THE PRIZE CROSSWORD

There’s an amazing €2,000 prize for the first correct solution drawn at random in our general knowledge Prize Crossword. Entries must arrive by Friday, March 16 (photocopies not accepted). Today’s solution will appear next week and the winner’s name on Su

Across

1 Geoffrey –––, English poet who wrote The Canterbury Tales (7) 5 A discussion intended to produce a settlement or agreement (11) 10 In surgery, a blunt-ended, flexible instrument (5) 11 Tack for horses, consisting of buckled straps and metal mouthpieces (7) 13 Systems of letters or symbols, used for communicating in secret (5) 14 Port in Russia named Stalingrad from 1925 to 1961 (9) 15 A safety barrier at the side of a staircase or road (9) 16 See 4 Down 17 Canadian-born film star who was a co-founder of United Artists (4,8) 20 Major river in Spain rising in the Cantabrian Mountains (4) 21 Heraldic emblem which united the Houses of York and Lancaster (5,4) 22 Long and bitter hostility between two families or individuals (4) 26 English author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (7,5) 27 Silvery-white metallic element widely used for structural and engineering purposes (4) 29 (Of water) becomes brackish and foul from standing still (9) 31 Central American republic between the Caribbean and the Pacific (9) 33 A type of bay window (5) 34 US city on the isthmus between Lake Washington and Puget Sound (7) 35 Anwar –––, the third President of Egypt (5) 36 The wheels and shock absorbers that support an aircraft on the ground and enable it to take off (7,4) 37 Introduces air or gas into a substance (7)

Down

1 An island republic in the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa (4,5) 2 Bikini –––, site of US nuclear device testing between 1946 and 1958 (5) 3 A member of a Native American people indigenous to the South East US (8)

4 and 16 Across Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1834-1835 and 1841-1846 (6,4) 5 American singer-songwriter who starred in the 1980 film remake of The Jazz Singer (4,7) 6 A system of labour camps maintained in the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1955 in which many people died (5) 7 A chief nobleman, formerly the son of the Emperor of Austria (8) 8 Large area of sea bordered by Africa in the West, Asia in the North and Australia in the East (6,5) 9 Snuggled, settled or cuddled closely (7) 12 A nectar-rich genus of the honeysuckle family, also called pincushion flowers (8) 16 One of the ways in which a number of things can be ordered or arranged (11) 18 Cathedral in Northern England, the seat of the cleric holding the secondhighest office of the Church of England (4,7) 19 The inflammation of a small fluid-filled sac in the body, most common in the shoulders, hips, elbows or knees (8) 23 Rene –––, 17th Century French philosopher and mathematician who wrote Discourse On The Method (9) 24 A town in South Wales, on the Loughor estuary in Carmarthenshire (8) 25 An empty vertical pipe intended to distribute water to multiple levels of a building to suppress fire (3,5) 26 To strip or deprive by force, plunder, rob or loot (7) 28 A skin inflammation with lesions that scale, crust or ooze (6) 30 ––– School of Fine Art, the art school of University College London, established in 1871 (5) 32 Waiting For –––, Samuel Beckett play featuring Vladimir and Estragon (5)