Notes for Gemelo 47
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 47
This puzzle is available at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/47443b9e-1247-4b8b-80a0-88a16eca0504/file/puzzle.pdf.
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We all seemed to be in agreement that Gemelo 46 was one of the easiest plain puzzles that Gemelo has served up thus far. I gave it a difficulty rating of 1.5, and the average of the 45 visitor votes was 1.7, below even the 1.8 that you awarded to the Beatles special.
I thought this was an enjoyable puzzle, with a good mix of clues, including enough easier ones to allow the solver to make inroads into the grid. I don’t remember coming across the word at 13d before; starting out as an Old English version of ‘Latin’, it came to mean ‘the language of a nation’, and then ‘a way of speaking’, which is the sense in which Spenser employed it. It has also been used by poets to describe the language of birds, hence the more recent dialect meaning of ‘noise’ or ‘chatter’.
Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 6d, “Queen caught disease (5)”. The wordplay is a charade of the two-letter abbreviation of the Latin for ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and a three-letter word meaning ”caught’ or ‘obtained’. The point of interest is ‘Queen’ being used to indicate ER. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth II it was universally accepted that ‘Queen’ or ‘The Queen’ was sufficient to yield ER, while ‘King’ can now be seen in puzzles as an indication of CR. Since this latter abbreviation does not appear in Chambers (or Collins), it is clearly considered by editors to be sufficiently well known to override the usual criteria which would be applied. But should ER now require a qualified definition, such as ‘former queen’? I’m not sure that there is a definitive answer to that question, but if ‘Queen’ is valid for ER, then the basis for its use in barred puzzles now has to be the abbreviation given by Chambers, and it must therefore also be valid for VR and VIR, with ‘King’ being acceptable for GR and ER. I know that some editors of blocked puzzles will not accept ‘Queen’ on its own for ER, and in general I would advise setters to clarify such a definition in some way.
Across
7a Bean that’s by the kilo? (4)
The wordplay makes reference to the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet (aka the NATO Phonetic Alphabet), with ‘kilo’ and the answer representing neighbouring letters. The wordplay here just about works, but I bet that Gemelo tried out a few other options in his head before having to settle for it.
12a A short walk round, meaning one is house-trained? (11)
The letter A (from the clue) is followed by a six-letter word for a walk, missing its last letter (‘short’), the letter of the alphabet which can be described as ‘[a] round’, and a four-letter word for ‘meaning’ or ‘pith’. The definition is nicely oblique, the houses in question being divisions of the heavens.
16a Go out with European, 18, after losing head (6)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘European’ precedes a six-letter word corresponding to the answer at 18d, without its first letter (not a seven-letter word missing its first two letters, for which ‘head’ would not be appropriate).
19a Dead then alive, stopping to drink up? (9)
The usual abbreviation for ‘dead’ and a four-letter past participle meaning ‘having come into existence’ are contained by (‘stopping’) the less common verbal form (‘to drink’) of a familiar noun, almost always seen in the past tense and in the company of ‘dined’.
23a Old soldier to give way when cycling around Italian city (9)
A four-letter word meaning ‘to give way’ or ‘yield’ with its first two letters moved to the end (‘cycling’) contains (‘around’) an Italian city famous for fashion, finance and football.
29a Creep arranged to hold court in A&E, dressed appropriately (11, 2 words)
A four-letter word meaning ‘[to] creep’ is followed by the three-letter abbreviation for ‘arranged’ around (‘to hold’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘court’ inside the letters A and E (from the clue).
31a No longer compose timeless kind of music outside the mainstream (5)
The ‘timeless’ could indicate the removal of a single-letter abbreviation from either what comes before or what comes after, but it is a six-letter archaic word meaning ‘to compose or write’ which must suffer the loss.
32a Gabonese agreed to carry about black antelope (6)
Apparently around 80% of Gabonese speak French, and it is the French word for ‘yes’ which contains the two-letter bit of commercial jargon for ‘about’ and the single-letter abbreviation for ‘black’. Chambers doesn’t give ‘agreed’ as anything other than the past tense of ‘agree’, so the translation seems a bit iffy – even if we allow it as an adverb, I suspect that “d’accord” would be a more accurate rendering, non?
Down
3d Brief sporting competition getting United expelled after attending (8)
A seven-letter word for a sporting competition (either mediaeval or modern) deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘United’ (‘getting United expelled’) follows a two-letter word for ‘attending’ (as in ‘He was attending a conference’).
4d Indian distance runner initially hides in Ford? (5)
Similarly to 31a, Gemelo has phrased this clue so that the first letter of ‘runner’ (‘runner initially’) could be hiding in either the Indian distance or the Ford. It turns out that it is concealed within an Indian measure of distance somewhere between 1¼ and 2½ miles, depending on whether you’re buying or selling. The unnecessary capital on ‘Ford’ will, if the results of our recent poll are anything to go by, have upset 25% of solvers.
5d Thessaloniki possibly reflected on song stanzas for local church? (8)
A reversal (‘reflected’) of a four-letter word for the sort of town exemplified (‘possibly’) by Thessaloniki (Aden and Rio have always been popular ones with setters) precedes a word for the sort of song one might associate with opera. The reason for Gemelo’s unusual choice of city is that the answer is classified by Chambers as ‘Greek church’, so the ‘local’ in the definition expands to ‘local to Thessaloniki’.
18d What male lion may have, chasing missing female tiger? (8)
A charade of a four-letter word for what one expects to see on a male lion and a word for ‘chasing’ or ‘following in search of’, lacking (‘missing’) the usual abbreviation for ‘female’. The answer is hyphenated, 3-5. Apparently, female lions are unimpressed by the length of the appurtenance, but colour is (according to a University of Minnesota study) of prime importance, with blonds reportedly having a lot less fun.
22d Wearing through standard dress fabric (6)
A two-letter word meaning (among many other things) ‘wearing’ is contained by (‘through’) a four-letter word meaning ‘standard’ or ‘price’.
24d Did Long Acre coach expand when empty? (5)
The 25% who railed at ‘Ford’ in 4d won’t have liked this one either. The usual abbreviation for ‘Acre’ is followed by the first and last letters (‘when empty’) of both ‘coach’ and ‘expand’.
28d Content of birthplace of Heracles, offspring of Zeus (4)
The six-letter name of the city where Heracles was born loses its first and last letter to produce the daughter of Hera and Zeus who served ambrosia (a form of creamed rice) and nectar (an Australian lager) to the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus.
30d Captain determined to drop external action (3)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘determined’ or ‘chose’ loses a four-letter word for an action from its outside (ie ‘to drop external action’).
(definitions are underlined)
You make the classic anachronistic error in your explanation of 28d as tin-openers were yet to be invented. For me, the problem with 7a is that ‘the’ (required for the surface, with ‘sold’ implicit) doesn’t really work for the wordplay. In 18d, I think ‘male’ is unnecessary. Are you happy with ‘when empty’ to indicate both words being emptied in 24d? These are minor quibbles though, in what is probably my favourite Gemelo puzzle so far.
I agree about the quality of the puzzle, and I think it’s reasonable for us to quibble about a clue without necessarily implying that it was unfair, or even unenjoyable.
1. My mistake regarding 28d. In fairness, I do now use Claude to check for typos in the blogs, and today (after pointing out a couple of slips) he noted that, “‘ambrosia (a form of creamed rice) and nectar (an Australian lager)’ [is] obviously a joke, not a typo”, so he didn’t spot the issue either. Incidentally, I don’t like ‘content’ being used as a first/last letter deletion indicator – ‘content’ refers to a component that is present in something, but may be a very small part of it (‘sugar content’); ‘contents’ describes everything which is within.
2. I agree about 7a – there are many ways to phrase it, but either you have to include ‘the’ or you need a verb which adds meaning, like Brian’s broadcast. I can’t envisage any version that would have convincing surface and cryptic readings.
3. I agree that ‘male’ isn’t necessary, but since it is almost invariably male lions that have the thing in question, the added detail just helps the solver. Similarly something like ‘cutting tooth’ would be fine for INCISOR, although ‘tooth’ would be sufficient.
4. No, I’m not happy with ‘when empty’ being applied distributively without some form of separator between the components or the indicator being qualified along the lines of ‘when individually emptied’.
7a left me wondering whether a word had been dropped at some stage, and that it should have been “Bean that’s broadcast by the kilo?”. The surface is smoother and broadcast usefully joins the senses of “transmitted” and “sown”, it seems too obvious to overlook. Anyway, aside from the profusion of question marks doing much heavy lifting, I was most irked by 25a. Surely a New Yorker is a person from New York, and therefore an “Easterner”, not an “Eastern”? Hmm…
Chambers gives the latter noun as a synonym of the former, but it did cause me to raise an eyebrow. OED has the shorter word as meaning “An inhabitant of the East; an oriental” and the longer one as “An inhabitant of one of the eastern or New England states”, which is something very different.
Collins has New Yorker in US usage as an adjective ‘of the state of New York’.
I couldn’t find New York in Chambers at all – I assume you refer to the app.