Notes for Gemelo 28

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 28

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/00c5ba8e-987a-47b4-96d3-a3557823e4b8/file/puzzle.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

3.5 based on 29 votes (voting is now closed)

Last week’s ‘Spooner or Letter’ special, which seemed to go down well with solvers (including myself), received a difficulty rating of 3.8, based on 37 votes, the most popular award being 4/5. Given that this sort of special has never appeared before, and some of the ‘name the letter’ clues took a bit of getting one’s head around, this seemed a pretty fair assessment. Let’s hope that Gemelo can come up with a few more ‘specials’ of similar quality and difficulty.

For me, today’s plain puzzle harked back to the early Gemelos, with rather too many clues which would have been extremely difficult to solve ‘cold’ (ie without crossing letters). I’ll be interested to hear what other solvers made of it. I marked significantly more than 16 clues as being potentially worthy of note, so just let me know if there are any which I haven’t covered below that you would like me to comment on.

Readers may be interested in this post on the Observer site about the evening session held to celebrate 100 years of their barred crossword (the work of just four setters – Torquemada, Ximenes, Azed, and now Gemelo). Courtesy of a correspondent, here is a link to the short film which was shown at the event.

I was saddened this week to hear of the death of long-time Azed competitor John Tozer, who had been ill for several years following a heart attack. Those who knew John have nothing but good things to say about him; I never met him, although we exchanged a few friendly emails about particular points in Azed puzzles, but his masterwork (and a lasting legacy) is the wonderful &lit site. Apart from being an invaluable resource when setting Azed competition clues over many years, it is a treasury of clues from 77 years of Ximenes and Azed comps and of the accompanying slips containing much cruciverbal wisdom. RIP, John.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clues 33a, “1 across eating this stew (10)”, and 4d, “You don’t mind Japanese food (4)”. In the first of these the wordplay involves an anagram (‘stew’, verb) of EATING THIS; in the second the phrase YOU DON’T contains (‘mind’, verb) the answer. These examples illustrate one of the few points that Azed and I have always disagreed over, and on which it seems Gemelo takes a similarly lenient line. In the slip for comp 2,036, Azed wrote:

“In my clue to PLIANCY (‘Being flexible I can swim in strand’) should not ‘swim’ be ‘swims’ for the anagram to work cryptically? This took me back to a similar question I put many years ago to Ximenes when the late Eric Chalkley won first prize with this clue to PANTOPHAGIST: ‘What pig has to become when gripped by hunger? (anag. in pant, & lit.). Surely, I asked, it should be ‘becomes’, unless he accepted that as a singular string of words or a plural set of words, in this case three of them, it could govern a singular or a plural verb. He replied (I still have his pencilled note) that yes, he did think either a singular or a plural verb was OK, ever since when I’ve followed his dictum, both in my own clues and in my judgement on those of others.”

For my money, a single string of ‘fodder’ such as I CAN or EATING THIS must take a singular verb, so ‘see car crashes’ is valid for CREASE; however, there are those – including Azed and (it would seem) Gemelo – who believe that ‘see cars crash’ is acceptable for CREASES. I consider that this is at odds with ‘real world’ English, but in any event a continuous string of words must surely require either a singular verb or a plural verb – the setter cannot have their cake in one clue while eating it in another, hence I can’t accept that both ‘see car crash’ and ‘see car crashes’ can legitimately lead to CREASE. Incidentally, the use of the participle verb form usually offers a way round this issue, as in eg ‘see cars crashing’ for CREASES.

Across

1a Stammering European swallowing bread without restraint (10)
A four-letter European from Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania contains (‘swallowing’) a three-letter ‘sweet roll or cake’, of which many are eaten at this time of year (quite a few of them by me, in truth), which itself contains (‘without’) a three-letter ‘restraint’.

10a A Room of One’s Own keeping you initially satisfied, but not any more (5)
The letter A (from the clue) is followed by a three-letter slang term for a room or home of one’s own which I particularly associate with the 1960s (“Let’s go back to my ??? and listen to some groovy sounds”) containing the first letter (‘initially’) of ‘you’. The answer is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic’, hence the ‘but not any more’.

12a Stain stuck with prisoner at first (8, 2 words)
A five-letter word meaning ‘stuck’, as an unlucky toreador might be, is preceded by (‘with…at first’) a three-letter slang term for a prisoner (the shortened form of a seven-letter word). The answer is (5,3).

13a Glaswegian to fashion mohawks, steering clear of prime spots (3)
There was a discussion on this site quite recently about the use of ‘prime locations in…’ to indicate the selection of letters 2, 3, 5, 7 etc from the word or words that follow, a device seemingly first used by Monk in a Times puzzle from 2005.  Here we have a variation, where the letters in the ‘prime spots’ within MOHAWKS are to be deleted rather than selected.

15a Capital T put back in “Tongue” (5)
The capital of Peru (and home of Paddington’s Aunt Lucy) and the letter T (from the clue) are to be reversed in order to produce the name of a particular ‘tongue’.

17a Old German lacking in soul (4)
A six-letter ‘obsolete’ word meaning ‘German’ is deprived of (‘lacking’) the consecutive letters IN.

26a Sodium chloride originally turned bracken orange-red (7)
The two-letter chemical symbol for sodium and the first letter (‘originally’) of ‘chloride’ are followed by a reversal of a four-letter kind of bracken found in New Zealand and Tasmania (also the name of the plantation in Georgia which Scarlett O’Hara called home, and the ancient seat of the High Kings of Ireland, in the halls of which the harp once shed the soul of music).

32a Islander‘s wine bar returned vermouth (5)
A seven-letter wine from Tuscany loses (‘bar’) a reversal (‘returned’) of a two-letter ‘informal’ term for a particular kind of vermouth, almost invariably seen in the company of gin.

Down

1d Is sewer to accumulate dogs for absent-minded don? (12)
The ‘absent-minded don’ is William Archibald Spooner, fellow of Cue Knowledge, Oxford, who last week had half a puzzle to himself. Here the spoonerism is of a five-letter word meaning ‘to pile’ or ‘to accumulate’ (usually seen with ‘up’) and a seven-letters word for dogs of the female persuasion. The definition is crafty, although it perhaps pushes the boundaries of acceptability – ‘is sewing’ would certainly be ok, but wouldn’t produce a sensible surface reading. Apparently Spooner was sensitive on the topic of his verbal slips; one of his students described being part of a group that gathered outside the venerable don’s lodgings one evening, calling for a speech; that gentleman reportedly opened his window for just long enough to reply, “You don’t want a speech. You only want me to say one of those things”.

2d Handsome man, apparently with depression, shedding clothing (6)
The two-letter abbreviation for ‘apparently’ is followed by a six-letter ‘depression’ of the physical kind missing its first and last letters (‘shedding clothing’).

3d Previous change of course mostly elevated drink (6)
A four-letter nautical term for a change of course achieved by swinging the sail of a boat from one side to the other, lacking its last letter (‘mostly’), is reversed (‘elevated’) ahead of an informal word for a drink, as in “Well, if you insist, just a quick ???”.

5d Judge cutting politician’s roast (7)
A three-letter short form of the seven-letter word for the type of ‘judge’ known to football fans as (among many less savoury epithets) ‘the man [or woman] in black’ is contained by (‘cutting’) a four-letter word for a member of a certain UK political party.

8d Heart skipped in intricate pulse (4)
A six-letter word meaning ‘intricate’, from the eight-letter name of the mythical artist who designed the Cretan labyrinth and made wings for his son, albeit using unsuitable materials, loses its two central letters (‘heart skipped’).

19d Referee finally books tackling of winger, saving centre forward for Monaco (7, 2 words)
Crikey, this is a bit convoluted, and in the end the surface reading is nothing to write home about. The last letter (‘finally’) of ‘referee’ is followed by the two-letter representation of (biblical) books that isn’t ‘OT’ containing a five-letter word meaning ‘relating to birds’ (ie ‘of winger[s]’) without its middle letter (‘saving centre’). The answer is (deux, cinq).

23d Asian title reflected North American or South American tree (6)
The four-letter Japanese title ‘given to an exalted or distinguished person’ (and also perhaps to Sam Allardyce by people who didn’t want to say his surname) precedes a reversal (‘reflected’) of the two-letter abbreviation for ‘North American’.

25d Referring to missing pastry scoop (5)
That familiar two-letter bit of commercial jargon meaning ‘referring to’ is deleted from (‘missing’) a seven-letter word for ‘a kind of choux pastry, the dough of which has been mixed with grated cheese prior to baking’. Yum.

(definitions are underlined)