GENERAL KNOWLEDGE CROSSWORD

Across

1. Basque or Spanish game, played on a court with ball and racket (6)

4. Small organ located in the chest between the lungs (6)

9. ___ Turismo, Japanese video game series first released in 1997 (4)

10. Author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, published in 1678 (4,6)

11. Red cloth attached to a stick, used by a matador (6)

12. Condition formally known as decompression sickness (3,5)

13. Small cup used to serve espresso (9)

15. “A man who dares to waste one __ of time has not discovered the value of life”: Charles Darwin (4)

16. Island in Scotland’s Firth of Clyde (4)

17. Female head of a family (9)

21. Early plastic, developed by a Belgian chemist in 1907 (8)

22. Type of surgery done to improve blood flow to the heart (6)

24. The world’s largest landlocked country, ten times the size of New Zealand (10)

25. First name of the Daily Planet journalist who is Superman’s love interest (4)

26. Luxurious passenger ships (6)

27. ___ City, state capital of Nevada (6)

Down

1. Best-selling historical fantasy novel by Patrick Suskind, published in 1985 (7)

2. 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand (5)

3. Westernmost city in Mexico, which boasts ‘the most crossed border in the world’ (7)

5. Calvin and ___, American comic strip launched in 1985 (6)

6. _____ Fats: legendary pool player in the 1961 film The Hustler (9)

7. Make false and damaging statements about someone (7)

8. Joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction, a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (3,10)

14. Singin’ __ __ __, 1952 film starring Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds (2,3,4)

16. Small, sharp tool for making holes (7)

18. Deciduous trees and shrubs commonly known as locusts or false acacia (7)

19. Felt covered rim of a billiard table from which the ball rebounds (7)

20. Shallow, flat stringed instrument which is laid flat and plucked with the fingers and a plectrum (6)

23. Evergreen trees with unbranched trunks which grow in tropical regions (5)