I continue to find Gemelo quite a challenge, and I think this was one of the hardest yet, with several clues taking me a while to parse even after I was confident of the answer. Thanks to Gemelo for the puzzle.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1 | PINT | Measure sand grouse or guinea fowl, each without trouble (4) PINTAIL (either of two birds mentioned) less AIL |
||||||
| 4 | FULGURAL | Fall out with guru of electric forks? (8) (FALL GURU)* |
||||||
| 9 | WOOMERANG | Australian uses this to launch Beethoven’s unnumbered works, bungling German (9) WOO (Werke ohne Opuszahl, a classification of some of Beethoven’s works that have no opus number. They include the famous Für Elise, which is WoO 59)+ GERMAN* |
||||||
| 10 | ROAD RAGE | Irish policeman retreating, covered in eggs, with violence on the way? (8, 2 words) Reverse of GARDA in ROE |
||||||
| 11 | KAON | Particle of clay devoid of lithium (4) KAOLIN less LI |
||||||
| 12 | ARRANGE | 100 sq m holding called to order (7) RANG (called) in ARE (unit of area) |
||||||
| 14 | TIPTOE | There’s more to come in obligation to make digital advancement? (6) PTO (“there’s more to come”, at the end of a page) in TIE |
||||||
| 16 | EAU | Water from Uganda (3) EAU is the international vehicle registration code for Uganda, one of several for east African countries , e.g. EAK for Kenya |
||||||
| 19 | SAILER | Ship initially sunk by Ariel in tempest (6) S[unk] + ARIEL* |
||||||
| 20 | RAMIFY | Branch liable to wither, having lost core following power of the sun (6) RA (sun god) + MI[f]FY (to wither away) |
||||||
| 21 | AFT | Firmly establish missing lead is back (3) [h]AFT (to establish firmly) |
||||||
| 25 | CABRIE | One that ruminates about cheese (6) CA (circa) + BRIE |
||||||
| 26 | ROOKERY | Piece extremely lacking in volume causes disturbance (7) ROOK (chess piece) + VERY less V |
||||||
| 28 | ERSE | Tongue River cutting border (4) [m]ERSE[y] |
||||||
| 29 | TALIONIC | Unplanned movement to steal a coin of James VI, with corresponding punishment (8) A LION (Scottish coin) in TIC |
||||||
| 30 | TWENTY‑TWO | Where you’ll find firing line in sport (9) I think this is a double definition: the first referring to a .22 rifle; more confidently, the twenty-two is a line in Rugby, 22 metres from the goal line (it was the 25-yard line when I was an unwilling participant in the game at school) |
||||||
| 31 | DERRIÈRE | Broadcast example of Irish folk leaving London behind for Paris (8) As homophonically in the LondonDERRY AIR |
||||||
| 32 | FOGY | Old person to confuse year (4) FOG + Y |
||||||
| Down | ||||||||
| 1 | PIRATE | Bonnet, say, or crown worn by Irish (6) IR in PATE. Stede Bonnet was a famous pirate |
||||||
| 2 | ISODIA | One provided help to mount feast (6) I + SO + reverse of AID |
||||||
| 3 | TODY | Small bird currently losing acceleration (4) TODAY (currently) less A[cceleration]. The Tody is a colourful West Indian bird, related to the Kingfisher |
||||||
| 4 | FOR TOFFEE | Keep measuring livestock, no longer used at all (9, 2 words) FORT (keep, as in a castle) + OF (measuring, as in “a distance of five miles”) + FEE (obsolete word for cattle) |
||||||
| 5 | LEG-REST | Support for members running St Leger (7) (ST LEGER)* |
||||||
| 6 | UAKARIS | Monkeys from this country biting a Cockney’s backside (7) A in UK + ARIS (Cockney “arse”) |
||||||
| 7 | À GOGO | Short musical sequence with love in abundance (5, 2 words) AGOG[e] (musical sequence, shortened) + O |
||||||
| 8 | LINEAR | Writer of nonsense about home of One Direction (6) IN (home) in (Edward) LEAR |
||||||
| 9 | WAMPUMS | Old American jacket filled with a thousand Algonquian beads (7) M (1000) in WAMPUS (a US cardigan or jacket) |
||||||
| 13 | REAGANITE | About period involving comeback of conservative political viewpoint? (9) RE (about) + reverse of TINA (There Is No Alternative, as attributed to Margaret Thatcher) in AGE, &lit |
||||||
| 15 | CLARINO | Trumpet call from Oban welcoming head of local navy into port (7) L[ocal] in CA’ (Scots “call”) + N in RIO |
||||||
| 17 | PICKEER | Scout who chooses to tour Spain (7) E (Spain) in PICKER |
||||||
| 18 | HYDRATE | Water too long delayed through what turned up (7) Reverse of TARDY in EH (what?) |
||||||
| 20 | REREAD | Lost Red era interpreted again (6) (RED ERA)* |
||||||
| 22 | FIRING | Ignition provided that spins round (6) Reverse of IF (provided) + RING (a round) |
||||||
| 23 | TETCHY | Carve through skin of turkey, tending to beef (6) ETCH in T[urke]Y – “beef” as in “complain” |
||||||
| 24 | TORTE | Carry around recipe for dessert (5) R in TOTE |
||||||
| 27 | WOWF | What one needs to bowl over, dismissing player with bats from Perth (4) WOW FACTOR (what bowls someone over) less ACTOR – it’s a Scots word for “crazy”, so this Perth in Scotland, not Australia, as the cricket-based surface might suggest |
||||||
I came pretty close but failed to complete the grid without looking things up. I used Chambers to find REAGANITE, which I probably should have been able to work out, but I didn’t think it was &lit so I thought I wanted a four-letter word for ‘conservative’, and even though I knew Chambers had TINA for ‘there is no alternative’, I was very young and half a world away when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. This helped me to see TALIONIC which I should have solved earlier even if I didn’t know the coin, but it probably didn’t matter since I don’t think I would have worked out WOWF without finding it in Chambers, after first finding several other Scottish words that would fit the checking letters.
For 1a, I think the sand grouse PINTAIL is without AIL, but the guinea fowl PINTADO is without ADO, but I originally entered this from the definition alone.
For 30a, I think the ‘Where you’ll find firing’ is referring to FIRING being the answer to 22d.
Thanks, Andrew and Gemelo.
TWENTY-TWO’s “where you’ll find firing” is a reference to 22 down.
Thanks Gemelo and Andrew. This was my first attempt at a Gemelo puzzle and it took me two sessions each of about the maximum time an Azed takes.
I had 1ac the same way as Matthew @1.
It is not clear to me that WAMPUMS is a word. The definition of WAMPUM in Merriam-Webster is “beads of polished shells….” i.e WAMPUM is already plural.
I also had 1a as per Matthew@1 and thought this a very clever clue. I don’t think I made the 22 connection as offered by Tim C, so thank you for that.
I’ve just read today’s preamble, looks interesting.
Thanks to Gemelo and Andrew.
To be fair Jay @5, Matthew @1 was first in with the 22 connection. My slow reading/thought processes/typing came to the fore as usual. 🙂
thanks A and G! I found this very hard as well. I spent many cycles trying to make CLARION work until 29a (itself long a mystery) forced me to reconsider. In addition, I suspected that 1a must be PINT but I couldn’t find a convincing reference attesting to the pintailed-ness of sand grouse and guinea fowl. In fact, gemini claimed otherwise. So I was backed into pint and pirate (didn’t know about Stede Bonnet).
my time was 1:07:43 – a lot spent interrogating the interwebs.
I think I’m getting disillusioned with Gemelo. The last two, I’ve got about a quarter solved before getting stuck. Thought I was making a good start last week, getting most of the top right, but that was all.
Dormouse@8, I felt a bit the same. Made a good start and then started to stutter. There were (I thought) a number of awkward clues interlocking in the SE corner. CLARINO was an ugly clue – I never like it when there are two separate operations (in this case, L inside CA and N inside RIO) stuck together. WOWF smacks of the setter being so pleased with the surface, he didn’t bother to check if it was a fair solve. Also, what part is “with” playing? It’s like “causes” in 26ac: does wordplay actually “cause” the solution? “Creates” might have been better, or “produces”.
Also agree with AR@4 about WAMPUMS.
Regarding 30a, as a hockey player I feel obliged to point out that hockey’s 25 yard line is now known as the 23m line. 25 yards is 22.86m, so it’s actually the closer conversion to metric.
I got pretty much nowhere with the puzzle meanwhile, and having read the blog I can see that I wasn’t going to get any further than I did!
[A warning to anyone attempting today’s puzzle: it’s a special, but the preamble doesn’t appear in the online version – you have to download the pdf (or buy the newspaper) to read the explanation]
Made a better start with this Gemelo puzzle than many and managed to complete the grid in one (long) sitting – made copious use of Chambers and several remained unparsed – many thanks for explanations! I think if I can hit the submit button with reasonable confidence despite unparsed answers then I count that as a success – maybe a less stringent personal success criterion than for Azed puzzles but needs must… When I search for WAMPUMS in my Chambers app it recognises it as a legitimate word and takes me to WAMPUM – it is not explicitly listed in the entry but then that’s generally true of plurals with an “s”.
If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend this short video featuring Jonathan Crowther and Gemelo (which I now know how to pronounce!).
Thank you Jay @13. I don’t (sc. am not clever enough to) attempt Gemelo crosswords, but enjoy reading the comments about them and it was interesting to see Azed and Gemelo in their crossword-compiling habitats.
I only just today managed to finish this one–very tough sledding for me, I’m afraid. I completed it all right, but I had five solutions for which I had an iffy parsing or no parsing at all. The TINA reference was unknown to me, although it is in Chambers (as an acronym, with no further explanation of its origin). I might have arrived at a satisfactory explanation for everything, with a lot of further pondering and googling, but frankly, I had exhausted my curiosity about solving this puzzle once the grid was filled. In retrospect, I cannot really fault the clues. Oh, well.