Notes for Gemelo 42

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 42

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/fece4c35-65d3-4703-8cec-8a42492f8620/file/puzzle.pdf. Note that 24d should be enumerated as (6, 2 words) rather than (6).

Solver difficulty rating

2.4 based on 41 votes (voting is now closed)

We had a significant disagreement over the difficulty of last week’s puzzle – your average rating of 2.6 was a long way short of my assessment of 3.6. This suggests either that you’re getting better at solving Gemelo’s puzzles or I’m getting worse. Or, very likely, both!

This puzzle was a bit of a mixture – some neat and well-constructed clues like 25a and 5d, but a few that looked to have been put together rather quickly (4a, 24d). Overall, I thought it was an enjoyable solve, and there were enough of the easier clue types (anagrams, hiddens) to provide entrées to all parts of the grid. One or two of the wordplays were certainly quite tricky to unravel even when you had the likely answer. I’ve put my assessment of its difficulty in a sealed envelope (well, I’ve written it down), and I look forward to seeing how your score for this puzzle compares both to that for G41 and to my rating.

Having had time to reflect on 24d, specifically the strange choice of first word, I wonder if it was originally ‘Manchester’ and at some relatively late point in the editorial process it was decided that the step from there to the first three letters of the answer was an unreasonable one; I cannot believe that Gemelo would have written the clue as it was published.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 23a, “Spooner’s become famous for some tennis (7, 2 words)”. The answer is a (3,4) spoonerism of a (3,4) phrase meaning ‘become famous’ or ‘acquire celebrity’. Spoonerisms are the Marmite of the crossword world, and if you ask a group of solvers to name their pet hates the spoonerism is sure to feature in more than one list. I’ve never really understood this – it seems to me that one spoonerism clue can add a bit of variety to a puzzle, particularly a blocked puzzle where there are several long, multi-word answers which otherwise will be clued using anagrams or by separately defining their component parts. However, in my view it is very important that the spoonerism:

(i) clearly ‘works’, such that swapping the two sounds gives the answer (as here)
(ii) is consonantal (as here) rather than vocalic (eg ‘bride sword’ for ‘broadside’)
(iii) is fairly indicated, eg “Spooner’s” (as here) rather than “don’s”
(iv) forms part of a coherent surface reading (as here) rather than the clue being just a definition and a ‘Spooner’ wordplay which have been stuck together without regard to the overall effect

Across

13a Long story requiring energy after introduction (5)
A four-letter word for a tale or story has the usual abbreviation for ‘energy’ inserted after its first letter (ie ‘requiring energy after introduction’).

17a Briefly disparage a Roman house (6)
A six-letter word meaning ‘disparage’, missing its last letter (‘briefly’), is followed by the letter A (from the clue).

19a String instrument originally covered in extremely erodent yellow pigment (7)
A familiar six-letter ‘string instrument’ has its first letter (‘originally’) replaced by (‘covered in’) the first and last letters (‘extremely’) of ‘erodent’. This is one of those clues where the surface reading has been optimized to the detriment of the wordplay – ‘covered by’ could certainly indicate one pair of letters being obscured by another; ‘covered with’ would probably be borderline; but ‘covered in’ (to my way of thinking, at least) doesn’t suggest that the thing covered has been rendered invisible.

25a Set forth conclusion of report in full (6)
The last letter (‘conclusion’) of ‘report’ is contained by a word meaning ‘full’ in the sense of ‘glutted’.

29a Ways to move Scottish children (5)
The first definition refers to ways of walking, while the second is Walter Scott’s version of a Scots word for children of the brattish variety (“A’ the ?????? o’ boys and lasses wad be crying at Madge Wildfire’s tail” – Heart of Midlothian)

30a Irish girl provided that idea (5)
A charade of a three-letter piece of Irish slang for a girl or young woman, especially a girlfriend (as in “that’s me ???”), and a word meaning ‘provided that’.

34a Vase that’s from ancient Egypt but can work (4)
A seven-letter word for an ancient Egyptian vase, except for (‘but’) the consecutive letters CAN. The vase is named after an ancient city, founded according to Homeric myth by Menelaus, and named after ???????, the pilot of his ship, who died there after being bitten by a serpent.  In that particular city, Osiris was worshipped in the form of a jar representing his body, topped with a lid representing the human head of the god. The unfortunate pilot also gave his name to the star (the second-brightest in the night sky) which was the rudder in the ancient constellation Argo and is now part of the group Carina.

Down

1d Certainly soft waste to give one locally (12, 5 words)
A three-letter word for a fool (‘[a] soft’) is followed by a four-letter word for the chief form in which nitrogenous waste is excreted, a three-letter word meaning ‘to give’ in the sense of ‘yield’ or ‘sink’, and a two-letter dialect form (‘locally’) of ‘one’.

2d Free country welcoming national poll (6)
A country with two capitals (well, only one actually, but what you think that is may depend on where you live), containing (‘welcoming’) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘national’, precedes a three-letter word meaning ‘with close-cut hair’ or ‘polled’. But surely, you say, ‘polled’ and ‘poll’ aren’t the same thing? They can be, as witnessed by the definition of the adjective ‘poll’ in Chambers, and the term ‘deed poll’, a deed made and executed by one party only, so called because the paper or parchment was ‘polled’ or cut even, not indented.

5d Avoided prison, not quite caught in act (8)
A five-letter slang term for prison (the name of a noted jail in Southwark, opened 1144, burned down 1780) without its last letter (‘not quite’) is contained by (‘caught in’) a four-letter word for an act (often of a heroic kind).

6d Senior rabbis with article in Times (6)
A two-letter (indefinite) article is contained by a word meaning ‘times’. If the result of the June poll is anything to go by, only 18% of solvers will have taken exception to ‘times’ being written as ‘Times’.

12d Approval somehow isn’t lost by government (10)
An anagram (‘somehow’) of ISNT is removed from (‘lost by’) a 14-letter word for a government.

18d What covered Roman soldier‘s face when climbing (5)
A three-letter word for the face (as seen in police photographs of their regular ‘clients’) and a two-letter word meaning (among other things) ‘when’ are reversed (‘climbing’).

26d Shadow Home Secretary going around centre for injured (5)
The past tense of a three-letter informal word meaning ‘injure’ (particularly used to describe an unpleasant but unspecified act of revenge – “I’m going to ??? you for this”) has the two-letter abbreviation for ‘Home Secretary’ surrounding its middle letter (‘going around centre’).

28d Chat about shape of Cheerios cereal (4)
A three-letter informal, and perhaps rather dated, word for ‘chat’, a shortened form of ‘all ??? and gaiters’, is reversed (‘about’) ahead of the letter which represents the shape of a single Cheerio. Determining whether it can legitimately be indicated by ‘shape of Cheerios [plural]’ is, as they say, left to the reader as an exercise.

(definitions are underlined)