Notes for Gemelo 24

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 24

This puzzle is available at https://cdn.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/media/documents/obs.GEMELO.20260215.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

3.8 based on 49 votes (voting is now closed)

Just when I thought that Gemelo had settled into a nice rhythm, with puzzles that were well clued and pitched at what seemed an appropriate level of difficulty, we have this one. Azed has always been very clear that a ‘special’ should present a different challenge for the solver as well as the setter, since otherwise…well, what’s the point? The end result here was a puzzle with clues which for the most part made very little sense and, because anagrams and ‘hiddens’ were effectively ruled out, offered very few easy toeholds. I’m reluctant to criticize a construction which demonstrated considerable skill given the constraints that the setter had placed upon himself, but admiration and enjoyment are horses of rather different colours as far as I’m concerned. I guess there was at least something for us to discover in the completed grid, though Gemelo had rather spoiled that surprise in the preamble.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 22d, “Bow’s cut into two, lifted into hem of knicker’s synthetic fibre (6)”. One of the hardest clues in the puzzle to parse, a five-letter word meaning ‘[to] cut into two’ loses the H at the start (“Bow’s”, ie as a Cockney might say it) before being reversed (‘raised’) inside (‘into’) the first and last letters (‘hem’) of ‘knicker’. This clue raises no less than four points. Firstly, the aitch-dropping: I don’t think there could be any quibble with, say, “Cockney’s locks” for AIR, but what about “Cockney’s elevation” for EIGHT? It jars a little, since pronouncing the resultant letters certainly doesn’t suggest a Cockney version of ‘height’, but I think when decoding this device we must consider how, say, Magersfontein Lugg’s words are reported in Margery Allingham’s Campion novels: ‘hair’ would appear as “‘air”, and ‘height’ as “‘eight'” – so no problem there. Next, ‘into’ indicating containment: in general, I don’t think that ‘X into Y’ is valid to indicate containment of X by Y, since it needs a verb such as ‘put’; here, however, the ‘lifted’ performs the verbal function, with the phrase ‘lifted into’ telling us to perform two manipulations on the target string, reversal followed by insertion – all ok there. Third, the use of ‘hem’ to indicate both the first and last letters of a word: I can’t accept this – a hem is an ‘edge’ or a ‘border’, and to indicate the two ends of a word I believe that ‘edges’, ‘borders’ or ‘hems’ would be required (the hem of a garment doesn’t contain the garment). Finally, “knicker’s”: Gemelo was clearly struggling here, and the apostrophe has to come before the S if the correct letters are to be delivered. But ‘knicker’ isn’t a garment, it’s a clay marble, which doesn’t make any sense.

Across

1a Voice filled with very loud energy of emotion (9)
A six-letter ‘voice’ that isn’t ‘passive’ or ‘middle’ contains the two-letter musical abbreviation for ‘very loud’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘energy’.

12a Lily, runner-up, dropping sport in distress – I’m surprised to go into it (8)
An anagram (‘in distress’) of RUNNER-UP without (‘dropping’) the two-letter abbreviation for one form of rugby football (‘sport’) contains (‘to go into it’) a two-letter interjection ‘denoting various emotions or responses, eg surprise, joy, exultation, dismay, enquiry, scepticism, encouragement, hesitation, and when repeated, laughter’ (ie “I’m surprised”).

14a Scott’s to do tense plot (5)
My first thought was that this would be a charade of the usual abbreviation for ‘tense’ and a four-letter word for plot, but in fact it is Walter Scott’s word meaning ‘to do’ (often indicated in non-lipogrammatic cryptics by ‘daily’) which is followed by the abbreviation, with ‘plot’ being the definition.

20a Lingo circling before someone phoned ME reformer (8)
A three-letter Hindi word for ‘the informal speech of a foreign language’ contains (‘circling’) both the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘before’ and a four-letter pronoun used when identifying yourself on the telephone – pop fans might associate it with Bryan Ferry’s ‘Tomorrow’ or Paul Evans’ ‘Joannie’; on the evidence of ‘Hello’, appropriate telephone protocol was foreign to Lionel Richie.

21a Bushmen winning three points, drinking one Joburg home-brew (8)
A three-letter word for a group of huntsmen in South Africa (a string of letters sometimes indicated by ‘hospital’) contains (‘winning’) a judo score of three points (introduced in 1974, and done away with in 2009 ) which itself contains (‘drinking’) the Roman numeral representing ‘one’.

30a Silly to vent with difficulty on betel flower (5)
The word SILLY (from the clue) deprived of (‘to vent’) a three-letter word meaning ‘with difficulty’ follows (‘on’) a word for betel.

34a Fed executioner (but not Chinese) (4)
A seven-letter executioner loses (‘but not’) a three-letter word for a member of the native Chinese people. The answer is hyphenated, 1-3.

35a Love cycling off from evening primrose (9)
The single character representing ‘love’ in games such as tennis is followed by a (3,4) phrase meaning ‘off’ or ‘elsewhere’ which is ‘cycling’, the last letter being moved to the beginning. At the end is a single-letter accented preposition meaning ‘from’ or ‘of’, without which the Augustinian canon would have been plain old Tom Kempis.

Down

3d Vision of the future from Liechtenstein, so hot with respect to defensive position (12, 2 words)
The two-letter IVR code for Liechtenstein is followed by a two-letter word meaning ‘so far’ (but the ‘far’ had to be left out for obvious reasons), the usual abbreviation for ‘hot’, a three-letter word meaning ‘in respect of’ (or ‘in favour of’), and a four-letter word for a defensive motion or position in fencing (as in the expression ‘to ???? off’, meaning to parry or keep away).

4d Begin retrospective Gemelo report (6)
A reversal (‘retrospective’) of how Gemelo might be described objectively is followed by a four-letter word for a report in the sense of a gunshot (or a cough).

6d Old block of buildings put down, not quite the best of its kind (6)
A six-letter word meaning ‘[to] put down’ or ‘treat with contempt’ missing its last letter (‘not quite’) precedes the single letter which denotes an item of the highest class (albeit not necessarily the very best of its kind).

8d Thingummy with e.g. trilby is tested in Northern Soul (12)
The usual abbreviation for ‘with’ is followed by the term for something of which a trilby is an example, a four-letter word meaning ‘is tested in’ (as one might be tested in an examination), the usual abbreviation for ‘Northern’, and the French word for a soul. The answer is hyphenated, 5-3-4, and contains an apostrophe.

9d Police officer not finishing one’s fish (6)
A five-letter informal term for a police officer of a specific rank without its last letter (‘not finishing’) combines with an objective pronoun ‘in editorial and royal use’ for ‘one’.

17d More or less blow up rest (6)
A two-letter abbreviation for the Latin word meaning ‘around’ (ie ‘more or less’) is followed by a reversal (‘up’) of a word meaning ‘blow’ in the way that I might after ascending a long flight of steps following an inadequate breakfast.

24d Queen covering lid of sunken drinking cup in Holyrood (6)
The two-letter abbreviation for ‘Queen’ replaces (‘covering’) the first letter (‘lid’, hmm) of a five-letter word meaning ‘sunken’, a Scots form of ‘low’.

25d Possibly put EU emblem on shoulder when crossing street (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘[to] shoulder’, as one might do to a burden, contains (‘crossing’) the usual abbreviation for ‘street’.

(definitions are underlined)