{"id":5689,"date":"2025-08-10T12:57:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T11:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/?p=5689"},"modified":"2025-08-24T12:08:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T11:08:29","slug":"notes-for-gemelo-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/10\/notes-for-gemelo-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes for Gemelo 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

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<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Gemelo 4 Plain<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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Solver difficulty rating\r\n

4.2 based on 45 votes (voting is now closed)<\/p>\r\n

Starting today, you have the opportunity to give your own G-rating for each Gemelo puzzle by clicking on the relevant star above, with one star representing a very straightforward solve by your own standards (Gentle) and five stars indicating a seriously tough one (Ghastly). If you accidentally select the wrong star, you can change your vote by simply clicking on a different one. Each solver will be using their own yardstick, but by reflecting the average solver rating for the preceding puzzles I hope in the coming weeks to be able to give a good feel for the relative perceived difficulty of the latest offering.<\/p>\r\n

This seemed to me a pretty challenging puzzle, and I was grateful for the three long anagrams (I chose to cheat on one of them, thus revealing a suitably reproachful answer). Once again, the proportion of obscure words was relatively low, but some devious definitions and wily wordplays proved a more than adequate counterbalance. The grammatical accuracy of the clueing in today’s puzzle struck me as being extremely high – a second look at a couple of things that didn’t look quite right at first glance confirmed that they were absolutely fine. If there are any clues which I haven’t covered below that you would like assistance or views on, just let me know.<\/p>\r\n

Setters’ Corner<\/em><\/strong>: This week I’m going to look at clue 14d, “Take up stuffing duck, not having the sauce? (8)”. The wordplay here involves a reversal (‘up’) of a four-letter word meaning ‘take’ or ‘carry’ (often associated with ‘bag’) being put inside (‘stuffing’) the name of a particular kind of duck. The point of interest is the definition, the question being how far a setter can twist the words of an oblique definition to improve the surface reading. Chambers gives ‘the sauce’ as a US informal term for alcoholic drink, although I think it would be familiar to most UK solvers. I very much doubt whether in conversation we would refer to an abstainer as ‘not having the sauce’, rather something like ‘staying off the sauce’, but that doesn’t matter in the least. What is important in the cryptic reading of the definition is that what the setter has written could reasonably be interpreted as leading to the answer, not that it has to be a natural way of indicating it. Since ‘have’ has a wide variety of meanings, including ‘take’ and ‘accept’, someone ‘not having the sauce’ could surely be abstaining from alcoholic drink. Similarly with ‘never trying hard stuff’, but note that something like ‘never striking the bottle’ would not be acceptable – ‘hitting the bottle’ is the expression here, and replacing one word in it with a synonym destroys the figurative sense. Whether ‘never hitting the bottle’ would be a valid description of an abstainer is itself questionable, since the phrase refers to drinking alcohol excessively, not to having the odd dram.<\/p>\r\n

Across<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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1a<\/strong> Lover<\/span> of language cheers (8)<\/span>
The sight of ‘cheers’ in a cryptic clue always make me think TA, but the interjection which follows the three-letter name of an international language developed from Esperanto does not mean ‘thanks!’ but ‘cheerio!’ or (for older readers) ‘TTFN’.<\/p>\r\n

10a<\/strong> Teachers may use these<\/span> unearned powers to ignore government (6)<\/span>
A seven-letter word for powers which have been inherited rather than earned (or for the insignia of royalty) is deprived of (‘to ignore’) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘government’.<\/p>\r\n

15a<\/strong> Move to and fro, avoiding hot light that\u2019s been abandoned<\/span> (6)<\/span>
A seven-letter word for ‘move to and fro’ (originally from the world of weaving) loses (‘avoiding’) the usual abbreviation for ‘hot’. The answer is shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’, hence the qualifier “that’s been abandoned”.<\/p>\r\n

16a<\/strong> New rubber involving clubs, secondly diamonds, and hearts<\/span> (6)<\/span>
The wordplay yields the usual abbreviation for ‘new’, a three-letter type of rubber extracted from a central American tree containing the usual abbreviation for ‘clubs’, and the second letter (‘secondly’) of ‘diamonds’.<\/p>\r\n

20a<\/strong> Fish<\/span> that is out of time (4)<\/span>
The (2,3) Latin phrase meaning ‘that is’ surrenders (‘out of’) the usual abbreviation for ‘time’.<\/p>\r\n

21a<\/strong>\u00a0Primate<\/u> Mark losing south-east and half of London(4)<\/span>
The nine-letter name of a particular punctuation mark loses both the usual abbreviation for ‘south-east’ and the first half of ‘London’.<\/p>\r\n

24a<\/strong> Like notable lion<\/span>\u2019s old relative, swallowing another one? (6)<\/span>
A three-letter ‘pet name for a grandmother'(‘old relative’) contains (‘swallowing’) an obsolete term for an uncle (‘another one’, ie another old relative, ‘old’ in this instance referring to the word’s obsoleteness). The answer comes from the name of the valley which the large and ferocious lion of Greek myth called home before it had the misfortune to meet up with Heracles. King Eurystheus had charged Heracles with the task of dispatching the said feline, which had become a scourge of the area; it was a labour which didn\u2019t sound unduly challenging until it turned out that the enormous beast had an impenetrable golden hide, and that firing arrows at it simply made it angrier. And it was pretty angry to start with. Heracles blocked up one of the entrances to the lion\u2019s cave before lobbing an early form of smoke bomb through the other one; when the lion duly emerged (by this time bordering on incandescence), Heracles (in the words of Ned Flanders) “gave its noggin a floggin'” and then throttled it. This feat of bare-handed lion-strangling put the wind up Eurystheus sufficiently that he communicated all future labours to Heracles through an intermediary, declining to meet him in person. The RSPCA\u2019s response to the events is unknown.<\/p>\r\n

29a<\/strong> Behold interior to clipped front claws<\/span> (6)<\/span>
One of those two-letter interjections meaning ‘behold!’ is contained by (‘interior to’) a word for ‘front’ (of the brass neck variety) which has been shorn of its last letter (‘clipped’).<\/p>\r\n

32a<\/strong> Perhaps olive stuffed with herb for amusement of a crowd?<\/span> (8)<\/span>
A four-letter word for something of which an olive is but one example contains (‘stuffed by’) the name of an umbelliferous herb related to the parsnip. My remarks in Setters’ Corner about the definition in 14d are equally applicable here, the ‘crowd’ being one more than the number of people constituting ‘company’ in a familiar saying.<\/p>\r\n

Down<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

2d<\/strong> Irrational number had to follow round number<\/span> (6)<\/span>
A two-letter irrational number (slightly bigger than the crowd in 32a) and a three-letter word meaning ‘had’ in the sense of ‘consumed’ come after (‘to follow’) the letter of the alphabet which could be described as a ’round’. I remember a time when ETHER seemed to be invariably defined in cryptic clues by ‘number’, but I don’t remember seeing it for the answer here.<\/p>\r\n

4d<\/strong> Card<\/span> game\u2019s mark is hedging so far (5)<\/span>
A three-letter word for the cross on the ice at curling or the ‘hob’ at quoits (“game’s mark”) contains (‘is hedging’) a two-letter word meaning ‘so far’, often indicated in crosswords by ‘like’. The nicely-disguised definition is a verb in the cryptic reading.<\/p>\r\n

5d<\/strong> Opposition means to expel peer for his costume?<\/span> (6)<\/span>
An eleven-letter word for ‘any means of counteraction’ (‘opposition means’) gives up a five-letter word for a noble equal in rank to an earl (‘peer’), the result being something which is traditionally used to trim the ceremonial robes of the aristocracy.<\/p>\r\n

6d<\/strong> Short notch in willow plant<\/span> (7)<\/span>
A four-letter word for a notch (or police station) without its last letter (‘short’) is contained by an alternative spelling of a word for a willow, shown as obsolete by the OED, and derived from the Latin word for the tree (with which it shares the first three letters).<\/p>\r\n

7d<\/strong> Choice<\/span> of 200 monkeys no longer adopted<\/span> (4)<\/span>
A double definition clue, although I’m not sure that I much care for ‘of’ being used to link the two definitions, suggesting an asymmetry that doesn’t exist. The first definition is an adjective (and the nickname of PG Wodehouse), while the second requires the solver to work out what 200 monkeys would be, given that one ‘monkey’ is \u00a3500.<\/p>\r\n

12d<\/strong> Ascendant prophet adjusting position of university theologians<\/span> (6)<\/span>
The name of an Old Testament prophet to be found sandwiched between Ruth and Kings is reversed (‘ascendant’) and the usual abbreviation for ‘university’ is relocated within it (‘adjusting position of university’).<\/p>\r\n

23d<\/strong> Test<\/span> circuit board (6)<\/span>
The wordplay is a charade of a two-letter ‘circuit’ with a single binary output (the highest value of any of its inputs) and a word for a board in the wooden sense. Apparently in the British timber trade such a thing is understood to be 9 inches wide, not more than 3 inches thick, and at least 6 feet long. If shorter, it is a ???-end; if not more than 7 inches wide, it is a batten.\u00a0 I imagine that if it exceeds the stated dimensions, it is considered a big ????.<\/p>\r\n

27d<\/strong> Keen to cut lines for Bollywood title?<\/span> (4)<\/span>
A six-letter word meaning ‘keen’ or ‘piercing’ loses (‘to cut’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘lines’ to produce a title which I believe is bestowed on celebrated or revered figures (such as Bollywood stars) regardless of their gender.<\/p>\r\n

(definitions are underlined<\/span>)<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/span> Post Views:<\/span> 3,186<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n

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<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gemelo keeps the challenges coming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":4.20000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gemelo-notes"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":46,"sum_votes":193},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5689"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5738,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5689\/revisions\/5738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}