Gemelo 2

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Gemelo’s second puzzle continues to show his promise as a (partial) successor for Azed.

We have the special instruction (not included in the PDF version) “Constrained: the letter E is avoided in all clues”, and indeed there are no Es in the clues. This made me wonder if the same would be true of the answers, but it soon became clear that this was not the case. In fact every answer contains an E, and most – all but five – have more than one. Incidentally, there are no Zs in the clues either, but all the other letters do occur.

Thanks to Gemelo.

Added: I woke up this morning with the realisation that I had missed a very important point, which is that E is in fact the only vowel in the answers (as Matthew points out in the comments).

 
Across
1 REPRESENTER Who portrays (about now) old monarch? (11)
RE (about) + PRESENT (now) + ER (the late Queen)
10 EMEER Fatima’s son to crop up again, dropping bit of work around (5)
Reverse of RE-EMERGE less ERG (unit of work). EMEERs can be “all the supposed descendants of Mohammed through his daughter Fatima”
11 PEEWEE Tiny lapwing from Moray (6)
Double definition – it’s a word for “very small”, and Scots variant of “peewit”, the lapwing
12 SWEDEN Marry, drawn in by coin of Asian country (6)
WED in SEN (Asian coin)
14 WHEEL What fun with pound and dollar! (5)
WHEE! + L – slang for a dollar
15 CREESE Malay short sword found in Spain by First Nations Canadians (6)
CREES + E – an alternative spelling of “kris”
17 TWEEZE Pluck of quaint stripy animal losing support (6)
TWEE + ZEBRA less BRA
18 SMEETH Still harbouring group hunting local duck (6)
MEET (group of hunters) in SH ([be] still!)
21 CHESTED Companion told gags, but for jack in a box (7)
CH + [J]ESTED
22 LESSEES Contracts with variant point for contractors (7)
LESSENS (contracts) with N[orth] replaced by E[ast]
25 ELECTS Picks talks having no publicity (6)
PRELECTS (lectures, talks) less PR
26 THYRSE Wand of Bacchus: that lot almost grabs yours (6)
YRS in THE[Y]
28 PETERS Calls for Trumps in prison rooms (6)
Double definition – a peter is a play in Whist asking one’s partner to play a trump; also a word for prison cells
29 EMCEE Host city introducing mass ISP (5)
M in E.C. + EE (a UK Internet Service Provider)
30 MELEES This author with worst part in noisy conflicts (6)
ME + LEES (waste from wine-making)
32 NESTER National compound for bird? (6)
N + ESTER
33 KENTE Know spun Madagascan and Ghanaian silk cloth (5)
KEN (know) + reverse of ET (“and” in French, which is an official language of Madagascar)
34 TRENDSETTER Fashion-forward individual transactions ruin yours truly (11)
TR[ansactions] + END (ruin) + SETTER
Down
1 RESETTLEMENT Migration put local sow back in 52.4cm sty without boundary (12)
This was tricky to work out: it’s SET (put) + reverse of ELT (dialect word for a young sow) in REMEN (an ancient Egyptian measure equivalent to 52.4 cm) + [s]T[y]
2 PEERESSES Jacqui Smith, and so on, look on top of conclusions from Lords and Commons (9)
PEER (look) + ESSES (last letters of lordS and commonS)
3 REDEEM Ransom on portion climbing (6)
RE + reverse of MEED (portion)
4 ERE Worn-out plough in this spot of Bow? (3)
Cockney [h]ERE. It’s a variant of “ear”, an obsolete word for “plough”
5 SENSE Gist of abrupt martial arts instructor (5)
SENSE[i]
6 NEWSMEN Guys who adopt today’s notions about Sun journalists (7)
S[un] in NEW MEN
7 TEHR Angry about king’s goat (4)
Reverse of HET + R
8 RE-ENTER Irrational to go into film distributor and go in again (7)
E (Euler’s number – always in lower case – which is irrational) in RENTER
9 WELSH DRESSER Don’t pay lady’s maid for what cups and bowls may sit on (12, 2 words)
WELSH (don’t pay) + DRESSER (lady’s maid)
13 MESH Trap drunkard’s dish of sloppy food? (4)
How a drunk might say “mess”
16 DETERRENT Run for gallons of washing-up liquid, say, forming obstruction (9)
DETERGENT with R (run) replacing G (Gallons)
19 WELL MET You and I will shortly limit salutation (2 words) (7)
WE’LL (you and I will) + MET[e] (a limit)
20 BETWEEN To and from Scotland’s small navy, supporting opinion (7)
BET (opionion) + WEE + N[avy]
23 ESPY Fantastic gift: daddy’s last old watch (4)
ESP (“fantastic” gift) + [dadd]Y
24 EYELET Holm caught mini organ (6)
Homophone of “islet” (a holm)
26 TEMPS Family disowning sons, I forgot to add fill-in staff? (5)
STEM (family – as in “the stem of Jesse”) + PS (“I forgot to add..”)
27 JETÉ Black drug bound for Falstaff? (4)
JET (black) + E (drug). A jeté is a jump in Ballet. I‘m not sure what Falstaff has to do with it: there’s an opera by Verdi of that name, but not (as far as I can see) a ballet
31 EKE Draw out trio at focus of Saturday and Sunday (3)
The middle three letters of weEKEnd

11 comments on “Gemelo 2”

  1. For JETÉ, the PDF has “bound for Sylvia?,” which is a ballet (which makes more sense).
    The parsing for TEMPS needs “minus (disowning) S (sons).”
    I found this puzzle slow going, and was kind of worried that I would not be able to complete it. It helped to realize that all vowels were “E.” Clever setting.

  2. I think it is more important that no answer contains A, I, O or U, rather than they all contain E. There are three answers that contain a Y and none of them are consonants, but it didn’t really bother me. I remembered that Colin Thomas (Gemelo) mentioned in the latest Magpie editorial that he got an answer wrong in a crossword competition because he was unable to work out the order of the vowels in an answer, and wondered if he designed this puzzle so that the solver wouldn’t experience such uncertainty.

    I didn’t think the puzzle was too hard considering that I usually think using types of wordplay where all letters of the answer appear in the clue (e.g. anagrams, hidden answers, initial letters) generally make clues easier to solve, but they couldn’t be used here, or at least not for the whole answer. I always like a gimmick that seems to make things harder for the setter but not really harder for the solver.

    I was also confused about what Falstaff was doing in 27d and wondered if it was comparing a jeté to drunkenly stumbling around. If only I had thought to look at the PDF.

    On Wednesday I opened up the first Gemelo puzzle and found that the grid was now blank. I decided to refill it because I wanted to see if it would confirm that the grid is filled correctly, and I found that it did this and also added an explanation of the wordplay after each clue.

    Thanks, Andrew and Gemelo.

  3. Enjoyed this and admired the construction and the clueing. Once I realised the implications of the constraint on the grid, it actually made things easier.

    RESETTLEMENT – “boundaries” may have been better for removal of both first and last letters but of course ‘Gmlo’ did not have this option. I also wondered about the use of “back” as a reversal in a down clue here.

  4. [Colin Thomas (Gemelo) was on Countdown – Friday July 25th.

    I tried to post a link to the specific episode but Channel 4 have introduced too many hurdles]

  5. Spent a long time puzzling over Falstaff. Did not spot the significance of letter E. Slow going. A few I could not parse, but this is normal. Nearly done by Tuesday evening, but Wednesday was blank, and getting resigned to DNF. Without much hope, picked it up again Thursday over morning tea, and it was obvious that 21 ac should read ‘Companion – told gags but for Jack – in a box’, and that 27 d was ‘Black – drug – bound’. So I am hopeful of getting the hang of these puzzles, but maybe the copy-editors will be more careful in future. Thanks to Gemelo and Andrew

  6. I agree with Matthew’s comment; once I found (fairly quickly) that all the vowels were E it simplified the solving considerably, but composition must have been much more difficult without the ability to deploy anagrams.
    As for Falstaff, I just shrugged my shoulders and assumed that there was some Shakesperian passage I was unfamiliar with in which Falstaff made use of the word, doubtless causing great hilarity to a Tudor audience but necessitating explanation to a twentieth century one.

  8. I started well, but then got more and more puzzled…. Failed to spot the Es, which would have helped considerably, as I’d put MUSH for 13dn instead of MESH (no, I couldn’t quite place “drunkard” in this, but it satisfied “trap” in the sense of mouth and “sloppy food” and I was probably thinking that MUSH might be a variant of lush). I was also assuming that 15ac would start with E, so I ended up with ERE-SU, which got me nowhere! Couldn’t quite parse 1dn (got SET and ELT backwards, then gave up), so thanks to Andrew for that.

  11. Struggled with this last week and failed to solve any – my excuse is that I was watching / listening to the Test match at the same time 🙂 – although the necessary lack of anagrams could have been a factor. Anyway, looked again today with no distractions – saw CHESTED, PEERESSES and CREESE – then the penny dropped and it became much easier. I was also puzzled by Falstaff but put it down to limited knowledge of Shakespeare…

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