BIG MONDAY CROSSWORD

ACROSS 1

First named geyser in Yellowstone National Park, discovered in 1870 (3,8)

Any edible burrowing mollusc of the family Cardiidae, common on sandy coasts (6)

‘Wee, ___, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie’ (Robert Burns ‘To a Mouse’) (7)

English musician, singersongwriter and actor born Richard Starkey in 1940 (5,5)

Second-largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily, lying immediately south of Corsica (8)

City that replaced Lagos as the capital of Nigeria in 1991 (5)

Southern branch of the Rhine in the central Netherlands, flowing west to the estuary of the Meuse on the North Sea (4)

Retreat for the practice of yoga or other Hindu disciplines; Sanskrit, ‘hermitage’ (6)

Second son of Joseph and Asenath after Manasseh (Genesis) (7)

Annie ___, US photographer whose works include album covers for artists including Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper (9)

2018 thriller film starring John Cho and Debra Messing (9)

Title for a revered sage or holy man in South Asia; from Sanskrit, ‘great soul’ (7)

Alternative name for the lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), derived from its call (6)

Largest lake in Ethiopia; source of the Abbai, or Blue Nile (4)

6 9 10 11 12 13 16 19 21 22 23 24 25 26

Snail in TV’s The Magic Roundabout (1965-77), called Ambroise in the French original (5)

Spanish dance marked by clapping and stamping of the feet, originating with gypsies in Andalusia (8)

Animated Walt Disney character first seen in 1934’s The Wise Little Hen (6,4)

Character voiced by Terry Scott in the 1981-92 cartoon series Danger Mouse (7)

Titaness in Greek mythology; maternal grandmother of Apollo and Artemis (6)

Point in space-time at which matter is infinitely dense, as at the centre of a black hole (11)

27 32 33 34 35 DOWN 1

Writer, producer and director of the 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons (5,6)

Squirrel’s nest, typically in the form of a mass of twigs in a tree (4)

Westernmost of the Spanish Balearic Islands, north of Formentera (5)

Radioactive metallic element of the actinide series artificially produced by neutron bombardment of plutonium; atomic no. 100 (7)

Island of central Hawaii separated from Maui by the Au’au Channel (5)

James ___, English explorer who claimed the E coast of Australia for Britain in 1770 (4)

Actress who plays Lou in the 2018 heist comedy film Ocean’s 8 (4,9)

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1900 Joseph Conrad novel largely set in the fictional country of Patusan (4,3)

Official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury (7,6)

1994 supernatural superhero film starring Brandon Lee and Ernie Hudson (3,4)

Mild semi-soft Danish cheese with small irregular holes, sometimes flavoured (7)

1846 opera by Giuseppe Verdi about a 5th-century king of the Huns (6)

Second epoch of the Paleogene period, following the Palaeocene and preceding the Oligocene (6)

1919 Virginia Woolf novel featuring the characters Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet (5,3,3)

Iris ___, British author awarded the Booker Prize for 1978’s The Sea, The Sea (7)

Plant of the gourd family cultivated for its large orange-yellow fruits; Cucurbita pepo (7)

Name of eighteen kings of France, beginning with the son of Charlemagne (5)

Wickerwork basket, especially one used by anglers to hold fish (5)

Wood-shaping tool consisting of an arched metal blade set at right angles to a wooden handle (4)

Autonomous republic of NW Russia west of the Ural mountains; capital, Syktyvkar (4)

14 15 17 18 19 20 23 24 28 29 30 31