Independent 8508 / Kairos

20 comments on “Independent 8508 / Kairos”

1. Definitely not the easiest Tuesday puzzle I have ever done, but I got there in the end.

   I had no idea of the theme and the CIRCUS/PUCCINI crossers were my last ones in after I finally saw RESTS/resits at 7dn which confirmed that the American in the clue for 9ac was “US” and not “AM”, and I then corrected 5dn. I had originally entered the non-existent composer “Passini” at 5dn when I interpreted the mug in the clue as “sap”, and until I realised my mistake I had checkers of S?R??? at 9ac and the “enchantress” in the clue led me down the path of looking for a word beginning with “sire”, i.e. siren with the last letter removed, but “siream” or “sireus” made no sense.

2. I nearly finished this puzzle but missed 1a (I had Amos). I slowly recognised the book series from my girls’ grammar school childhood. They books were so exciting, especially with Uncle Bill (MI5 or MI6) who, nowadays, would be suspect for taking the children off on some dangerous missions. I still needed my aids (Sorta and cCosswordsolver), though, to get this close.
   I’ve found them all harder in the last week or so. 9a (Circus) was the wittiest clue, I thought.

3. Only come across Kairos before on Sunday, after this one hope to see more of him/her on weekdays. Knew there was some sort of theme, but had only read Blyton’s Famous Five series as a child.

   Query for Latin scholars. In 28a “Deo” is the ablative or dative case of the noun Deus (god). If the wordplay is “for God”, would this correctly be “Deum” (accusative case)?

4. I enjoyed this. I read all the books as a child in the 1950s but it wasn’t till I had got 3 or 4 of the theme words and 1d that I finally realised what was going on.

   For me, this was definitely not a ‘one-sitting’ solve. I returned to the puzzle a few times during the morning and solved a few more clues each time before grinding to a halt again. It was on about the 5th return that I finally solved the whole thing.

   I wondered if we might see ENID BLYTON appearing somewhere in the grid, but I guess that would be a much more difficult grid construction. All the letters in ENID BLYTON are present near the bottom centre of the grid, but they don’t seem to form any logical pattern.

5. With regard to ‘Deo’ in 28a, this works fine. ‘For God’ would be ‘Pro deo’ so the ablative case is correct.

6. Hi Gwep@3 – Joyce wrote up the blog this time and is definitely NOT a Latin scholar. She checked and Chambers has Deo as to, for or with God.

   Mind you, others have criticised Chambers in the past!

7. Thanks Penelope – we crossed!

8. Thanks, both. Sound enough puzzle, with both the gateway clues pretty gettable (thank you to setter). But like you, I finished it and then asked myself what was going on. Mrs Google led me to the same site that you have highlighted, and then – to quote how Kathryn speaks – ‘I was like, what?’

   Themes are themes, but a set of children’s books that aren’t the best known of her works, written seventy years ago, and an author that is hardly top of the sales list in 2014 for reasons we all know about … not my cup of tea today.

   gwep, I embarrassed myself in Another Place recently getting into a discussion about Latin grammar. Eileen is your woman to answer the question you’ve asked.

   Thanks to Kairos for today’s offering.

9. Although others seem to have answered your question while I was typing …

10. Dative is to or for, ablative is by, with or from. So it is dative, which is fine. It doesn’t need the ‘pro’ to mean ‘for god’. I didn’t know the theme, as I wasn’t really a Blyton child, but it became obvious something like that was going on, and I suspected it might be her. It didn’t at all spoil the pleasure of solving this –
    I agree that this was a very good puzzle, and it would be excellent to see more of Kairos on weekdays.

11. Hi Anne

    Many thanks for that!

    I wrote a [fairly lengthy] reply earlier this afternoon, when I came in, when I was alerted to the query, although I hadn’t done the puzzle, and subsequently found it had disappeared!

    However, it said more or less what you have said.

    [I’ll just add, for gwep, if s/he is still there, that the accusative case is used for the object of the verb, as in the Latin hymn, ‘Te Deum [laudamus]’ – ‘We praise thee, O God.’]

    Sorry, B and J, I was out for most of the day, so didn’t have time for the puzzle but thanks, as ever, for the blog!

12. I guessed AMOS for 1ac, too. It was the only book of the bible I could remember beginning with an ‘a’ and it still gave me the correct checking letter for 2dn. These were my last two in.

    Curiously, I’d mentioned this series of books in a conversation with friends just last month. As I recall, my school library had these books and the Secret Seven books, but not the Famous Five, which I never read.

    I knew the alternative spelling of 26ac, ANAPEST, so I guessed this spelling. Chambers tells me that the spelling I know is the American spelling.

13. Setter reporting for duty.

    My thanks to Bert and Joyce for their expert unravelling of the clues and to all for your kind comments. The additional words in 1a were to indicate the theme – they appear in italics in the paper. The clue is, as indicated, a double definition.

    Fortunately, I was not caught out relying on Chambers’ definition of DEO but the Latin lessons from other contributors were useful and brought back many memories of sitting learning declensions. I always remembered the order by the mnemonic “naughty virgins always give dirty answers”!

14. Putting the theme hint in 1 across was helpful but slightly confusing in that it lead you to think that 1 ac itself must be linked to the theme, which it appears not to be. With a lot of effort I managed to finish this apart from anapaest where I was trying things like asanapet, which as far as I was concerned were every bit as feasible as the answer. Anagrams may be easy most of the time but, if you’ve never heard of the word, they become just about impossible. The theme was fairly meaningless to me beyond the fact that they all sounded like places you could have an adventure.

15. “I always remembered the order by the mnemonic “naughty virgins always give dirty answers”!”

    Goodness me! – I learned many mnemonics from my Latin teacher [in my state school, as I always add, being one of the fortunate ones!] in rural Norfolk, many decades ago, but I cannot imagine what she would have made of this one!

    Thanks for that, Kairos – I’m sorry I didn’t get round to your puzzle. 😉

16. Years ago (30+) there was a Christmas book quiz on the BBC (it wouldn’t happen today…) in which various literary luminaries were invited to answer questions on a range of titles. One round involved a guest actor reading extracts which were to be identified. One extract I was sure I’d read, but couldn’t identify – however, as Anthony Burgess (no less) launched into an intense deconstruction of the text the answer popped up on screen for viewers at home, and it was indeed the first library book I’d ever read. It was The Island of Adventure and Burgess looked faintly chastened when told.

    So, pleasant memories here.

17. Only got round to this this morning, found it quite fun. But having got RIVER, ISLAND and VALLEY I thought for a while the gateway clue was somehow geographical till the penny dropped.

    You Latin scholars struggling with declensions might like a little light relief here

    Better get my coat before Gaufrid ejects me for going off topic.

    Thanks, Kairos and B&J

18. Thanks for the memory, allan_c. 😉

19. Oh dear! Eileen – not quite 10 out of 10 I’m afraid. In your example “O God” is actually the vocative case (though “te deum” does seem to be accusative) The failure is perhaps in the translation……. All dreadfully interesting (yawn)
    Nice puzzle – for once, took more than 10 minutes to complete. BTW ‘anapaest’ not that abstruse. Diddy dum, diddy dum!

20. Just dropping in out of curiosity, but I cannot let William@19 go unanswered. I do not think there is any failure of translation, merely different idiom in Latin and English, so that DEUM agrees in case with TE in the Latin, but English idiom prefers to switch to a vocative.

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