{"id":7574,"date":"2026-09-13T12:56:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T11:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/?p=7574"},"modified":"2026-09-13T13:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:01:11","slug":"notes-for-gemelo-47","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/13\/notes-for-gemelo-47\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes for Gemelo 47"},"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 47<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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This puzzle is available at https:\/\/content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk\/api\/mobile\/v1\/puzzle-data\/47443b9e-1247-4b8b-80a0-88a16eca0504\/file\/puzzle.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

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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 (Gnarly). Note that hovering over the ‘graph’ icon will show you the full breakdown of votes for the current puzzle.<\/p>\r\n

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,\u00a0 below even the 1.8 that you awarded to the Beatles special.<\/p>\r\n

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’.<\/p>\r\n

Setters’ Corner<\/em><\/strong>: 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.<\/p>\r\n

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

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7a<\/strong> Bean<\/span> that’s by the kilo? (4)<\/span>
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.<\/p>\r\n

12a<\/strong> A short walk round, meaning one is house-trained?<\/span> (11)<\/span>
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.<\/p>\r\n

16a<\/strong> Go out<\/span> with European, 18, after losing head (6)<\/span>
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).<\/p>\r\n

19a<\/strong> Dead then alive, stopping to drink up?<\/span> (9)<\/span>
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’.<\/p>\r\n

23a<\/strong> Old soldier<\/span> to give way when cycling around Italian city (9)<\/span>
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.<\/p>\r\n

29a<\/strong> Creep arranged to hold court in A&E, dressed appropriately<\/span> (11, 2 words)<\/span>
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).<\/p>\r\n

31a<\/strong> No longer compose timeless kind of music outside the mainstream<\/span> (5)<\/span>
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.<\/p>\r\n

32a<\/strong> Gabonese agreed to carry about black antelope<\/span> (6)<\/span>
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<\/em>?<\/p>\r\n

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

3d<\/strong> Brief<\/span> sporting competition getting United expelled after attending (8)<\/span>
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’).<\/p>\r\n

4d<\/strong> Indian distance runner initially hides in Ford?<\/span> (5)<\/span>
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 1\u00bc and 2\u00bd 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.<\/p>\r\n

5d<\/strong> Thessaloniki possibly reflected on song stanzas for local church?<\/span> (8)<\/span>
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’.<\/p>\r\n

18d<\/strong> What male lion may have, chasing missing female tiger?<\/span> (8)<\/span>
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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\r\n

22d<\/strong> Wearing through standard dress fabric<\/span> (6)<\/span>
A two-letter word meaning (among many other things) ‘wearing’ is contained by (‘through’) a four-letter word meaning ‘standard’ or ‘price’.<\/p>\r\n

24d<\/strong> Did Long<\/span> Acre coach expand when empty? (5)<\/span>
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’.<\/p>\r\n

28d<\/strong> Content of birthplace of Heracles, offspring of Zeus<\/span> (4)<\/span>
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.<\/p>\r\n

30d<\/strong> Captain<\/span> determined to drop external action (3)<\/span>
A seven-letter word meaning ‘determined’ or ‘chose’ loses a four-letter word for an action from its outside (ie ‘to drop external action’).<\/p>\r\n

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

\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/span> Post Views:<\/span> 196<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n

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

The first Gemelo of the month<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5717,"comment_status":"open","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-7574","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":22,"sum_votes":61},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574","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=7574"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7587,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574\/revisions\/7587"}],"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=7574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}