BIG X-WORD

ACROSS

1 Title character of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor Of Casterbridge (1886) (7,8)

10 Musical note half as long as a minim and twice as long as a quaver (8)

11 Person appointed to manage the finances of a body such as a club, company or government (9)

12 Italian fashion company, founded in 1978, whose logo is the head of

Medusa (7)

13 Monetary unit of Israel equal to one hundredth of a shekel (5)

15 County of western Ireland whose Irish name means ‘Plain of the yew trees’ (4)

16 Shallow channel cut into soil or rocks by running water; similar to but smaller than a gully (4)

17 & 18 2018 action horror film starring Y’lan Noel and Lex Scott Davis (3,5,5)

20 Herman ___, German-born Swiss novelist and poet awarded the Nobel Prize For Literature in 1946 (5)

22 ‘Watch out and guard yourselves from every kind of ___’ (Luke 12:125) (5)

25 Milton ___, Ugandan politician; prime minister 1962–66 and president 1966–71 and 1980–5 (5)

27 Rich city formerly believed to exist somewhere in the region of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers; Spanish, ‘the gilded one’ (2,6)

28 2000 single by US rapper

Eminem featuring British

singer Dido (4)

30 Fourth-oldest man in the Bible after Noah (950), Jared (962) and Methuselah (969), living to 930 (Genesis 5:4) (4)

32 Spanish soldier born Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar c. 1043, posthumously made a national hero (2,3)

33 Widow of Nabal who became the third wife of David (1 Samuel 25) (7)

35 Exercise machine consisting of a continuous moving belt on which to walk or run (9)

36 King of Nepal murdered by his son, Crown Prince Dipendra, in 2001 (8)

37 1987 gangster film starring Kevin Costner, Sean Connery and Robert De Niro (3,12)

DOWN 2

Welsh composer and actor known for the 1914 song ‘Keep The Home Fires Burning’ (4,7)

3 Oldest member of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (1844) (5)

4 Country of NE Europe on the Gulf of Riga and the Baltic Sea (6)

5 Person with a lean and delicate body type, thought to accompany a personality characterised by introversion, restraint and artistic activity (9)

6 Aromatic Eurasian herb of the parsley family; Anthriscus cerefolium (7)

7 Jean-jacques ___, Swiss-born French philosopher whose works include 1762’s The Social Contract (8)

8 Excessive sentimentality, especially in music or films; from German via Yiddish, ‘melted fat’ (8)

9 Port city of NE Italy, capital of the Friuli-venezia Giulia region (7)

14 Department of SW France in the Occitanie region; capital, Foix (6)

15 In billiards and snooker, a stroke made with the cue held nearly vertically to impart swerve to the ball (5)

18 Spineless globe-shaped cactus of N Mexico and the southern US which contains the hallucinogen mescaline; Lophophora williamsii (6)

19 Firework giving off a continuous series of flaming coloured balls and sparks (6,5)

21 State capital of Oregon, established by Methodist missionaries in 1840 (5)

23 Florentine sculptor known for works including the bronze statue David (c. 1430–60) (9)

24 Small songbird of the shrike family with black-and-white plumage and a reddishbrown crown; Lanius senator (8)

25 Port town of SE Italy; setting of a 1764 novel by English writer Horace

Walpole (7)

26 Combination of three letters used to represent a single speech sound, as in the ‘igh’ of light (8) 29 Capital and largest city of Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland (7)

31 One of the six official languages of the United Nations, along with English,

French, Russian, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese (6) 34 Mildly-spiced Indian curry made with yogurt or cream; from Urdu, ‘braise’ (5)