Notes for Gemelo 27

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 27 – Spooner or Letter

This puzzle is available at https://cdn.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/media/documents/obs.GEMELO.20260315.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

3.8 based on 37 votes (voting is now closed)

Good to see a proper special, and a brand-new one at that. Azed set a number of Spoonerisms puzzles, of course, but as well as the spoonerized definitions they contained spoonerized entries, which were on occasion mildly controversial. Gemelo has pursued a different course by giving us a 50:50 mix of spoonerized definitions and ‘turn one or more letters into their names’ wordplays. A couple of the latter (in particular 7d) took me a little while to get my head round, but they all worked out in the end. I’ll be interested to hear what you made of the puzzle and how much of a challenge it presented. My only specific piece of advice for solving would be to go through each clue saying any possible ‘unspoonerisms’ to yourself; if you can’t find any, then the clue is almost certainly of the Letter type. After notes on selected clues I have included a checklist of clue types.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 9d, “Horribly stern and extremely tight (7)”. The trickiest thing about this clue, an anagram (‘horribly’) of STERN, is the fact that two letters are transformed prior to entry in the grid. The point of interest, though, is the word ‘and’ linking the wordplay with the definition. In normal clues, this would be entirely acceptable, but what about here? The wordplay yields just five letters while the defined word has seven, so despite what the ‘and’ suggests there appears to be no equivalence between them. Where the wordplay and definition lead to different sets of letters, link words between wordplay and definition should normally be avoided, but the situation here is rather unusual. The preamble tells us that the replacement of letters is in effect part of the process of deciphering the clue, so the defined entry and the end result of the wordplay could be considered the same. It’s perhaps marginal, but I’m comfortable enough with the clue as it stands. There would have been no issue at all with the use of link words or phrases in the spoonerized clues, but I applaud Gemelo for avoiding them in this puzzle and thus producing more technically satisfying clues.

Across

1a Old soul had to play one of the Australian Avengers (9)
A two-letter word for an ancient Egyptian (‘old’) spirit or soul is followed by an anagram (‘to play’) of HAD. The ‘translation’ of one letter results in a net gain of four.

10a Drunk about to lose book for university course (9, 3 words)
The word ‘about’ (from the clue) loses the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘book’, which is replaced by the three initials of a degree course first offered at Oxford in 1921 and taken by many British politicians past and present including Tony Benn, Edward Heath, Michael Foot, Ed Miliband, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Rachel Reeves. The answer is (1,5,3).

12a Be part of Keir Starmer’s top two after affirmative vote (5)
The first two letters (‘top two’) of ‘Starmer’ follow a three-letter ‘formal or archaic’ word for an affirmative vote or voter.

17a Heartless, stealthy criminal sold E (6)
The tricky bit of this clue is the spoonerism, with the wordplay involving an anagram (‘criminal’) of STEALTHY missing the central pair of letters (‘heartless’).

18a Pinks in last frames of uncommon challenge with nothing in front (5)
The first and last letters (‘frames’) of ‘uncommon’ and ‘challenge’ are preceded by the single-letter representation of zero (ie ‘with nothing in front’). Part of the unspoonerized definition is a qualifier which reflects the presence of ‘formerly’ in the relevant Chambers definition.

21a Nothing saw to May, somehow seated at ten with Heath lacking any energy (12, 3 words)
An anagram (‘somehow’) of SEATED AT TEN and HEATH without all instances of the usual abbreviation for energy (ie ‘lacking any energy’).

30a Rogue messenger once seen in Scottish town (5)
A double definition, except that the first definition leads to a familiar three-letter word which then requires a letter expansion.

33a Welsh river crossed by predominantly underground soldier (9)
A three-letter Welsh river which rises on the Black Mountain and flows into the Bristol Channel at Newport is contained by a five-letter word for an urban railway that runs largely underground (in particular, the one in Paris) without its last letter (‘predominantly’).

Down

5d What bums in a County Court, framing South African man about scam (7)
The two-letter abbreviation for ‘court’ contains (‘framing’) a two-letter informal South African word for a man (also the abbreviation for ‘Open University’), which itself contains (‘about’) a three-letter slang term for a swindle or trick. After unspoonerization of the definition, the ‘County’ still has a capital letter, but not the one it started with.

7d Fraternity member once cycling round loch (6)
Initially I was convinced there was something wrong with this clue, but when you take the four-letter name of perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most monstrous, Scottish loch and ‘cycle’ it such that the first two letters end up after the last two, replacement of the first and third letters by their names will indeed produce the answer.

8d Lord is cooped in this castle abroad, with Austen hero briefly returning to visit (10)
An anagram (‘abroad’) of CASTLE has a reversal (‘returning’) of the surname of a Jane Austen hero (think Colin Firth) missing its last letter (‘briefly’) inserted (‘to visit’, not to my taste, but there it is). The answer is hyphenated, 4-6, and contains an apostrophe, something which Azed was unsure about whether to mention in an enumeration but Gemelo clearly feels does not need to be flagged (and I agree with him).

16d Stand-in worker perhaps supporting tradename, one with extended line of letters? (7)
A three-letter word for a stand-in (maybe for a footballer whose number is up)  precedes a three-letter creature ‘of proverbial industry’ (the sort that had high hopes of moving a rubber tree plant) which itself follows (‘supporting’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘tradename’.

19d One’s restaurant discarding skin from radicchio bought of salad monger? (7)
A (1,2) phrase meaning “one’s” (or ‘one is’) is followed by a six-letter word for an intimate, relaxed type of restaurant, from which the first and last letters (‘skin’) of ‘radicchio’ have been removed.

20d Characters in ancient city found within nanoseconds (7)
A two-letter preposition which can mean essentially the same as ‘in’ when referring to a place, although the two are rarely interchangeable, and the two-letter ancient city much favoured by crossword setters are contained by the two-letter abbreviation for ‘nanoseconds’.

24d Take in second habit from a rat? (5)
The single-letter abbreviation of the Latin word meaning ‘take’, formerly used by physicians at the start of prescriptions, is contained by a word for ‘second’, as in ‘hang on a second’.

25d Boeing people share new speed for signalling – without British Airways, that is (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘new’ is followed by a four-letter word for a unit of data transmission rate, which has been deprived of the abbreviation for ‘British Airways’, and the two letters regularly indicated in cryptics by ‘that is’. When I first started in IT, the unit was commonplace, being used interchangeably with ‘bits per second’ (although they are not exactly the same thing). I well remember using acoustic couplers to connect to remote computers at a rate of 300 of them (on a good day) by shoving a phone handset into the two rubber cups of the device; unfortunately, most of the phones in our office were shared extensions, and when someone tried to make a call on the linked phone, things went rapidly downhill (there was no error correction in those days). After that, even very slow broadband seems quite wonderful.

(definitions are underlined)

Checklist of clue types (S = Spooner / L1 = 1 Letter / L2 = 2 Letters /L3 = 3 Letters)

Across: 1 – L1; 10 – L1; 11 – S; 12 – S; 14 – L1; 15 – S; 17 – S; 18 – S; 19 – L1; 21 – S; 23 – S; 24 – L1; 26 – S; 28 – L1; 30 – L1; 31 – L1; 32 – S; 33 – L1.

Down: 1 – L1; 2 – S; 3 – L1; 4 – L1; 5 – S; 6 – S; 7 – L2; 8 – S; 9 – L2; 13 – L3; 16 – L1; 19 – S; 20 – L1; 22 – S; 24 – S; 25 – S; 27 – L1; 29 – S.