Notes for Gemelo 2

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 2 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

Note that although this puzzle has some unusual features, it is a ‘plain’ puzzle, with the clues being solved in the normal way and the answers being entered normally.

In Jennings and Darbishire, following an unfortunate accident during an initial inspection of The Ideal Junior Printing Outfit which Jennings has received for his birthday, all the e’s are lost. In his printed letter of thanks to Aunt Angela, he resourcefully uses x’s in place of the missing letters (“I hopx you arx quitx wxll..”), culminating in a postscript that reads, “Plxasx sxnd mx somx morx of thx lxttrs that comx bxtwxxn d and f.” It would seem that our setter may have been faced with a similar dilemma (presumably the result of a faulty keyboard) when it came to putting the clues together for this puzzle, but he has solved the problem by simply avoiding the letter entirely. A very clever grid construction, and I can say from personal experience that trying to write a complete set of convincing clues without the help of a specific low-scoring Scrabble letter is very challenging indeed. I felt that overall it was probably at about the same level of difficulty as last week’s series opener; the shared feature of the answers being revealed early in the solve was a  help, but the constraint on the clues resulted in occasional looseness that made things harder. Once again there were less obscure answers than in a typical Azed, but some nicely tricky wordplays. The quality of the clues was inevitably impacted to a degree by the gimmick, and I found myself feeling for Gemelo on occasion, such as when ‘etc’ was denied to him in 2d.

Setters’ Corner: Today I’m going to start by looking at 1d, “Migration put local sow back in 52.4cm sty without boundary (12)”. A three-letter word meaning ‘put’ and a reversal (‘back’) of a dialect (‘local’) word for a young sow are contained by a five-letter word for an ancient Egyptian unit of measurement also known as a royal cubit and the word ‘sty’ (from the clue) lacking its first and last letters. Whether ‘boundaries’ would have been preferable to ‘boundary’ is a moot point (the setter, of course, didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter), but the feature I want to pick out is ‘back’ being used to denote reversal in a down clue. Some editors will not accept this on the grounds that ‘back’ cannot indicate a vertical reversal (even this is questionable), but I cannot see their rationale – the answer can be assembled normally based on the words as written and then entered vertically in the grid. Even so, setters should be aware that ‘back’ in a down clue may not meet with editorial approval.

On a similar topic, most lists of indicators, including the one on this site,  give ‘top’ as a valid way of telling the solver to select the first letter of a word in the clue, eg ‘top of class’ for C. Chambers offers plenty of meanings for the noun ‘top’, but none of them suggests the foremost or leftmost piece of something. Clearly if the operand were written downwards, ‘top’ could refer to the first letter, but when we look at a down clue such as ‘Wearily walk along top of treacherous slope” for TRAMP [T(reacherous) + RAMP], this would mean us mentally entering TREACHEROUS in the grid and then removing all but the first letter. It seems to me that where an operator acts directly on a word or words in the clue, the operation must take place in the same plane as the clue (horizontally), so ‘left side of pitch’ is acceptable for P regardless of the orientation of the grid entry. Note that I have no problem with ‘topless’ in a down clue to indicate the removal of the first letter from a word which is implied, so an old clue of mine, “Suggestion of Lulu singing topless in bars” for LOCALS [L(ulu) + (v)OCALS], still seems absolutely fine.

10a Fatima’s son to crop up again, dropping bit of work around (5)
An eight-letter word meaning ‘to crop up again’ or ‘to come out again’ loses (‘dropping’) a three-letter word for the CGS unit of work before being reversed (‘around’).

12a Marry, drawn in by coin of Asian country (6)
A three-letter word meaning ‘[to] marry’ is contained (‘drawn in’) by the name of a Japanese coin as well as a currency unit. I feel that the lexical constraint perhaps pushes the deception here a little too far – Jennings would probably have plumped for  ‘coin usxd by Asian country’.

14a What fun with pound and dollar! (5)
A four-letter interjection meaning ‘what fun!’ is followed by the single-letter abbreviation for ‘pound’, producing a word (closely related to the nine letter term applied to an oversized George III penny) humorously applied to a large coin such as a dollar.

18a Still harbouring group hunting local duck (6)
A two-letter interjection often indicated in cryptics by ‘mum’ contains (‘harbouring’) a term applied to a group gathered together for the purposes of fox-hunting. The ‘local’ in the definition indicates that the answer is given by Chambers as ‘dialect’.

21a Companion told gags, but for jack in a box (7)
A two-letter abbreviation for the sort of companion who has been recognized for rendering ‘conspicuous service of national importance’ is followed by a six-letter word meaning ‘told gags’ from which the usual abbreviation for ‘jack’ (in card games) has been lost (‘but for jack’)

22a Contracts with variant point for contractors (7)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘contracts’ or ‘reduces’ has one letter representing a point of the compass replaced by another (‘with variant point’). The people who constitute the answer would certainly have entered into a contract, so the definition seems entirely fair.

28a Calls for Trumps in prison rooms (6)
A double definition clue, where the initial letter of ‘Trumps’ has been deceptively capitalized when it comes to the cryptic reading, and the self-imposed restrictions in place have forced the setter to upgrade the typically more austere type of accommodation provided for inmates.

29a Host city introducing mass ISP (5)
The two-letter abbreviation for ‘east central’, which is also the postcode area covering most of the City of London, put around (‘introducing’) the usual abbreviation for ‘mass’, is followed by the two letters that form the name of a division of BT originally known as Everything Everywhere. With solvers being spread around the globe, I wonder if things like ‘city’ here, ‘Kent area’ for SE and ‘Tyneside’ for NE should be eased into retirement.

33a Know spun Madagascan and Ghanaian silk cloth (5)
I believe that for 75% of Madagascans, the English word ‘and’ would translate to the Malagasy ‘sy’, but the French speakers there will have had no problem with this clue, where a three-letter word for ‘know’ is followed by a reversal (‘spun’) of the mot in question.

Down

4d Worn-out plough in this spot of Bow? (3)
A Cockney is someone born within hearing of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow, so the answer here is the aitch-dropped version of a four-letter word meaning ‘in this spot’.

7d Angry about king’s goat (4)
A three-letter word meaning ‘angry’ or ‘agitated’ is reversed (‘about’) and followed by the monarchical abbreviation for ‘king’.

13d Trap drunkard’s dish of sloppy food? (4)
If the solver has had a few drinks prior to pronouncing the four-letter word for a dish of sloppy food,  thish could be the result.

23d Fantastic gift: daddy’s last old watch (4)
The three-letter abbreviation for a sense that one might possess above the usual five (‘fantastic gift’) is followed by the last letter of ‘daddy’.

24d Holm caught mini organ (6)
The answer is a homophone (‘caught’) of a synonym for ‘holm’ which is explicitly given by Chambers.

26d Family disowning sons, I forgot to add fill-in staff? (5)
A four-letter word for a family, or the stock thereof, losing (‘disowning’) the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘sons’, is followed by the two letters which introduce a bit of a written message which the author forgot to include in the main body of text.

27d Black drug bound for Sylvia? (4)
A three-letter word for ‘black’ (think drummer with The Stranglers) and a single-letter drug (as covertly recommended to our setter by The Shamen) combine to produce a term for something that might be executed by a performer in a work such as Sylvia (don’t think Focus song, think Delibes).

31d Draw out trio at focus of Saturday and Sunday (3)
The wordplay leads us to the ‘trio’ of letters at the centre (‘focus’) of the seven-letter term for Saturday and Sunday, while the answer is a word that I make a point of excluding from my own puzzles. Chambers gives the verb as ‘now only with out’, but doesn’t make clear what senses it could have in its uncompounded form. OED suggests that it is the first two, so ‘draw out old-fashioned’ would be valid; I ‘m not sure that ‘draw out’ on its own quite works.

(definitions are underlined)