Notes for Gemelo 41

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 41

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/de89a49b-1e63-467a-bf03-afe8c6edbc1b/file/puzzle.pdf.

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You gave last week’s ‘Two truths and a lie’ an average difficulty rating of 3.1, suggesting that this was one of Gemelo’s less challenging ‘specials’. I rated it as 2.9 in terms of getting a complete grid, but I put that up to 3.2 for a complete solve, which included fully parsing all the ‘lie’ clues, so we are very much in agreement.

This puzzle seemed to me to have received more ‘polishing’ than some in recent times, and included several wordplays that were pretty tricky to resolve. Plenty of clever clues to enjoy, and, while there were a couple of indicators that struck me as borderline, when it came to relatively obscure definitions within the wordplay you could as usual be confident that Gemelo would wherever possible have supplied a definition that is given verbatim by Chambers (eg ‘white paint’ in 12a,  ‘daughter’ in 2d, ‘blindfold’ in 9d, etc). I did feel that there were rather too many indicators in the infinitive (‘to evict’ in 1a, ‘to adopt’ in 15a, along with three others) – there’s nothing inherently wrong with this device, but I do prefer to see it used sparingly.

Note that ‘Lousiana’ in 34a should read ‘Louisiana’, although perhaps Gemelo has been there and didn’t think much of it.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 31a, “American finally cut into flower with vigour (7)”. The wordplay here has the two-letter abbreviation for ‘United States’ (‘American’) and the last letter (‘finally’) of ‘cut’ put inside (‘into’) the name of a particular flower, which invariably makes me think of Lonnie Donegan’s My Old Man’s a Dustman: “My dustbin’s full of ??????. Well, throw them away then! I can’t, ????’s wearing them.”

The point of interest is the insertion indicator ‘into’. The principle of an insertion indicator is that it suggests a state where one component is contained by another,  as in “English in pub suffer” for BEAR. The indicator in this example could equally well be ‘inside’, but I don’t think that ‘English into pub’ is valid; in real life, the only verb that can be inferred in such a phrase is an inflexion of ‘to be’, so ‘English is/are into pub’, but while this  might suggest an enthusiasm for the pub, it certainly doesn’t indicate containment by it. Something like ‘going into’ or ‘put into’ is required, but these verbal forms cannot reasonably be inferred.  For the clue here, I would prefer something like “American beginning to tackle flower borders with vigour”.

Across

1a Do nothing to evict quiet relative (6)
An eight-letter word meaning ‘to stop changing or progressing’ is deprived of (‘to evict’) a two-letter interjection meaning ‘[be] quiet[!]’, perhaps a shortened form of ‘whist’ – or ‘wheest’, as the Scots have it.

12a One pressed shirt with white paint tipped on it (7)
A three-letter informal term for a particular type of informal shirt has a reversal (‘tipped’) of a word for ‘white paint for the face’ put in front of (‘on’) it. I ‘m not convinced that ‘tipped’ can legitimately indicate reversal in an across clue, though.

17a Ed’s clever book opening well (5)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘book’ is put inside (‘opening’) a word for ‘well’ which is most often seen in combination with ‘hearty’. Needless to say, ‘Ed’ is Ed Spenser.

24a King, perhaps, to take pieces a lot (5)
The ‘chess and cards’ abbreviation for king precedes a word that means ‘to take [up] pieces’, where ‘pieces’ are guns, and the letter A (from the clue). The last definition of the answer in Chambers is the relevant one.

28a Fail to cook enough ginger on the counter to cut open (7)
A three-letter word for ‘ginger’ (as a hair colour) is reversed (‘on the counter’) inside (‘to cut’) a word meaning ‘[to] open’, as one might open a parcel.

30a People attempt Native American language around part of California (8)
A three-letter word for an attempt (“I’ll give it a ???”) is followed by a three-letter Native American language (or an Australian pick-up truck) containing (‘around’) the two letters representing a part of California that will be familiar to all.

32a What can be read as being “Satanic” in manuscript? (5)
I’m not sure that &lit (‘all in one’) clues are Gemelo’s strongest suit, and this one hasn’t persuaded me otherwise. A three-letter word which can mean ‘evil’ (‘Satanic’) is contained by the two-letter abbreviation for ‘manuscript’. The clue as a whole is a reference to William Blake’s poem And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time, which does not exist as a manuscript, having been relief-etched by Blake as part of the preface to his work Milton.

34a Boxers, maybe reds, skipping town in Lousiana (6)
A ten-letter word for red wines associated with a particular area of France loses (‘skipping’) an informal US (‘in Louisiana’) term for a town.

Down

3d Guide in stuffed jacket (5)
A (3,2) phrasal verb meaning ‘to exert an influence over’ (‘guide’) leads directly to the answer.

4d What covers onion up in one paste (6)
A three-letter word for an item of headgear (ie ‘what covers onion’) is reversed (‘up’) ahead of IN (from the clue) and the Roman numeral representing ‘one’.

5d Armour-wearer in American Psycho screened by Channel One at first (9)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘American’ is followed by a three-letter adjective answering to ‘psycho’, contained (‘screened’) by a four-letter word for a channel (typically one carrying water) and the first letter (‘at first’) of ‘One’.

7d Express willingness to shift electronic music equipment, in departure for Broadway? (7)
A five-letter word meaning ‘express willingness’ (or ‘propose to give’), losing (‘to shift’) the usual abbreviation for ‘electronic’, combines with a short form of a nine-letter word for a piece of equipment used to make sounds louder to produce a (3-4), ‘chiefly North American’, term for ‘an exit road from a main thoroughfare’, which is also the name of a fine album by the Pat Metheny Group.

9d Blindfold wrapped around western scarecrow once (5)
One of those clues where you need to know either the ‘obsolete or dialect’ word for a scarecrow or the four-letter word meaning ‘to blindfold’ which contains (‘around’) the usual abbreviation for ‘western’, or a search in Chambers may be indicated. The ‘blindfold’ word could be cryptically indicated by ‘observe lake’.

15d Dance away with triumphant shout (9)
A 3+3+3 charade of a word meaning ‘distant’ or ‘away’ (the latter might seem a stretch, but the required sense is there in Chambers under the entry for ‘away’), a word meaning ‘with’, and the sort of triumphant shout that might greet a goal for either team in New Jersey later today.

23d New financial institution shortly experiencing rise and fall (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘new’ and a six-letter word for ‘a financial institution owned by its customers’, without its last letter (‘shortly’), are reversed (‘experiencing a rise’). The definition is craftily disguised.

29d Elizabeth‘s French degree (4)
The wordplay leads to a (1,2,1) abbreviation of a degree awarded in France. The word in the middle is an archaic contraction of the preposition ‘en’ and the article ‘les’, so it translates as ‘Bachelor of the Sciences’.

(definitions are underlined)