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 43

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/fde6ae09-c8a8-4b99-874e-f0a12993345d/file/puzzle.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

2.4 based on 40 votes (voting is now closed)

My thanks to the 41 readers who gave their difficulty ratings for G42 (the biggest solver sample that I can remember). Your average rating was 2.4, and looking at my printed copy of the puzzle I see that I had written ‘2.3’ beside it, so I think it’s fair to say the general feeling was that it was close to (if perhaps a tidge below) the middle of the Gemelo difficulty spectrum.

Today’s Gemelo puzzle struck me as being more like an Azed than last week’s ‘Azed’. There weren’t perhaps the generous dollops of wit that we came to expect from Azed in his prime, and the misdirection relied more on misleading surfaces and concealment of the breaks between definition and wordplay than on innovative definitions, but the soundness, accessibility and interesting surface readings were all there. I thought this was an enjoyable crossword, just right for a breakfast-time solve along with a couple of slices of Toastie, but you may feel differently about the puzzle or, indeed, your accompaniment of choice.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look not at a clue but at the grid. An unusual feature this week is the presence of two five-letter entries (7d/27d) containing no unchecked letters (‘unches’). The rules for unching in barred puzzles dictate that there should be no unchecked letters in entries of 3 letters; no more than one unchecked letter in 4/5-letter entries; no more than two in 6/7-letter entries, no more than three in 8-letter entries, and no more than a third of the letters unchecked in entries of 9 or more letters. You will note that the rule for 8-letter entries is something of an anomaly, allowing more than a third of the letters to be unchecked; Azed has always limited himself to two unches in such entries, but on occasion Gemelo avails himself of the extra unchecked letter (thus demonstrating that there is such a thing as a free unch).

It is unusual for setters to include fully checked entries of four or five letters in a grid, but it is not wrong. As Azed has noted in the past, not using the entire ‘unch allowance’ causes extra difficulty for the setter, not the solver, so the fact that, for instance, the 8-letter entry at 3d in today’s crossword includes only one unch is not an issue. I will say, though, that solvers in general (myself included) don’t like to see more than a couple of fully-checked entries in any barred puzzle, because the answer simply emerges without the need to solve the clue; as a general principle, fully checked entries of four or more letters should be avoided where possible. The situation can be rather different in themed puzzles – practically speaking, an ‘unch’ in an entry is a letter which is not checked by the solution to an intersecting clue, hence unclued entries and solutions which are mutilated prior to entry cannot truly be counted as providing ‘checkers’, and a five-letter entry that has no cells barred off but which intersects an unclued entry effectively contains one unchecked letter.

Across

1a Nonsense from preachers renouncing vermouth (4)
A metonym for preachers collectively (this being a likely place from which to preach) is deprived of (‘renouncing’) the informal two-letter term applied to Italian vermouth. I wonder what a suitable metonym for all things cruciverbal might be  – ‘the grid’?

11a Look inside bank for worm (7)
A three-letter word for ‘look’ or ‘appearance’ is contained by (‘inside’) a word meaning ‘[to] bank’ – in reality, these are ‘crossword synonyms’ which I doubt could ever be used interchangeably in real life but which have a shared meaning of ’tilt’. The answer is (4-3).

13a Something found under mail not about to be returned (5)
We had the same answer in Gemelo 41, where the clue was ‘Guide in stuffed jacket’. A simpler wordplay here has the letters NOT (from the clue) and a two-letter abbreviation of the Latin word for ‘about’ being reversed (‘returned’).

16a What Superman’s named cape that doesn’t use better silk cloth (5)
Superman’s real (yes, I do know…) surname (“What Superman’s named”) is followed by the letters CAPE from which a word meaning ‘[to] better’ has been removed (ie “that doesn’t use better”).

17a Old me adopting new name for fruit (9, 2 words)
The usual abbreviation for ‘old’ and the name of our setter, containing (‘adopting’) the usual abbreviation for ‘new’, are followed by the single-letter abbreviation for ‘name’, yielding the (4,5) answer. Given that phrases such as ‘geometrical progression’ and ‘judgement of Solomon’ are rather too long, this is Gemelo’s only realistic chance to use all of his letters in order, although in a 13×11 grid he could squeeze in ‘double-meaning’ and ‘complementing’, which include him (spread out 1-4-1) in reverse order. It is hard to think about clues which reference the setter’s name or pseudonym without being reminded of Dr Eddie Young’s (winning, I need hardly add) entry for AZ comp 1,775 (ROUGH-AND-READY) – “A hard tussle with Dr E. Young plainly winning”. I’m even prepared to overlook the plural verb ‘tussle’ as an anagram indicator, given that it’s something that the judge was known to allow and there aren’t too many alternatives (I can’t come up with one) which would work.

26a Blast of pan-pipes featuring in short form of jazz (9)
A six-letter word for ‘a type of Andean Pan-pipes’ (Chambers has the word hyphenated with an initial capital, while Collins gives ‘panpipes’ and ‘Pan pipes’) is contained by a four-letter word for a particular type of jazz, missing its last letter (‘short’). Based on the earlier New Orleans style, this form of jazz thrived in the middle part of the last century, and still remains popular, although sadly the death of  Chris Barber in 2021 (he had retired at the age of 89 two years earlier) meant that the last of the great British exponents of the genre had gone.

30a Devious excursion uncovered jelly (4)
Hands up everyone who got this from the definition and worked back to the six-letter word for a ‘devious excursion’ which loses its first and last letters (‘uncovered’). I’ll have to put my hand down now so I can carry on typing.

31a Melting ice mostly dogging a building designer carving out arch (10)
The word ICE without its last letter (‘mostly’) follows (‘dogging’, which may bring back memories for anyone who watched Peter Kay’s Car Share) a three-letter word often cryptically indicated by ‘a’ (as in ‘three pounds a punnet’) and a nine-letter word for a building designer without (‘carving out’) the consecutive letters ARCH.

35a Where scholars may read scripture in the morning paper (4)
A two-letter abbreviation for a school subject likely to involve reading scripture and a two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘in the morning’ combine to produce the answer.

Down

5d Time where preacher sat up and presented Lamentations (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘time’ and a three-letter word for a place where a preacher would have sat are reversed (‘up’). But surely a worshipper would sit there, the preacher being more at home in the location referenced in 1a? Nowadays, yes, but Chambers gives another meaning of the word as ‘formerly a place for a preacher or reader’, hence the past tense ‘sat’.

7d Drum kit almost breaking on account of drummer initially going the wrong way (5)
The word KIT missing its last letter (‘almost’) is contained by (‘breaking’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘on account of’ and the first letter (‘initially’) of ‘drummer’, the whole lot being reversed (‘going the wrong way’).

12d River dam’s last part taken out (6)
A charade of the three-letter name of a river in south-west England, the last letter of ‘dam’ (“dam’s last”), and the two-letter abbreviation for ‘part’.

18d Reporter‘s notorious, abruptly U-turning to right (8)
A six-letter word meaning ‘notorious’ or ‘downright’ (invariably in my experience used pejoratively) is shorn of its last letter (‘abruptly’) and reversed (‘U-turning’) ahead of the letters TO (from the clue) and the usual abbreviation for ‘right’.

21d Quickly win section of course (6)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘section’ is followed by a slang term meaning ‘of course’.

24d Very able to move? (6)
An unassuming sort of &lit, the usual abbreviation for ‘very’ preceding a word meaning ‘able to move [nimbly]’ to produce a completely different word meaning ‘having the ability to move about’.

27d Begin to split into opposing camps after politician quits (5)
An eight-letter word meaning ‘to split into opposing camps’ loses a three-letter informal term for a politician or political activist, only to be found in more recent editions of Chambers (‘after politician quits’).

(definitions are underlined)