzle. Last week’s ‘Fab 45’ (or not) received an average difficulty rating of 1.8, with no score above 3; I felt it was reasonably tricky, but I think that was largely because the gimmick meant that Gemelo’s wordplays were rather looser than usual. I wonder if it was sheer coincidence that the puzzle number was 45, as in rpm?

I’ll be interested to hear what you made of this one. The clues to most of the 12-letter words were not too taxing, and there were several other clues which, by Gemelo’s standards, were very straightforward, the definitions often lacking disguise. With his puzzles I nearly always have to pare the clues potentially worthy of comment down to my limit of 16, but this week no such trimming was required (only 14 suggested themselves). Continuing the ‘dodgy plural’ theme of recent puzzles, the one at 7d strikes me as being particularly unlikely. 

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 28a, “Country getting rid of king for one who’ll join union (6)”. The six-letter name of a country discards the monarchical abbreviation for ‘king’ in favour of the Roman numeral representing ‘one’. This leaves “who’ll join union” as the definition, which is very much like (say) “who’ll make meals” for CHEF. I’ve seen definitions of this type before, and I’m not particularly keen on them. If you put a question mark on the end – “who’ll make meals?” – it seems absolutely fine, the answer to the question being CHEF. But if, as here, the pronoun is relative rather than interrogative, then the solver must infer a subject, with ‘one’ being the most likely candidate. “Country getting rid of king for one [one] who’ll join union” looks pretty odd, but isn’t fundamentally unsound given that the wordplay and definition are separate; however, it’s not an inference that would typically be made in real life. But could the wordplay and definition be linked? In the clue “Boss wanting one who’ll make meals”, the result of (CHIEF – I) could potentially be the subject, but the relative pronoun doesn’t match – ‘who’ relates specifically to people, and CH(i)EF is a sequence of letters. But change ‘who’ to ‘that’, producing “Boss wanting one that’ll make meals” and things start to improve – “Boss wanting one…” takes the letters C-H-E-F forward to the definition “…that will make meals”. Replace ‘who’ with ‘that’ in today’s clue, and I’d consider it much more acceptable.

Across

1a Tree and shrub family aged a decade, and led to change without any dead (12)
An anagram (‘to change’) of AGED A DECADE AND LED without every instance of the usual abbreviation for ‘dead’. But while ‘without any carbon’ certainly means that a thing contains no carbon at all, when you pre-process the expression into ‘without any C’ it does look a bit iffy.

14a Where hair’s removed from showers I’d taken in middle of engagement (9, 2 words)
A five-letter word for showers (in the sense of repeated precipitation) and the letters ID (from the clue) are contained by the central letters (‘middle’) of ‘engagement’. The answer is (5,4).

18a Flightless birds sing with allure, extremely attractive (7)
A three-letter word meaning ‘sing’ , ‘snitch’ or ‘squeal’ is followed by the sort of allure exuded by Clara Bow and the first and last letters of ‘attractive’ (‘extremely attractive’ – no comment necessary, I think).

20a Talk about old product of palm tree (4)
A word meaning ‘talk’, particularly of the empty and garrulous variety, is reversed (‘about’) ahead of the usual abbreviation for ‘old’.

25a First applications when decorating small crib no longer accepted in other cribs (12, 2 words)
The answer here starts with the single-letter abbreviation for ‘small’, which is ubiquitous IRL but not to be found in Chambers, and a six-letter archaic (‘no longer’) word for a crib to hold hay for cattle. There follows the single-letter abbreviation for ‘accepted’ inside the four-letter plural of a word for a crib or small bed, the result being the (7,5) entry.

29a Offensive decoration not really meant to put out independent Scotsman? (9, 2 words)
A six-letter word for ‘conveying meaning using words which are the literal opposite of the intended sense’, without (‘to put out’) one instance of the usual abbreviation for ‘independent’, precedes a forename  given by Chambers as ‘from the surname and place name, probably from [the] Gaelic [for] headland, peninsula’.

Down

1d Stop scraping around section that’s awkward (12)
A five-letter archaic word meaning ‘to hinder or stop’ is followed by a word meaning ‘scraping’ (more often seen  spelt with a ‘z’ and in the company of ‘to the ground’) containing the usual abbreviation for ‘section’.

2d Fulsome man perhaps gaining year, one way or another? (9)
A five-letter word exemplified by ‘man’ (but not boy) containing (‘gaining’, not a containment indicator that I like) a single-letter abbreviation for ‘year’ (‘year, one way’) combines with the letters OR (from the clue) and a different abbreviation for ‘year’.

4d Upset Los Angeles citizen in painful argument, initially about ballooning (12)
A reversal (‘upset’) of the usual abbreviation for ‘Los Angeles’, a three-letter abbreviation for ‘citizen’, a two-letter word with a very similar meaning to ‘in’ when referring to location (although in standard English the two are rarely interchangeable), a four-letter word meaning ‘painful’, and the first letter (‘initially’) of ‘argument’.

6d Scottish Highlander is embracing nationalist during unproductive uprising (7)
The letters IS (from the clue) containing (’embracing’) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘nationalist’ are themselves contained by a reversal (‘uprising’) of a word meaning ‘unproductive’ or ‘thin’.

9d Extra active duty to get into (5)
A charade of the military abbreviation for ‘active duty’ and a word meaning ‘get into’ or ‘put on’ produces the (3-2) answer.

13d What takes blood, mainly? (4)
There are some words that you hear once and which stay with you forever. In a music lesson at school many years ago, Mr Massey played a 32a by Brahms; I couldn’t describe one in any detail, but the word has remained firmly lodged in my mind ever since. Similarly, in an episode of the original TV adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small, Siegfried brought forth (much to the surprise of James) the five-letter instrument (that here must lose its last letter – ‘mainly’) in order to bleed a pony. Isn’t it always the things that you most want to forget that you can’t get out of your mind!

19d Damn accountant with unopened contract (7)
The three-letter abbreviation for ‘accountant’ goes ahead of a word meaning ‘[to] contract’, said specifically of the lips, missing its first letter (‘unopened’).

30d Disciple, like priest, ignoring peripheral parish (3)
A nine-letter word meaning ‘like a parish priest’ loses the letters PARISH from its outside (‘ignoring peripheral parish’).

(definitions are underlined)