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 44

This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/9585e14a-2630-4cb5-83e4-575bfbeaaa87/file/puzzle.pdf.

Solver difficulty rating

2.5 based on 39 votes (voting is now closed)

You gave Gemelo 43 an average difficulty rating of 2.4, the same as that of its predecessor; I rated it slightly lower at 2.2, probably because I got a flying start with the two entries across the top and the one down the left-hand side.

This puzzle was not without its challenges, but, like other recent Gemelos, it offered several toeholds to the solver. A pleasant solve, but when are we going to get the promised clue-writing competition? Surely there has been time enough to get all the necessary arrangements set up, tested, and ready for launch. And to get a Gemelo bookplate produced, of course, though I feel that any trophy should probably be virtual.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 19d, “Dismissal after Stokes bowled over (7)”. A six-letter slang word for dismissal, specifically in the phrase ‘to get the ??????’, originally used to describe the dismissal or rejection of a lover, follows the usual abbreviation for ‘Stokes’ – well, actually for ‘stokes’. The July poll confirmed that many solvers are not bothered about words in clues being given false capitals, as with ‘stokes’ here, but I do feel that part of the setter’s art is wherever possible to misdirect while providing a cryptic reading which can be interpreted exactly as it is written. Sometimes it can be almost impossible to manoeuvre the word which requires a capital in the surface reading but not in the cryptic reading to the start of a sentence, and in such instances I have sympathy with the setter who adds a false capital, but often a bit of shuffling around is possible. The clue under consideration could have been written, for instance, as “Stokes, prior to dismissal, bowled over”. In these situations, I would encourage setters to look at how they can legitimately ‘hide’ the initial capital before resorting to the inclusion of a false capital.

Across

1a Dangerous habit of passing on tea in M&S from the back (12)
Gemelo starts off with a crafty wordplay where a five-letter ‘informal’ word for ‘passing’ or ‘approving’ follows (‘on’) a three-letter word for ‘tea’, the letters IN (from the clue), and the letters M and S reversed (‘from the back’). The answer is hyphenated, 5-7, and – since Chambers  does not show the verbal noun – should ideally have been defined as a present participle by ‘pursuing dangerous habit’ or similar.

14a Led by power, classic Avenger rejects first picks (7)
I initially thought that the ‘classic Avenger’ who loses their first letter (‘rejects first’) and follows the usual abbreviation for ‘power’ might be John Steed, Cathy Gale or Emma Peel (I’m afraid that David Keel and Tara King don’t qualify as ‘classic’), but it turns out that we have to go back much further than the 1960s to find the daughter of Agamemnon who helped her brother Orestes to avenge their father’s murder. The name puts me in mind of the winning clue for TREACLE in Ximenes comp 997 by ‘Mrs B. Lewis’ (the pseudonym of Dorothy Taylor, which was subsequently used by Colin Dexter for Morse’s sidekick), “Material for a black confection that might become ???????”, with its reference to Eugene O’Neill’s reworking of the story.

17a Do without occasionally antiwar Christian (5)
A name for the first note of the scale, now almost invariably called ‘do’, contains (‘without’) alternate letters selected from ‘antiwar’ (ie ‘antiwar occasionally’).

20a Aardvark hater turned corner (8)
The (5-3) answer is the result of an anagram (‘turned’) of HATER plus a word meaning ‘to take or use selfishly’, although whether ‘corner’ is a valid synonym is open to question. A ‘corner’ involves a syndicate buying up all the available stock in the market or available supply of a commodity, thus forcing speculative sellers into a corner, such that they can only fulfil their obligations by buying from the corner-men at an inflated price. The term ‘to corner’ can certainly be used figuratively in a broadly similar context, eg ‘he cornered the market in scented tie-clips’, but I’ve never seen it used in a wider sense. The Chambers Thesaurus does give the word here under the verb ‘corner’, but, as I have noted before, many of the synonyms in that work range from distinctly questionable to just plain wrong.

22a Vast number from Pakistan and India, and smaller number from East in opposition (8)
A three-letter word for 100,000 rupees or an indefinitely vast number (‘vast number from Pakistan’), the letter represented in the IRSA by ‘India’, and a four-letter word for ‘something small of its type’ are all reversed (‘from East’).

26a Caterpillar falling short on account of being late (5)
The word ON (from the clue) missing its last letter (‘falling short’) precedes a shortened form of an eight-letter ‘account of a dead person’ (ie ‘account of being late’, where ‘being’ has the meaning of ‘person’).

29a Filling food carried by Yodel? (8)
A four-letter word which can describe food generally – although among nautical folk it is usually either ‘hard’ (ships’ biscuit) or ‘soft’ (bread) – is contained by a verb which broadly describes what a yodeller would do (hence the question mark). The Yodel brand ceased to exist on 17 July this year, so I hope the food arrives ok. Still, it could have been with Evri…

34a Ultimately, hint to crack puzzle proves incorrect (6)
The last letter (‘ultimately’) of ‘hint’ is contained by (‘cracks’) the name for the sort of puzzle where a word or words are represented by a combination of pictures, sometimes with single letters crossed out or added. I remember that there used to be a pop-themed puzzle of this type every week in Disc magazine, the one for Captain Beefheart being particularly memorable.

Down

4d Deny access after one loses head (6)
I’m afraid that this clue is unsound – as the wordplay is written, it can only be the four-letter word for ‘[a means of] access’ which loses its first letter (‘head’). The intended interpretation, though, is that this four-letter word comes after the word ONE, lacking its first letter – this would correctly be indicated by something along the lines of ‘Deny access, faced with one losing head’. While the word ‘after’ in the surface reading is a conjunction, in order to achieve the required juxtaposition in the cryptic reading it must be a preposition, but a preposition cannot introduce a main clause – it must relate the subject to the object, as in ‘driver behind learner loses patience’, which can only mean that the driver is losing patience. In crosswordese, the use of a participle instead of a main verb offers the setter welcome ambiguity: ‘driver behind learner losing patience’ could mean that either the driver or the learner loses patience – although in normal language we would take this example to mean ‘[a] driver behind [a] learner [is] losing patience’, it could also legitimately be interpreted as ‘[a] driver [is] behind [a] learner losing patience’.

7d Chuck about what’s inside of dried mud (7)
An anagram (‘about’) of CHUCK is followed by the word ‘what’ deprived of its first and last letters, ie “what’s inside”. The word ‘of’, required by the definition, rather spoils the surface reading.

12d Shake can (4)
A double-definition clue, the first definition wherein prompted a regular correspondent to suggest that “James Bond might raise an eyebrow” about the clue, given his very clear views about how a Martini should be prepared. Absolutely right, although in a non-physical sense both ‘shake’ and the answer have a shared meaning of ‘rouse’, so the clue is fine.

16d Fruit provider to go around every trustee (9)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to go’, or euphemistically speaking ‘to answer the call of nature’, contains (‘around’) a four-letter word meaning ‘every’ and a two-letter abbreviation for ‘trustee’. The answer is (5-4).

21d Extremely dim bully clinging to one stone (7)
A four-letter word of US origin meaning ‘to subject to cruel horseplay’, particularly used in relation to the practices of college students, containing (‘clinging to’) the Roman numeral representing ‘one’ is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘stone’. Do ‘dim’ and the four-letter adjective from which the answer is formed share a meaning? Just about, I would say.

23d Definitely not Iron Man’s core breaking circuit (6, 2 words)
The chemical symbol for iron and the middle letter (‘core’) of ‘Man’ are contained by the sort of logic circuit that delivers an ON only if all its inputs are OFF. The answer is (2,4).

25d American constitution restricting Express and associated organs (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘American’ precedes a three-letter abbreviation from the world of chemistry which has come to figuratively represent the essence or constitution of a thing, containing (‘restricting’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘express’.

27d Casually throw old purse to pay broken Australian (4)
A quadruple-definition clue which relies on the second, third, fourth and fifth headwords in Chambers. Incorporating the first, sixth and seventh headwords is left to the reader as an exercise…go on, there hasn’t been a clue writing comp for ages…

(definitions are underlined)