Pit your wits against our prize puzzle, plus the £50 Mystery Word Bonus
ACROSS
1 A skiing race, especially one downhill, over a winding course (6) 5 19th-century American poet famous for the verse collection Leaves Of Grass (1855) (4,7)
10 An Irish republican political movement founded in 1905 (4,4) 11 A barrier for defence, especially one erected hastily, as during street fighting (9) 12 City and port in north-west Belgium, the capital of East Flanders province (5) 14 A building designed for the performance of plays, operas, etc (7)
16 A long and often difficult journey (4)
18 A betulaceous tree or shrub with thin peeling bark (5) 19 A hard waxy fat around the kidneys and loins in sheep and cattle (4)
20 Tropical evergreen trees bearing brown pulpy pods with brittle shells (9)
23 The act or means of getting rid of something (8)
24 Hattie _, the first African American to win an Academy Award (8) 25 An ungenerous or miserly person (9)
28 An adhesive substance (4) 29 A cafè latte flavoured with chocolate (5)
31 Steffi _, German tennis player who won seven Wimbledon singles titles (4) 33 A sense of deep regret and guilt for a misdeed (7) 35 Hard, smooth variety of dentine that makes up a major part of elephant tusks (5) 39 A port on the island of Lewis, largest settlement in the Outer Hebrides (9) 40 A bacterium of a genus which causes a serious form of food poisoning (8) 41 Italian word for goodbye or farewell (11)
42 To move, walk or glide along casually (6)
DOWN
2 Mike _, film and theatre writer and director whose movies include Secrets & Lies (5) 3 Russian revolutionary who was the first head of the Soviet Union (5) 4 Patient, long-suffering or submissive in nature (4) 5 Mechanical device for lifting heavy objects (5)
6 Motor vehicle used to pull farm machinery (7) 7 Large tree with brown shiny nuts called conkers (5,8) 8 Implied or inferred without direct expression (5) 9 French painter; co-founder of Fauvism (5,6)
12 A metabolic disease characterised by painful inflammation of certain joints (4)
13 Round, mild Dutch cheese with a red outside covering (4) 15 (Of tide water) flows back or recedes (4)
17 Fictional private eye created by crime writer Raymond Chandler (6,7) 19 Backless seat or footrest (5) 21 A device for increasing speed, especially the throttle pedal in a motor vehicle (11) 22 Make or become less in amount, degree, etc (5)
25 A river in Europe, rising in the Vosges Mountains and flowing north to the Moselle river in Germany (4)
26 Villainous ensign in Shakespeare’s Othello (4) 27 A member of the English political party that opposed the exclusion of James, Duke of York from the royal succession (4)
30 An associate or companion (7) 32 Indo-european language of Iran and Afghanistan (5) 34 Georg _, Hungarian-british conductor (5) 36 Opinions or thoughts (5) 37 Indian condiment of finely chopped cucumber and mint in yoghurt (5)
38 The local name for the River Thames at Oxford (4)