Independent On Sunday 1,236 – Kairos

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Another Sunday, another Kairos puzzle for me. This one was considerably harder than the last, with a number of words that were new to me and some tricky wordplay for some of the ones that weren’t. A very nice mix of clues though, making for a good Sunday solve

Across
1 HERBAL – VERBAL (unwritten) with H(enry) replacing V
5 CHEMISTS – MI in CHESTS
9 FACTOTUM – F(ollowing) + ACT O’ TUM (work of corporation)
10 ORPHAN – Not sure on this one – “Melodious tune finally omitted from Oliver?”
11 GENEROSITY – (TRY + GO + IN + SEE)*
12 RUST – R(ight)T around US
13 REPARTEE – PART in EE (Europeans) in RE:
16 STATUS – TAT in SUS
17 PATHAN – PAT (glib) + HAN[-d]
19 AXEL-TREE – (EXTRA EEL)*
21 SPUN Hidden reversal in aN UPSet
22 KASHMIR RUG – “Cash” + MIR + RUG
25 SPREAD – Double def
26 ACID BATH – (A BAD ITCH)*
27 TRIMARAN – RIM in TAR + A(ustralian) N(avy)
28 ARCHER – A + R(oman) C(atholic) + HER
Down
2 ELATE – [-PR]ELATE
3 BUTTE – [-a]BUTTE[-d]
4 LETS OUT – Double def
5 COMPILE – (POLEMIC)*
6 EPONYMS – PONY (£25) in E(uropean) M(onetary) S(ystem)
7 IMPORTANT – PORT in I’M ANT
8 TRANSMUTE – (START MENU)*
14 EXAM PAPER – EX (from) A MP (representative) + APER (impressionist)
15 ATHENAEUM – THE N(ew) in AA (drivers) + EU (community) + M(ember)
18 NAKEDER – [-s]NAKED + ER
19 ABSTAIN – S(aint) in A BAIN
20 LEMPIRA – A + R.I.P + MEL rev.
23 REBEC – REBEL with C(ollege) for L (student)
24 UNTIE – Not sure on this one – “Release administrative areas from external function – quite the reverse”

12 comments on “Independent On Sunday 1,236 – Kairos”

  1. Thanks Ali
    10ac is ORPH[e]AN (melodious minus [tun]E)
    24dn is [co]UNTIE[s] (administrative areas minus COS {function})

  2. I also found this harder than the usual Sunday crossword.

    Typo in 19A, should be AXLE-TREE.

    Thanks to Kairos and Ali.

  3. Definitely tough. Bottom left corner I got nothing except “trimaran” which I’d more or less convinced myself I was right. Needed a lot of searches to get the top right too, and even then I guessed “ompaah” for 10ac, vaguely remembering a song from the musical Oliver, except that now I see it’s spelled “oompah”!

  7. Read from the 5th letter in 1a across to letter 5 in 5a and think about what you see there
    Then look across the other rows’ solutions and all should become clear

  9. There are setters names running across solutions
    herbAL CHEMIsts
    factotuM ORPHan
    generosiTY RUSt
    reparTEE Status
    pathAN AXletree
    sPUN Kashmir
    spreaD ACid
    trimarAN ARCHEr

  10. Thanks. I would never have found them

    Mind you, it doesn’t really matter – it’s still another dictionary for my village school. They are always short of reference books

  11. Definitely more difficult than the usual Sunday puzzle and I didn’t see the nina. An enjoyable mental workout though. Thanks to Gaufrid for parsing ORPHAN and UNTIE. I had the right answers from the definitions but the wordplay completely eluded me.

  12. Joyce was busy tidying up and found the completed crossword with a circle around 10ac which we solved but couldn’t parse it so thanks to Gaufrid! We are really glad that we checked the blog – we completely missed the nina. It’s a bit late but we just wanted to say thanks to Kairos – very well hidden names!

    Thanks also to Ali for the blog.

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