{"id":6486,"date":"2026-03-08T12:18:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T12:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/?p=6486"},"modified":"2026-03-22T12:46:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T12:46:21","slug":"notes-for-gemelo-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/08\/notes-for-gemelo-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes for Gemelo 26"},"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

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Gemelo 26<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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This puzzle is available at https:\/\/cdn.slowdownwiseup.co.uk\/media\/documents\/obs.GEMELO.20260308.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

Solver difficulty rating\r\n

2.5 based on 34 votes (voting is now closed)<\/p>\r\n

Please give your own G-rating for this 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). Note that hovering over the ‘graph’ icon will show you the full breakdown of votes for the current puzzle. Last week’s puzzle received an average rating of 2.3, which I think reflected the fact that, unlike the previous week’s constrained puzzle themed around the letter A, there were some straightforward toeholds (via ‘hiddens’ and anagrams) to provide help with the harder clues.<\/p>\r\n

I thought Gemelo 26 was an excellent puzzle, featuring a good range of clue types and a mix of difficulties that offered plenty of ways in to the grid. The clueing was innovative without, for the most part at least, demanding too many mental leaps from the solver. The surface readings in general were very good, and there was plenty of legitimate misdirection to enjoy.<\/p>\r\n

Setters’ Corner<\/em><\/strong>: This week I’m going to look not at a clue from this puzzle, but one from the latest Guardian Genius<\/em> puzzle that I saw recently on one of the help forums: “Part of car sounds like exhaust (4)”.\u00a0 The original poster was unsure as to whether the answer was TIRE (sounds like ‘tyre’) or TYRE (sounds like ‘tire’), the second letter being unchecked in the grid. I have noticed that even reasonably experienced solvers can struggle with homophones where both words involved are the same length such as “Reportedly, female servant is carried out (4)” for MADE. There should be no ambiguity here, as the homophone indicator can apply only to the female servant, but in any event the difference between the two possible answers means that a crossing entry will confirm which one is correct. Where the potential answers differ only by an unchecked letter (a relatively rare occurrence), in the interests of ‘solver satisfaction’ I would strongly advise asking yourself whether a homophone is the right tool for the job.<\/p>\r\n

But back to that Genius<\/em> clue. “Obviously”, I said to myself, “the answer is TYRE, which ‘sounds like [tire]'”. And if the clue had read “Part of car that sounds like exhaust”, I would have thought no more about it – we would be looking for “A word for a part of a car that sounds like a word meaning ‘exhaust'”. As it stands, though, the clue is simply a statement, and I think you could therefore legitimately read it as “A word for a part of a car sounds like this<\/em> word meaning ‘exhaust'”, the answer being TIRE. I’ve little doubt that the intended answer was indeed TYRE, but the clue leaves room for doubt – if a setter does decide to opt for the homophone clue in a situation like this, they need to ensure that it is absolutely watertight.<\/p>\r\n

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

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1a<\/strong> Centre-forward netting with vigour in a league match that\u2019s decisive<\/span> (8, 2 words)<\/span>
The two-letter abbreviation for ‘centre-forward’ containing (‘netting’) a two-letter word meaning (among many other things) ‘with vigour’ is followed by the letters IN A (from the clue) and the usual abbreviation for ‘league’. The answer is (3,5).<\/p>\r\n

6a<\/strong> Storm<\/span> shield remaining incomplete (4)<\/span>
A five-letter word from ancient history for ‘a small light shield or buckler’ is deprived of its last letter (‘incomplete’). The shield gave its name (with an ‘-st’ tacked on the end) to the sort of Greek soldier who carried one – it’s a long time since I read Xenophon’s Anabasis<\/em> at school, but I’m pretty sure that there were quite a lot of them among his 10,000. The word ‘remaining’ seems somewhat redundant, and would I suspect have been removed by many editors in their quest for brevity.<\/p>\r\n

9a<\/strong> Mary sheared pet lamb in place of amusement<\/span> (6)<\/span>
The word MARY (from the clue) without its outer letters (‘sheared’) precedes a word for a lamb abandoned by its mother and brought up by hand, or a pet lamb. The place of amusement is the sort likely to be found in profusion at UK seaside holiday resorts.<\/p>\r\n

10a<\/strong> Clay later packed into court properties<\/span>\u00a0(6)<\/span>
The second name taken by Cassius Clay when he changed his name in 1964 (ie ‘Clay later’) is contained by (‘packed into’) a word for a court, abbreviated from a ten-letter word referring to its shape and often associated with Oxbridge colleges.<\/p>\r\n

11a<\/strong> In winter, say, bank<\/span> secured over 500 rupees through close examination (9)<\/span>
A reversal of a three-letter word meaning ‘secured’ followed by the Roman numeral representing 500 and the single-letter abbreviation for ‘rupees’ are contained by (‘through’) a four-letter word for a close examination (usually seen as a verb, either in connection with de-lumping something like flour or figuratively with regard to going through<\/em>, say, a large pile of papers).<\/p>\r\n

18a<\/strong> Prime Minister\u2019s not opening private office<\/span> (3)<\/span>
It’s surprising how many Prime Ministers produce a real word when the first letter is dropped from their surname (ie ‘not opening’) – RUSS, AY, LAIR, HATCHER, EATH – but we have to go back to the 1950s to find the one for whom things all went wrong as a result of his ‘handling’ of the Suez crisis.<\/p>\r\n

19a<\/strong> Stop tossing around one of 50 poisons<\/span>? (9)<\/span>
An anagram (‘tossing’) of STOP contains (‘around’) the five-letter name of one of the 50 currently in the process of being made great again, this example being home to Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote<\/em> and the destination of Roger Miller in King of the Road<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n

26a<\/strong>\u00a0May’s constituents in time for work<\/u> (7)<\/span>
A neat little clue, where “May’s constituents” are its first letter AND its last three, leading to the (3-4) answer, although I can’t help feeling that with the apostrophe where it is the result should actually be the (3-3) singular form. I would have preferred “Constituents of May’s”.<\/p>\r\n

27a<\/strong> Genetic element<\/span> that\u2019s first removed from sheep (5)<\/span>
The first letter of ‘that’ (ie “that’s first”) is removed from a six-letter word for the meat of a sheep or, jocularly, a sheep itself.<\/p>\r\n

33a<\/strong> Cult attracting men, primarily, about man\u2019s way of doing things?<\/span> (8) <\/span>
An &lit, though perhaps not one from the Premier League. A reversal (‘about’) of the first letters (‘primarily’) of ‘Cult attracting men’ is followed by a three-letter word meaning “[that] man’s” and a two-letter abbreviation for a Latin phrase meaning ‘method of working’, often applied to the trademark technique of a particular criminal. The whole clue stands as an indication of the answer.<\/p>\r\n

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

1d<\/strong> Jackal, perhaps seizing day, arrived with artillery, shooting without warning<\/span> (12, 2 words)<\/span>
A five-letter generic term for an animal from a large group including jackals containing (‘seizing’) the usual abbreviation for ‘day’ is followed by a four-letter word meaning ‘arrived’ and the two-letter abbreviation usually signalled cryptically by ‘artillery’ or ‘gunners’. The answer is (6,6), and while I don’t think that the definition is strictly accurate (‘one gets shot without warning’ would probably be closer), the second definition in Chambers leaves plenty of room for interpretation. UK solvers of a certain age may be put in mind of Jonathan Routh\u00a0 among others.<\/p>\r\n

5d<\/strong> Service form saving opponent of children\u2019s disease<\/span> (5)<\/span>
A seven-letter word for ‘the form of service or regular ritual of a church, strictly that used in the celebration of the Eucharist’ loses (‘saving’) the two-letter word which describes the player chosen in a children’s game to oppose the others (“You’re ??”). The word may or may not have been coined by the Goons<\/em>, but it was certainly turned into a household name by them, almost invariably in its ‘dreaded’ form.<\/p>\r\n

8d<\/strong> Fancy<\/span> steak and onion ruined with heat not on (12, 4 words)<\/span>
An anagram (‘ruined’) of STEAK ONION and HEAT after the letters ON have been removed (‘not on’) produces the (4,1,5,2) answer.<\/p>\r\n

11d<\/strong> Mary\u2019s mother dropping second name for college position<\/span> (6)<\/span>
I would expect the crossword setter for the Church Times<\/em> to know the name of Jesus’s maternal grandmother, and there, unsurprisingly, he had the advantage of me; it seems that she isn’t mentioned in the canonical books of the New Testament, but her name (and that of her husband, Joachim) starts to appear in writings from around 150 AD. Anyway, the (2,4) name by which she is often known has the second instance of the abbreviation for ‘name’\u00a0 replaced by the usual abbreviation for ‘college’ (ie ‘dropping second name for college’).<\/p>\r\n

12d<\/strong> Fail<\/span> – lacking literary style – Open University (4)<\/span>
The letters OPEN (from the clue) without (‘lacking’) a three-letter word for ‘literary style’ precedes the three-letter abbreviation for a private university based in the city of Cambridge, but not the one where a short post-lunch punt journey might reveal that there was still honey for tea.<\/p>\r\n

17d<\/strong> Alexandre Manette possibly<\/span> involved with threat to king (6)<\/span>
A charade of a two-letter word meaning (inter alia<\/em>) ‘involved with’ and a four-letter term from chess for a (terminal) threat to a king produces a word for a person of whom Alexandre Manette was one of a great many examples, perhaps rather too many for cruciverbal comfort. In Dickens’s oft-spoonerized novel about London and Paris, he spent 18 years in the Bastille as ‘Prisoner 105, North Tower’, where he took up shoemaking in order to cope with his solitary confinement.<\/p>\r\n

24d<\/strong> Spending<\/span> limit supported by partner once (5)<\/span>
A three-letter word for a limit which is not to be exceeded combines with a two-letter word often indicated by ‘former partner’.<\/p>\r\n

25d<\/strong> Straw<\/span> man initially underpinning load of drag artists? (5)<\/span>
The first letter of ‘man’ (‘man initially’) follows (‘underpinning’) the kind of load that a group of fishermen expert in the use of drag nets might accumulate.<\/p>\r\n

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

\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/span> Post Views:<\/span> 1,014<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n

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

An nicely-pitched puzzle from Gemelo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":2.5,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6486","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":34,"sum_votes":84},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486","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=6486"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6516,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486\/revisions\/6516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}