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” |
Thanks Ali
10ac is ORPH[e]AN (melodious minus [tun]E)
24dn is [co]UNTIE[s] (administrative areas minus COS {function})
I also found this harder than the usual Sunday crossword.
Typo in 19A, should be AXLE-TREE.
Thanks to Kairos and Ali.
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”!
The Nina may account for some of the more unusual words.
It is a brilliant Nina!
Won it (runner-up), but missed the Nina completely – what was it?
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
Clear as mud
There are setters names running across solutions
herbAL CHEMIsts
factotuM ORPHan
generosiTY RUSt
reparTEE Status
pathAN AXletree
sPUN Kashmir
spreaD ACid
trimarAN ARCHEr
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
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.
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.