Notes for Gemelo 18

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 18 Plain

Solver difficulty rating

3.1 based on 42 votes (voting is now closed)

A printable version of this puzzle can be found at https://cdn.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/media/documents/obs.GEMELO.20251214.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 (Ghastly). Note that hovering over the ‘graph’ icon will show you the full breakdown of votes for the current puzzle.

I thought that the previous Gemelo crossword (G17) was probably the least difficult plain puzzle that he has served up so far, and your rating of 2.6 (compared to 3.5 for G16) suggested that many of you felt the same way. Most of the scores were 2’s and 3’s, resulting in an average reduced by almost a whole point from that of its predecessor – which seemed just about right to me.

We wait to see what sort of puzzle we will get – and from whom – at Christmas, but in the meanwhile Gemelo turns 18 with a crossword that seemed to me a lot more polished than his previous offering, with plenty of cleverly deceptive definitions, some well disguised breaks between definitions and wordplays, and one or two (actually, three) unwarranted capital letters of the kind that I’m none too keen on.

Incidentally, regular correspondent Jim H informs me that the Observer are offering half-price annual subscriptions for their online product. He has been told “We’d like to extend a special offer to our puzzle fans to take up an annual digital subscription now for 50% off in your first year. If you are already on one of our £1 trial subscriptions, you will be able to cancel that and take out this offer over the next month. To redeem this offer, visit https://observer.co.uk/subscribe/observer-friends; at the checkout, once you’ve registered or logged in, enter PUZZLES50 in the “Promo Code’ box, and click Apply. Enter your payment method to complete your purchase.”

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 16a, “Opening book, sitting in tree with child (9, 2 words)”. A five-letter ‘opening’, particularly one starting a piece of popular music, is followed by the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘book’ inside the three-letter name of a Central American rubber tree often indicated by ‘rubber’, the result being a familiar (2,7) phrase. The point of interest is the definition. Chambers shows the answer as being a euphemism for ‘pregnant (when unmarried)’, and clearly the ‘unmarried’ bit is important, since even in days gone by it was possible to be pregnant but not in the state described here. So is the definition valid? The rule is that the generic can indicate the specific, so ‘dog’ can define (in crossword terms) COLLIE, but the reverse is a definition by example, and must be indicated as such, so ‘collie, say’ could legitimately indicate DOG. Here, the definition is the all-encompassing ‘pregnant’ and the answer refers to being in such a state, albeit only in a specific situation, so it is ok. Using the answer here to define PREGNANT would not be acceptable; it would need to be accompanied by a ‘definition by example’ qualifier such as the word ‘perhaps’ or a question mark.

Across

1a Worcester’s old-fashioned celebration turned into nonsense (6)
A two-letter word for a celebration of the party kind is reversed (‘turned’) inside (‘into’) a word for ‘nonsense’ which could (in 1977, at least) have described Johnny Rotten or Siouxsie Sioux. The reason for ‘Worcester’ appearing in the definition is made clear by the Chambers entry for the answer. As the Times Literary Supplement put it in 1960, “A diploma from Harvard is much more marketable than a diploma from ?????? College.”

5a Haggard Roman welcoming drunken Scottish band (6)
I feel that Gemelo has been deliberately naughty here. ‘Haggard Roman’ relates to a Gothic novel (‘roman’) written by Henry Rider Haggard, but rather than adding that undeserved capital to ‘roman’, Gemelo could have chosen, for instance, ‘Haggard queen’. The three-letter name by which the African version of Dorian Gray was known contains a Scots word meaning ‘wet’ or ‘drunken’ (and a forename which I immediately associate with a man who fomented revolt against the poll tax and was put to death for his trouble).

9a One provided with speed going round circuit, it’s like something else (8)
The Roman numeral representing ‘one’ and a two-letter adverb/conjunction meaning ‘provided’ (Dickens, Bleak House: “He could play ’em a tune on any sort of pot you please, so as it was iron or block tin”) are followed by a three-letter abbreviation for a measure of speed (not speed itself) containing (‘going round’) the name given to a type of logic circuit of which the  output is 1 if either input is 1.

12a They provide colour in Scotland Yard compound when pressed by detective (8)
The usual abbreviation for ‘yard’ and a five-letter ‘compound’ (of the sort which is polymerized in artificial textiles) are contained (”pressed’) by a detective ranking between a DC and a DI.

14a Fed, mostly following cook’s principles (5)
I’m clearly getting attuned to Gemelo’s deviousness, because as soon as I saw ‘Fed’ here I though ‘Federal agent’, and by putting the word at the start of the clue he has dealt with the ‘Fed/fed’ problem in a way that satisfies the purists among us. The four-letter federal agent loses his last letter (‘mostly’) and follows a two-letter verb for ‘cook’.

23a After games with English, everyone’s beginning to whine at Murrayfield (6)
The first letter of ‘everyone’ (“everyone’s beginning”) comes after the two-letter abbreviation for group exercise at school (‘games’) and the three-letter abbreviation for ‘English’.

30a Learner in top set briefly (4)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘learner’ is contained by a three-letter word for the sort of short-sleeved ‘top’ often adorned with a logo or a statement that seemed a lot wittier when you saw it advertised online. The ‘briefly’ is not required in the definition, since Chambers gives the answer as an informal term in its own right.

31a Singular imbecile concealing order over pudding ingredient (8)
The usual abbreviation for ‘singular’ is followed by a reversal (‘over’) of a five-letter word for an imbecile containing the abbreviation for ‘Order of Merit’ (‘order’). Anyone who ate school dinners in the third quarter of the last century will surely be familiar with the answer.

Down

2d Game on, without Labour getting returned under local poll (9)
The three-letter word equivalent to ‘on’ when used about a side of the cricket field is put around (‘without’ – not a containment indicator that’s to my taste, but I’m braced for it now) the three-letter abbreviation for ‘Labour’ and the whole lot reversed (‘returned’) after a three-letter dialect (‘local’) word meaning ‘[to] poll’ or ‘[to] cut the hair of’.

4d Origins of Kal-El regularly identify this? (7)
If you take the first letters (‘origins’) of ‘Kal-el’ and ‘regularly’, retaining the case in which they appear in those words, you will have the chemical symbol for an element which shares its name with the planet on which Kal-el was born to Jor-el and Lara. He was sent to earth shortly before the destruction of his home planet, landing in Smallville, Kansas, where he was found and adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent. The rest, as they say, is history…well, kind of.

5d Pierce Brosnan’s central character – brilliant! (5)
I’ve written several clues involving the device employed by Gemelo here with ‘Pierce Brosnan’ (including my first VHC in an Azed comp). In this clue, the middle letter of ‘Brosnan’ is followed by a word for a brilliant-cut diamond of a particular form.

8d Bathroom without pronoun to follow (5)
A (2,5) term for a particular kind of bathroom is missing (‘without’) a two-letter pronoun.

11d Idler’s whole purpose in rolling about (10)
A three-letter word for ‘whole’ (which in fact often follows ‘the whole’ when emphasizing totality)  and a three-letter word for purpose (such as a piece of equipment might have) are followed by a two-letter preposition which has a meaning similar to ‘in’ (and is sometimes interchangeable with it, in something like “He was in school”) and a reversal (‘rolling’) of that familiar piece of commercial jargon meaning ‘concerning’ or ‘about’. The answer is hyphenated, 5-5.

13d One working too much with East China (5)
A four-letter derogatory term of indeterminate origin for “a socially inept person, especially a student seen as being excessively studious” is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘East’.

18d Sculpture elevated with a highly ornamental metal plate (5)
The word for a sculpture representing the upper part of a person’s body is reversed (‘elevated’) ahead of the letter A (from the clue).

27d Bore’s elaborate lyric read out (4)
The homophone (‘read out’) of a word for an elaborate lyric addressed to eg a nightingale, the west wind, or joy is the past tense of a word meaning ‘bear’ as in ‘I bear him no ill-will’.

(definitions are underlined)