Really an ingenious special puzzle this week from Gemelo.
The puzzle includes the following special instructions:
Bonus Shares – In my previous life I worked as an actuary, and probably understood for a while what “bonus shares” are. In this puzzle, though, the bonus is that each clue is actually two clues for symmetrically opposite answers, in either order, sharing one word. The first letters of the shared words spell what to enter in 1a & 34.
10, 18, & 25 are each 2 words.
For ease of explanation, I have broken out the overlapping clues into separate parts, with the shared word in all caps at the first occurrence.
Taking the first letter of each of these overlapping words in order provides the special instruction: OVERLAP DEFINITION, which is both the puzzle’s gimmick and a gentle direction to Chambers, which provides the solution to 1A & 34A as the second definition for “overlap”: TO COINCIDE IN PART WITH.
When I first read the instructions, I thought that I would never be able to solve this, but I quickly realized that if I could solve at least one pair of intersecting across and down clues, I could start to lock in which “half” of the clue belonged first, in a quasi-jigsaw fashion. My first such pair was FRONT/TSESAREWITCH, which could fit only one way, and from there, I was off to the races, filling in almost the entire puzzle in one sitting.
Since the shared word had to be somewhere near the middle of each clue, I pretty quickly intuited through guesswork that “overlap definition” was the “bonus” clue, but I was not sure how to solve it until I had the bright idea to crack open the dictionary. (Seems obvious in retrospect.) Determining where the shared word was within each clue also helped isolate the first and second parts of each clue pair.
It took me a while to parse the last few clues, but I think that all the clues were fair. Many of the clues were reminiscent of Azed, with DRERE perhaps being the outstanding example of a reward for us dictionary-bashers. Great fun.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1, 34 | TO COINCIDE IN PART WITH |
OVERLAP DEFINITION (2, 8, 2, 4, 4)
|
| This is the second definition for “overlap” in Chambers (2016). | ||
| 10 | LATIN CROSS |
. . . OSCAR, madly accepting money to appear in Lesotho church feature (10, 2 words)
|
| {Anagram of (madly) OSCAR around (accepting) TIN (money)} all inside (in) LS (Lesotho) | ||
| 12 | SPUTA |
Masses ejected rams, reversing uncovered VAN . . . (5)
|
| TUPS (rams) reversed (reversing) + [V]A[N] minus outside letters (uncovered) | ||
| 13 | IDEATE |
Imagine one would have EUROPEAN . . . (6)
|
| I’D EAT (one would have) + E (European) | ||
| 14 | BIDARKAS |
Inuit canoes in ignorance, with sway ROUND . . . (8)
|
| BIAS (sway) around (round) DARK (ignorance) | ||
| 15 | MAENAD |
Female reveller rejected European, old woman LEADING . . . (6)
|
| MA (old woman) + DANE (European) reversed (rejected), with “leading” indicating the order of the wordplay | ||
| 18 | IN ON |
. . . AMERICAN seed, initially not appearing wise to (4, 2 words)
|
| [P]IÑON (American seed) minus first letter (initially not appearing) | ||
| 19 | RHEUMIER |
Colder, damper male engaged in sport, with current breaking salt water of PARIS . . . (8)
|
| {HE (male) inside (engaged in) RU (sport)} + {I (current) inside (breaking) MER (salt water of Paris, i.e., in French) | ||
| 20 | SLIPRAIL |
. . . Paris – I’ll move gate down under (8)
|
| Anagram of (move) PARIS I’LL, listed in Chambers as “Australian,” thus “down under” | ||
| 23 | ERSE |
Tongue scrape saving American . . . (4)
|
| ER[A]SE (scrape) minus (saving) A (American) | ||
| 26 | BESTOW |
. . . leading pained cry for accord (6)
|
| BEST (leading) + OW (pained cry) | ||
| 28 | RADIATOR |
. . . round one hazard, almost coming back warmer (8)
|
| {ROTA (round) + I (one) + DAR[E] (hazard) minus last letter (almost)} all reversed (coming back) | ||
| 31 | ENIGMA |
. . . European Monetary Agreement to stop western Geneva problem (6)
|
| EMA (European Monetary Agreement) around (to stop) GIN (geneva) reversed (western), with a capitalization misdirection | ||
| 32 | FRONT |
. . . van of conservationists following recurrent sheep infection (5)
|
| ORF (sheep infection) reversed (recurrent) + NT (conservationists) | ||
| 33 | SEMIBREVES |
Staff notes Reese mostly struggling with B-movies after losing Oscar . . . (10)
|
| Anagram of (struggling) {REES[E] minus last letter (mostly) + B-M[O]VIES minus (after losing) O (Oscar)} | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | TASKMISTRESS |
. . . DISCOMFORT, ousting leader after Macedonia weighed up tyrant (12)
|
| {MK (Macedonia) + SAT (weighed)} all inverted (up) + [D]ISTRESS (discomfort) minus first letter (ousting leader), with “after” indicating the order of the wordplay | ||
| 2 | ORPHAN |
. . . EXPERT about Chinese Twist? (6)
|
| PRO (expert) inverted (about) + HAN (Chinese), referring to Oliver Twist | ||
| 3 | CLUPEOID |
Mixed up, lie cod and FISH . . . (8)
|
| Anagram of (mixed) UP LIE COD | ||
| 4 | OATEN |
. . . INMATE latterly, inside at the risk of resembling Porridge? (5)
|
| Second half of (latterly) [INM]ATE inside ON (at the risk of), with a capitalization misdirection | ||
| 5 | NIDI |
. . . NERVE centres of province, protecting identity (4)
|
| NI (province) around (protecting) ID (identity) | ||
| 6 | CNIDAE |
Painful organs upset some redhead, INCLINED . . . (6)
|
| Hidden in (some) [REDH]EAD INC[LINED] inverted (upset) | ||
| 7 | DRERE |
Ed’s gloomy, likewise grievous, when switching base to TAKE . . . (5)
|
| D[E]ERE (grievous, attributed in Chambers to Spenser, thus “Ed’s” and “likewise,” referring to Edmund Spenser) substituting (when switching) R (take, i.e., recipe in Latin) for E (base), with “deere” also attributed in Chambers to Spenser. Complicated clue | ||
| 8 | ESTATE |
Property’s shocking treatment IRRITATED . . . (6)
|
| EST (shocking treatment, i.e., electric shock treatment) + ATE (irritated) | ||
| 9 | TSESAREWITCH |
Russian heir sadly reaches wits’ end in discomfort . . . (12)
|
| Anagram of (sadly) {REACHES WITS’ + last letter of (end in) [DISCOMFOR]T | ||
| 11 | OAK |
. . . OBSCURE missing Sri Lanka wood (3)
|
| [CL]OAK (obscure) minus CL (Sri Lanka) | ||
| 14 | BARRE |
Rail, without effect, to abandon NUCLEAR . . . (5)
|
| BARRE[N] (without effect) minus (to abandon) N (nuclear) | ||
| 16 | RULER |
. . . nuclear, but ANC surprisingly supports resistance leader (5)
|
| R (resistance) + [N]U[C]LE[A]R minus (but) anagram of (surprisingly) ANC, with “supports” indicating the order of the wordplay | ||
| 17 | VIRTUOSI |
. . . fish south, and drive naked to north stars (8)
|
| Inside letters of (naked) {[F]IS[H] + [S]OUT[H] + [D]RIV[E]} all inverted (to north) | ||
| 21 | LOANER |
. . . irritated earl, no one gaining interest? (6)
|
| Anagram of (irritated) EARL NO | ||
| 22 | ANTARA |
. . . inclined to avoid the French/Arabic half-cut music producer (6)
|
| [LE]ANT (inclined) minus (to avoid) LE (the [in] French) + ARA[BIC] minus second half (half-cut) | ||
| 24 | SONNET |
Composition from native national, extremely expert . . . (6)
|
| SON (native) + N (national) + outside letters of (extremely) E[XPER]T | ||
| 25 | DIG IN |
. . . take up defensive position, perhaps one nearly new (5, 2 words)
|
| DIGI[T] (perhaps [the number] one) minus last letter (nearly) + N (new) | ||
| 27 | SCREW |
Second gang, one guarding inmate . . . (5)
|
| S (second) + CREW (gang) | ||
| 29 | DIM |
Police officer marks obscure . . . (3)
|
| DI (police officer) + M (marks) | ||
| 30 | ONER |
Expert cutting into nerve . . . (4)
|
| Hidden in (cutting) [INT]O NER[VE] |
I’ve solved puzzles with double clues before but I don’t think I’ve solved one where the clues share a word, and I thought having this word not mean the same thing in both clues made them more interesting while not having them seem as strained as Gemelo 31’s single clues with two answers. I also thought it was good that the instructions were included in the pdf of the puzzle.
I didn’t solve very many clues when I first went through them, but had managed the crossing IDEATE/ENIGMA and DIM/OAK so I was able to enter these and then having some checking letters helped to solve more. If I solved half a clue I tried to immediately solve the other half, but not knowing PIÑON or ORF and not seeing how the clue to VIRTUOSI worked meant I couldn’t always do this. I also thought that 9d was probably an anagram of REACHESWITST that was one of the derived forms under TSAR, but needed all of the checking letters to make a reasonable guess.
Thanks, Cineraria and Gemelo.
Thanks for the blog , I thought this was perfect for a Special , the solver having to do extra work but basically just solving clues . It is similar to the Right and Left puzzles of Azed but the shared word and unclued entries give an extra twist .
I went straight for 10&33 and the two word answer meant they both went straight in . Then the two longest at 1&9 , The Cesarewitch is a famous horse race in the UK so just needed the exact spelling , there are so many in Chambers93 . Every new solution could then go straight in .
Perhaps a very minor grumble , the 2 word entries could have been referred to as pairs instead of exact clues . I hope we now get another three good , solid Plains .
I’ve never been able to do any of Gemelo’s specials. (Many of Azed’s specials defeated me, too.) On this occasion, after about an hour, I got TSESAREWITCH. Couldn’t work out which answer it was and gave up. Life is too short. I’m not good at cold solving and work by pattern recognition, and that didn’t work for me here. (The Azed specials I liked was the Eightsome Reels.)
Took me a while to get going, but it’s always the same with double clue puzzles: once you can put in one pair of answers it gets steadily easier. My first pair was CNIDAE/ANTARA, which meant I could at least put in the shared N; that in turn helped with LATIN CROSS and it slowly built up from there. One query and one quibble: in 4dn, does “latterly” really main “second half of”? And 1dn: MK is the country code for North Macedonia; “Macedonia” isn’t a country.
MunroMaiden@4: I share your doubts about “latterly”. Chambers defines it as “towards the latter end”, with “latter” defined as ” later, coming or existing after”. All letters in a word come after the first one, so “latterly” does not clearly indicate how many to select. It’s too imprecise for me.
MK was the IVR code for Republic of Macedonia, as the country was known until the change to North Macedonia in 2019. The IVR code is now NMK. The current Chambers dates from 2016 so Gemelo was following it without regard to more recent events.
@5:and .mk is a internet country code, but now of course for North Macedonia. Chambers doesn’t include internet suffixes.
Thanks, Hector@5&6. MK is the ISO code for North Macedonia (according to Wiki), but I guess Chambers just does IVR. Mine is way older than the current one!
This must have been so difficult for Gemelo to compose the clues, with one word starting with the correct letter common to both halves of the clue, that one can sympathise with him for abandoning much pretence of producing convincing surfaces. It was really tough but very enjoyable. Today, and I hope I’m not contravening regulations by saying this, the surfaces are very good in a crossword that must have been a lot simpler to set. [Sorry, I didn’t realise I was signed in as John. Wil Ransome.]