After the brilliant Gemelo 27 with its Spoonerisms etc, we are now back to a plain Gemelo, and it seemed to me to be harder, possibly because I was solving at the computer (the software that I normally use has been tripped up by The Observer’s changes and this blog will look a bit different) with my reference books on my lap — I hadn’t learnt how to print a pdf, which thanks to The Observer I know now. There are two whose parsing is at present beyond me and which I hope to understand while I’m doing the blog. [Later: no].
My guess is that anyone who does these crosswords will have a copy of Chambers to hand and so won’t need everything to be spelled out. In the parsing I have confined myself to explaining when the wordplay is not immediately clear.
Definitions in some sort of red, underlined. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | BALBUTIENT |
Stammering European swallowing bread without restraint (10)
|
| Bal(bu(tie)n)t — I’m not quite comfortable with bread = bun but Chambers has ‘a kind of sweet roll’ so OK then … | ||
| 10 | APAYD |
A Room of One’s Own keeping you initially satisfied, but not any more (5)
|
| a pa(y[ou])d — ‘but not any more’ indicates obsoleteness | ||
| 11 | ADONAI |
Lord Botham maybe retired after some trouble (6)
|
| ado (Ian)rev. — ref Ian Botham, the retired cricketer (who incidentally is now Lord Botham, giving Gemelo a nice opportunity) | ||
| 12 | CONGO RED |
Stain stuck with prisoner at first (8, 2 words)
|
| gored with con at first | ||
| 13 | MAK |
Glaswegian to fashion mohawks, steering clear of prime spots (3)
|
| The prime spots (ie the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th letters) in ‘mohawks’ are dropped | ||
| 15 | TAMIL |
Capital T put back in “Tongue“ (5)
|
| (Lima T)rev. — the (pretty simple) parsing of this caused me much difficulty in the parsing as I was fixated on ‘put back’ indicating that T was moved to the left, so I was trying to make Amilt, Amtil, etc into languages | ||
| 16 | SLINGER |
Someone throwing head of swizzle stick around (7)
|
| S[wizzle] linger | ||
| 17 | ALMA |
Old German lacking in soul (4)
|
| Alma[in] | ||
| 18 | TO PERFECTION |
Sponge, cooked once, fit flawlessly (12, 2 words)
|
| toper *(once fit) | ||
| 20 | IDIOSYNCRASY |
Hypersensitivity to e.g. drugs, nuts, dairy, soy is engulfing North Carolina (12)
|
| *(dairy soy is) round NC | ||
| 24 | TANG |
Bite seaweed ring (4)
|
| 3 defs | ||
| 26 | NACARAT |
Sodium chloride originally turned bracken orange-red (7)
|
| Na c[hloride] (tara)rev. | ||
| 27 | STOAT |
Was a parliamentarian admitting to ermine? (5)
|
| s(to)at | ||
| 29 | HOO |
Shakespeare’s emotional cry which people heard (3)
|
| “who”, with ‘people heard’ a rather unusual homophone indicator | ||
| 30 | SHANGHAI |
Small weapon in New Zealand city (8)
|
| This is one of the clues whose parsing is beyond me: the definition seems to be ‘city’ because so far as I know there is no city in New Zealand called Shanghai, and s is probably small, but how ‘hanghai’ leads to a weapon in New Zealand I can’t see I’m afraid | ||
| 31 | ENIGMA |
Doctored image capturing end of Countdown Conundrum (6)
|
| *(image) round [Countdow]n | ||
| 32 | CHIAN |
Islander‘s wine bar returned vermouth (5)
|
| chian(ti) — vermouth = It and here bar = except | ||
| 33 | HESITATING |
1 across eating this stew (10)
|
| Since 1 across is defined by ‘stammering’, Gemelo is using this as an anagram indicator: *(eating this) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | BACKSTITCHES |
Is sewer to accumulate dogs for absent-minded don? (12)
|
| Lost here I’m afraid. I think the definition is ‘Is sewer’ [is someone who sews], possibly ‘Is sewer to accumulate’, and maybe ‘backs’ = ‘accumulates’ in the sense of backing up, and ‘bitches’ is there, but … | ||
| 2 | APOLLO |
Handsome man, apparently with depression, shedding clothing (6)
|
| ap. [h]ollo[w] | ||
| 3 | BYGONE |
Previous change of course mostly elevated drink (6)
|
| (gyb[e])rev. one — as in ‘have another one’ | ||
| 4 | UDON |
You don’t mind Japanese food (4)
|
| Is this a hidden, where ‘mind’ is the hidden indicator? Seems a bit odd to me and perhaps it’s something else | ||
| 5 | TORREFY |
Judge cutting politician’s roast (7)
|
| Tor(ref)y | ||
| 6 | EDDAIC |
Novel dictated without recurrent tense of old literature (6)
|
| *(dic[t]a[t]ed) | ||
| 7 | NORMA |
Opera standard (5)
|
| 2 defs — I was bit surprised to find norma not norm, but it’s there in Chambers | ||
| 8 | DAAL |
Heart skipped in intricate pulse (4)
|
| da(ed)al — I suspected Gemelo had made a mistake here, since I only had ‘dedal’, but no | ||
| 9 | LIKE ANYTHING |
What someone will do if they don’t discriminate very much (12, 2 words)
|
| 2 defs | ||
| 13 | MILIARY |
Seedy army abandons Troy (7)
|
| mili[T]ary | ||
| 15 | DIP INTO |
Use horse ridden by police officer (7, 2 words)
|
| DI pinto | ||
| 19 | EN AVANT |
Referee finally books tackling of winger, saving centre forward for Monaco (7, 2 words)
|
| [Refere]e N(av[i]an)T — ‘tackling’ an inclusion indicator, ‘for Monaco’ indicating the French — in Chambers ‘avian’ is ‘of birds’ not ‘of bird’, but the referee is hardly likely to book both wingers and the departure is justified. I think. | ||
| 21 | SPASMS |
Brief periods where one might recover text (6)
|
| spas ms | ||
| 22 | RAUGHT |
Take anything held out for previous generations (6)
|
| r aught — the archaism indicated by ‘for previous generations’ | ||
| 24 | SAMAAN |
Asian title reflected North American or South American tree (6)
|
| Sama (NA)rev. | ||
| 25 | GOUGE |
Referring to missing pastry scoop (5)
|
| gouge[re] | ||
| 27 | SONG |
Familiar attitude of native German (4)
|
| son G | ||
| 28 | INCA |
Former imperial height forgotten by 32 after conversion (4)
|
| 32 across is CHIAN, so it’s (c[h]ian)* |
In my first pass through the clues I wondered if 24a could be ORE (seaweed) + O (ring) and an OREO is a snack (bite), but maybe this is too fanciful. I had to guess some answers on the right side from the wordplay (NACARAT, MILIARY, RAUGHT), but my real problems were in the top left corner. I had entered the wrong first word DIP INTO, which made it harder to get SLINGER, and I had trouble thinking of GORED and GYBE for 12a and 3d. Then 1a and 1d were the only ones left, but I took my usual long time to understand an indirect reference to Spooner in 1d. I had solve 33d so I knew that ‘Stammering’ had to be the definition in 1a and I had guessed out the BU(TIE)N part, but I needed the first letter to think of BALT and then Chambers to confirm it was a word.
In 30a, Chambers says SHANGHAI is a word for a catapult in New Zealand (and Australia). I am from New Zealand and my father sometimes tells a story about breaking a streetlight with his ‘shanghai’, but not knowing this meaning wasn’t in more general usage didn’t help me. In 1d, as mentioned above, the ‘absent-minded don’ is the Reverend Spooner, so the answer is a Spoonerism of STACK BITCHES.
I was happy with ‘mind’ as a hidden indicator in 4d in the sense of ‘to have care or oversight of’. I does require “You don”t” to take a plural verb, but I’m happy that being two words (or even seven letters) can justify this.
For 33a, I thought ‘1 across’ was the definition and ‘stew’ was the anagram indicator.
Thanks, John and Gemelo.
29A I took to be a homophone (‘heard’) of ‘who?’, I.e. which people?
Thanks for the blog , another good solid puzzle . I liked the use of prime for MAKS and the different reference to Spooner for BACKSTITCHES . DAAL is not in Chambers93 but I have seen that spelling on many menus .
( Message to KenMac – The hour has gone forward in the UK . )
My experience was very similar to yours, John, in that it took me an awful long time to spot the reference to Dr Spooner in 1 down. I also was flummoxed for a long time by SHANGHAI until it occurred to me to look it up in Chambers.
@3
I’m well aware of the clock change. Am I missing something?
Ah, I see. I must be specifying GMT somewhere, which, of course, strictly speaking is correct. I’ll take a look later when I get to my computer.
I had a query over “mind” in 4dn. I’m would accept mind = take care of but, unlike Matthew@1, I don’t think the plural verb works.
I had a few struggles with this one. I did think of Spooner pretty quickly for 1dn, but “Is sewer” is a very imprecise definition for the answer. I’d thought of “bun” for bread in 1ac, but by the time I got the first B and had figured out BALT, I’d forgotten about “bun”! As for SHANGHAI…. of course, I assumed the initial S was for “small”, so was searching for a meaning of “hanghai”, unlikely as it sounded (so often with barred crosswords, the unlikely turns out to be correct, but not in this case!).
Weirdly, NORMA appeared in a certain other barred crossword on the same day, with the same definition of “standard” but a more complex wordplay.