General knowledge 805

(answers in next week’s paper)

ACROSS

1. Second son of Isaac and Rebecca (5)

5. Small, two-masted vessel (5) 8. Line on a map linking places with the same atmospheric pressure (6) 9. Hawk-headed Egyptian god (5) 10. An earshell or sea-ear (5) 11. Husband of Titania (6) 13. Synthetic textile fibre (5) 15. Mexican composite plant named after a Swedish botanist (6) 18. Surname of the baron and novelist who wrote Corridors of Power, etc. (4) 19 Drink of spirit (originally rum) and water (4) 20. Substance used in curdling milk, for making cheese and junket (6) 24. Famous Russian ballet company now known as the Mariinsky Ballet (5) 26. Plant traditionally brought to Ireland by Sir Walter Raleigh (6) 27. Many-headed snake killed by Hercules (5) 28. Divine messenger (5) 29. Tool with an end bevelled to a cutting edge (6) 30. Small herring-like fish (5) 31. Invisible emanations believed to radiate from people or objects (5)

DOWN

1. Composer whose works include a German Requiem (8,6) 2. Hard, calcareous substance, the skeletons of marine organisms (5)

3. Genus of wild cattle, such as the American buffalo (5) 4. A brood of partridges (5) 5 Monetary unit of Iceland (5) 6. Chief of the Dravidian languages (5)

7. Novelist and short story writer whose masterpiece is Moby Dick (6,8) 12. Port of Funen, Denmark, and birthplace of Hans Andersen (6) 14. Non-toxic gas discovered by Priestley in 1774 (6) 16. US state, capital Honolulu (6) 17. Florentine painter and architect, famous for his frescoes in churches at Assisi, Padua, etc. (6) 21. Point of the heavens diametrically opposite the zenith (5) 22. The moon’s age at the beginning of the year (5) 23. Plant growing in pastures and meadows (5) 24 Australian marsupial which feeds almost entirely on eucalyptus shoots (5) 25. Response indicating that an oral message has been received and understood (5)