Notes for Gemelo 17

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 17 Plain

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). Note that hovering over the ‘graph’ icon will show you the full breakdown of votes for the current puzzle.

Readers collectively rated last week’s  puzzle around half a point up on  the previous week’s ‘iambic pentameter’ special, with a rating of 3.5 compared to 2.9. The great majority of scores were 3’s and 4’s, with just a few 2’s and 5’s (no 1’s this time around). I was torn between giving it 3 or 4 before eventually settling on 3, but 3.5 seemed just right.

As for this week’s offering – well, either I’ve had an unsolicited brain boost, or Gemelo has been, well, slightly emasculated. There seemed to be very few of the devious definitions which have been the trademark of Gemelo’s earlier ‘plains’, with this one looking in parts as though it had been put together rather hastily. That’s not to say that it wasn’t without its challenges, but the tricky entries are always easier when you’ve got a few ‘cheap’ checkers. I’ll be interested to see how other solvers viewed the difficulty of the puzzle.

I had no problem accessing the crossword once I had registered on the site. This may portend the disappearance of Gemelo behind a paywall – but I note that access to the new ‘Goldilocks’ puzzle already requires a subscription, and it does not appear in the printed edition, so we will have to wait and see.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look not at one specific clue, but at four abbreviations, indicated by ‘jolly’ in 2a, ‘Scottish Education Department’ in 33a, ‘right now’ in 20d and ‘Stokes’ in 28d.

Those who regularly solved blocked puzzles will no doubt have come across ‘jolly’ for RM before. Chambers gives ‘jolly’ as a slang term for ‘a royal marine’, along with the abbreviation ‘RM’ for ‘Royal Marines’. There is no evidence in Chambers that RM can stand for ‘Royal Marine’, and a web search suggests that it usually refers to a retired missionary; I think that ‘jolly band’ would be ok (similar to ‘gunners’ for RA), but surely not ‘jolly’ on its own (which would be the equivalent of ‘gunner’ for RA).

Chambers gives ‘stat’ as ‘immediately’, from the Latin ‘statim’. Although it doesn’t explicitly give the meaning ‘right now’, there are two reasons why this is not a problem, either of which is sufficient in my view to justify this indication. Firstly, since ‘stat’ is an abbreviation of a Latin word, ‘right now’ is just as good a translation as ‘immediately’; secondly the abbreviation has what I think of as ‘a life of its own’, so a medical treatment could be described in conversation as being required ‘stat’. This aligns with something like LP (“I had their first LP”) and contrasts with, say, ‘Av’ for ‘Avenue’ (“We strolled down the Av – not”).

The ‘Scottish Education Department’ no longer exists (its function is now performed, I believe, by Education Scotland), and neither does the British Territorial Army (now the Volunteer Reserve). That doesn’t change the fact that SED is a historically valid abbreviation of Scottish Education Department and TA of Territorial Army, nor that these abbreviations can be used in cryptics so long as the full form is accurately reproduced. However, an indirect reference such as ‘volunteers’ for TA becomes invalid when the organization in question ceases to exist, and must be replaced by something along the lines of ‘volunteers once’.

The appearance of ‘Stokes’ is coincidental, as in the last couple of days it was the subject of a discussion about its validity in blocked crosswords, since it is not allowed in some series but was used in a recent Guardian puzzle. Chambers has S for ‘stokes’, the CGS unit of kinematic viscosity, so it’s certainly fair game in a barred puzzle. Should the clue here be ‘Send stokes in’, though? Technically, yes, but to insist on that would be to open up a whole can of cruciverbal Lumbricidae. It’s allowable (if undesirable) to deceptively capitalize the first letter of a word that would not normally have an initial capital (eg ‘stokes’ becoming ‘Stokes’), but to change an initial capital to lower-case is forbidden (eg the French city ‘Nice’ becoming ‘nice’). How often, though, do we see ‘river’ for R or ‘street’ for ST? These abbreviations occur only as part of names, eg ‘River Thames’ and ‘New Street’, so they should be indicated only by ‘River’ and ‘Street’. Some stones are best left unturned.

Across

2a Horse with a jolly young man (9)
We start with a charade of the usual abbreviation for ‘with’, the letter A (from the clue), the two letter abbreviation normally associated (rightly or wrongly) with ‘jolly’, and a five-letter word for ‘a young man’, a recent addition to Chambers, although I ‘m surprised that it’s shown as neither ‘slang’ nor ‘US’.

11a Where French children learn about British digression (6)
The five-letter French word for ‘school’ (ie ‘where French children learn’) contains (‘about’) the usual abbreviation for ‘British’.

13a Watcher circling area after potential killer shoots in the kitchen (9)
The five-letter name of a many-eyed ‘watcher’ containing (‘circling’) the usual abbreviation for ‘area’ follows a three-letter term for a venomous snake of various kinds (‘potential killer’). The watcher had a hundred eyes – less than the night, according to Bobby Vee, but considerably more than most people. This made him the perfect candidate for the job of guarding Io, a priestess whom Zeus had turned into a heifer, since he was able to look in all directions even when having a degree of shut-eye. He was killed by Hermes at the behest of Zeus; thankfully, he carried an organ donor tablet, and a lucky peacock was thus the recipient of the first multiple transplant.

17a Pollock actor dropping hard edge for character (3)
The (2,6) name of the actor who directed and starred in the film Pollock, based on the life of Jackson Pollock, is deprived of a five-letter word for a sharp edge at the meeting of two surfaces, usually these days seen followed by the word ‘rail’

23a On reflection, most common Scrabble piece is best (5)
A neat clue, a (1,4) term which could describe the ‘most common Scrabble piece’ being reversed (‘on reflection’) to produce the answer.

32a Earth covered in mostly slick clay (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘earth’ is contained by (‘covered in’) a four-letter word meaning ‘slick’ or ‘too smooth to be convincing’ missing its last letter (‘mostly’).

33a Glaswegian hated Scottish Education Department welcoming American swimmer (9)
The three-letter abbreviation for the former Scottish Education Department contains (‘welcoming’) an alternative spelling of a six-letter word for “a kind of wrasse, the goldsinny or corkwing”. I know the Scots word which gives rise to the answer here as part of the expression ‘take a ??????? to’, meaning ‘take a dislike to’.

Down

2d Tree in western that’s amazing when top’s trimmed (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘western’ is followed by a five-letter interjection of joy (and the name of a search engine which dominated the field in the late 1990s but whose market share is now under 3%, although that still represents a podium position) without its first letter (“when top’s trimmed”).

4d Local steals rubbish bit of card to read (9)
A four-letter dialect (‘local’) word meaning ‘steals’ (or an informal term for periodicals collectively) is followed by a word for complete and utter nonsense (‘rubbish’), the result being a (3-6) answer.

8d Twin getting upset about receding praise (7)
A four-letter adjective meaning ‘twin’ contained by a three-letter word meaning ‘upset’ or ‘overturn’ (ie ‘getting upset about’) is reversed (‘receding’).

9d Regressive name for Indian trees (4)
A four-letter slang term, a minced form of ‘celebrity’ (ie ‘name’), is reversed (regressive’) to yield one spelling of a word for some thorny Indian trees.

14d Wave when leaving UN following American sycophancy? (9)
A ten-letter word for a wave stripped of the consecutive letters UN (‘when leaving UN’) is preceded by the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘American’.

15d Ordinary war-club turned into trick bat (9)
The usual abbreviation for ‘ordinary’ and a four-letter Maori name for a war club, once a regular visitor to cryptics either with an E on the end (as here) or an I, are reversed (‘turned’) inside a word for a trick. Mr Wilkins: “What do bats do in winter?” Jennings: “They split if you don’t oil them, Sir.”

25d Salamander with extremely elastic tongue (5)
A three-letter “blind, cave-dwelling, eel-like salamander of Europe” is followed by the first and last letters of ‘elastic’, producing the name of the language used by a prehistoric Mexican people. Azed once wrote, “I don’t accept that ‘extremely’ can be used in a clue to indicate the first and last letters of the relevant word or phrase. This does not seem to me to come within any of the normal senses of the word.” I completely agree.

27d Gradually moved out, having got rid of relative (5)
An eight-letter word meaning ‘out’ (perhaps from a prison or a contract) loses (‘having got rid of’) the three-letter abbreviation for ‘relative’.

(definitions are underlined)