Notes for Gemelo 22

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 22

This puzzle is available at https://cdn.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/media/documents/obs.GEMELO.20260125.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

2.5 based on 37 votes (voting is now closed)

I felt that this was an excellent puzzle, with some imaginative and deceptive clueing which never crossed the line into unfairness. There were some tricky clues, but these were balanced out by a number of very accessible ones, and I felt that the finished product would by no means have disgraced Azed. Had it been set by the master, the emphasis would surely have been more on classical music and cricket than on films and religion, and there certainly wouldn’t have been that ‘without’ in 4d, but I think that Gemelo is now showing himself to be a successor as worthy as there can be, given that there will never be another Azed.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 13a, “Cliff Richard’s foolishly ignoring HR, I’d suspect (4)”. The answer here is an anagram (‘foolishly’) of RICHARDS  following the removal (‘ignoring’) of an anagram (‘suspect’) of HR ID. This clue illustrates a de facto rule of subtractive anagrams: if the letters to be removed (here HRID) do not appear in the correct order in the initial fodder (here RICHARDS), then there must be a second anagram indicator, effectively telling the solver to rearrange the subtrahend (here as RIHD) prior to extracting it (here to leave CARS) and rearranging the result. I’ve never fully understood the reasoning behind this – in this clue, why should we not rearrange RICHARDS to XXXXHRID and then remove the HRID? The answer, I’m sure, is that fairness to the solver demands an extra pointer, even if it is technically superfluous. If the clue were “Cliff Richard’s foolishly ignoring rubbish in his dustbin to start with” there would be no need for the second anagram indicator, but in the clue “Vehicles Richard’s foolishly denied HR, I’d suspect” for CARS, although the letters of the answer are in the correct order within the initial fodder (RICHARDS), convention dictates that two anagram indicators are still required, again in the interests of fairness.

Across

1a Repeatedly covered emergency, dropping one Gemelo, perhaps to save news editor (12)
A six-letter word for the sort of emergency that Commercial Union would never have turned into a drama loses (‘dropping’) a single instance of the Roman numeral representing one. The result is followed by a nine-letter word for what might appear on Sunday under the name ‘Gemelo’ (or ‘Azed’) without (‘to save’) a four-letter term for ‘news’ (as in “Have we had news from the front?”); the usual abbreviation for ‘editor’ concludes the entertainment.

12a Representative of Delhi peeled fruit (4)
You might, like me, find yourself working back from the solution to the six-letter ‘Indian agent, representative, or pleader’ which must be stripped of its first and last letters (‘peeled’) – the first letter is a V.

15a Skin disease specialist ultimately wears uniforms from the front line? (9)
The last letter (‘ultimately’) of ‘specialist’ is contained by (‘wears’) the eight-letter name for a disease ‘characterized by the presence of a rash resembling measles, the spots of which exhibit in their centres minute vesicles of the form of millet-seed.’ Yeuch.

17a Pile of rubbish cut from small-screen movie such as Ben-Hur (4)
A three-letter word for ‘a hill or ancient mound formed from the accumulated debris from earlier mud or wattle habitations’ (ie ‘pile of rubbish’) is removed (‘cut’) from a  seven-letter term for a film made specifically to be shown on television (‘small-screen movie’). It might appear at first blush that ‘movie’ is required by both the wordplay and the definition, but Chambers gives one meaning of the pronoun ‘such’ as ‘such a thing’, so the definition is effectively  ‘such a thing as Ben-Hur‘.

22a Outpouring shifting New Hampshire’s capital, almost (8)
A seven-letter word for ‘outpouring’ (as water or tears might be doing, at least when followed by ‘up’), having the usual abbreviation for ‘new’ relocated within it (‘shifting New’), precedes the capital letter found in ‘Hampshire’. The answer is hyphenated, 4-4.

25a Mountains and plains in southwest France overlooked at first (5)
A six-letter word used by English writers to describe the heathy plains of south-west France is shorn of its first letter (‘overlooked at first’) to produce the name of a famous range of mountains.

29a Female upended Ministry of Defence with Hong Kong, Italy, and UAE? (9)
A three-letter word for a female (or for a particular female) is followed by a reversal (‘upended’) of the abbreviation for the Ministry of Defence and the IVR codes for Hong Kong and Italy, producing a word for something of which the UAE is an example. I would take a lot of convincing that ‘upended’ is valid as a reversal indicator in an across clue (the ‘up-‘ bit is something of a giveaway).

30a Two months in Italian places of worship (6)
A word for ‘two persons, etc, associated in some way’ combines with a three-letter abbreviation for ‘months’.

Down

1d Half of field covered by lettuce plant from America (6)
It would be easy to biff in an answer with the wrong two letters at the end. The first half of a six-letter word for a field or tract of grassland comes after (‘covered by’) a three-letter lettuce.

2d Getting late to engage independent detective (9)
A six-letter word for ‘late’ or ‘occurring not long ago’ contains (‘to engage’) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘independent’ and the abbreviation for a type of detective associated with the US (and Tom Selleck, although in my experience the best sort of Magnum comes from an ice cream display chest).

3d Head of security filmed taxi driver avoiding Avis B level (8)
A clever one, where the first letter (‘head’) of ‘security’ is followed by the (6,6) name of the cabbie  played by Robert De Niro in the film Taxi Driver (ie ‘filmed taxi driver’) missing (‘avoiding’) the consecutive letters ‘Avis B’.

9d Losing badly, take expertise from bureau? (4)
A seven-letter word for ‘take [the element of] expertise from’ loses a three-letter word meaning ‘badly’ or ‘unwell’.

19d When volume is constant, curve is ordinary and routine (8)
At first I thought that a V was going to change into a C somewhere along the line, but the wordplay turns out to involve just the letters IS (from the clue), the usual abbreviation for ‘ordinary’, and a five-letter word for a routine task.

20d Tone to maintain for Eastenders, repeatedly holding good (7, 2 words)
A four-letter word for ‘maintain’, having dropped its initial aitch (ie ‘for Eastenders’), is repeated around (‘holding’ – I’m sure Gemelo would have preferred to use a different containment indicator if he could have) the usual abbreviation for ‘good’.

23d Increasingly contrived fine that is accepted by Croatia (6)
A two-letter informal word meaning ‘fine’ or ‘all right’ and the two-letter abbreviation of the Latin phrase meaning ‘that is’ are contained (‘accepted’) by the IVR code for Croatia (Hrvatska).

26d Almost fired Jade for flavouring sauce (5)
A four-letter word meaning ‘fired’ (as a gun might be) missing its last letter (‘almost’) is followed by a two-letter word for precious jade.

(definitions are underlined)