How to solve Azed & Gemelo

The Observer has long published two cryptic crosswords with very different personalities.

Everyman — the one written by me — is for beginners, or what we might call lapsed or occasional solvers.

But you’re reading this because one of our other puzzles tempts you. Azed — the one with no black squares — or, from the 13th July 2025, our brand new barred cryptic, Gemelo.

These puzzles are remarkable for many reasons. They are, by turns, exquisite, exceptionally witty, and remarkably ingenious. But they are not for the casual solver.

Unlike the answers in an Everyman — which should be familiar to any solver who takes an interest in the world and reads the Observer — there will be words in Azed and Gemelo that you have not met before and may never meet again.

Part of the fun, in fact, is peering at wordplay and crossing letters and wondering whether there might be some word — plumping, say — and whether it might be used in parts of Scotland to mean “raining suddenly and very heavily”, then discovering that it is, and you can write it in. In pencil.

For that discovery, you need a Chambers Dictionary. The physical edition is a gorgeous object and comes with a Word Lover’s Miscellany, the headings of which include ‘38 Insults’, ‘25 Words That Merit Rescue’ and ‘Words With Q Not Followed By U’.

An even trustier friend to the solver, though, is the Chambers app. You can search that for P???PING and find, alongside plumping, slapping (making a sound like a plop, but flatter), primping, prepping and the rest.

But Alan, some of you are thinking: is this not cheating?

It is not — for the good reason that there is no such thing as cheating in a crossword. Solve it how you like. The setter does not expect you to know every dialect term from around the British Isles and beyond. You need to do whatever it takes to find them.

I always recommend solving with a friend or family member nearby or on the other end of a message thread. Of course, if you want to approach it as unarmed combat, playing solo, you can do that. But these are puzzles best approached with curiosity, collaboration — and a healthy amount of patience.

Just like in a black-squares crossword, the moment you’ve written your first answer, the rest of the puzzle becomes much more tractable. And the effect is greater when so many of the letters are in both an across and a down entry.

Chambers is also useful for looking up words that you do already know — or think you do. When I’m stuck, enlightenment often comes from idly typing into the app the word in the clue that I thought was telling me to consider an anagram and discovering that it is a discontinued Turkish coin.

Let’s recap. For both Azed and Gemelo, you need a Chambers. You need to give the puzzle your full attention and savour each clue as its own miniature gem. And in case of doubt, the only instance of cheating I can think of in crosswords involves a prime minister, who is occasionally ranked as Britain’s second-worst.

In an earlier stage of life, Alec Douglas-Home was known for helping fellow commuters with their solve — no clue apparently beyond his ken. What he kept to himself was that he had compiled the puzzles.