FACTFINDER’S CROSSWORD

ACROSS

1 Old fishing village in the north-east, created a burgh of barony in the 1680s (10)

6 Country in north central Africa (pop 14 million), independent since 1960 (4)

10 Willie __ (1881 - 1965), the Communist MP for West Fife (1935 -50) (9)

11 A large evergreen coniferous tree (5)

12 The SI units of electrical capacitance (6)

13 A violent south-west wind in southern South America (7)

15 The chickweed genus of the pink family (9)

18 A rod or member that resists pressure (5)

19 A carpenter’s boring tool (5)

21 Light racing-boat with projecting rowlocks (9)

23 Weakness of digestion (7)

24 A flying island in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (6)

27 Colourless matter from an ulcer (5)

28 A type of cheddar cheese with beer, spices,

etc (9)

29 Novel (1815-16) by Jane Austen (4)

30 The deadly nightshade (10)

DOWN

1 European capital (pop about 640,000), a member of the Hanseatic League (4)

2 Historical film drama (2014), starring David Oyelowe and Tom Wilkinson (5)

3 The great valerian (4-3)

4 A mountain and peninsula in north-east Greece, the site of 20 monasteries (5)

5 Vegetable of the arum family, widely cultivated for its edible root (4,5)

7 Cross-border battle (1542 ) near Berwick (6,3)

8 An order of mammals, the flying lemurs (10)

9 Executes perfunctorily, or without thoroughness (6)

14 An amide found in various green vegetables (10)

16 Renfrewshire village listed as a place of special historic interest in 1960 (9)

17 A dye-stuff, usually red, akin to fluorescein (9)

20 The act of scraping or shaving (6)

22 Archaic term for to sue someone (7)

24 A trade union branch in the US (5)

25 One of the gods overthrown by Zeus in Greek mythology (5)

26 The killer-whale genus (4)