THE PRIZE CROSSWORD

WIN €2,000

There’s an amazing €2,000 prize for the first correct solution drawn at random in our general knowledge Prize Crossword. Entries must arrive by Friday, February 4 (photocopies not accepted). Today’s solution will appear next week and the winner’s name on Sunday, February 20. You must complete the iSpy box to enter. SEE BELOW THE GRID for details on how to enter – and good luck!

Across

1 See 30 Down

8 A highly seasoned type of sausage, often flavoured with garlic (6)

11 A gliding step in ballet, in which one foot slides forwards, sideways or backwards (8)

12 A French secondary

school (5)

13 The thick, light, porous outer bark of an evergreen Mediterranean oak tree (4) 14 See 35 Down

15 A complete change of physical form or substance (13)

17 Large, hairy

tropical spider (9)

19 To watch carefully or

pay attention to (7)

23 The desire to have something possessed by another (4)

24 Singers in the second lowest adult male voice range (9)

25 --- Chanel, 20th-Century French fashion icon credited with popularising the little black dress (4)

26 A polygon having

six sides (7)

28 Person suffering from a chronic inability to fall asleep (9)

31 The 28th president of the United States, in office 1913-21 (7,6)

34 --- Barrow, boyfriend of US criminal Bonnie Parker, who committed robberies with her in the early 1930s (5) 36 Roman emperor infamous for being a tyrant who ‘fiddled while Rome burned’ (4)

37 Type of endangered antelope of the plains of Central Asia (5)

38 An unreactive chemical element, such as helium, neon or argon (5,3)

39 The positive electrodes in

cells such as batteries (6)

40 20th-Century English actress, singer and music hall star who entertained Allied troops in the Second World War (6,6)

Down

2 Edmund ---, English astronomer and mathematician after whom a comet is named (6)

3 Large flightless bird with a horny head crest, inhabiting forests in northeast Australia, New Guinea and adjacent islands (9)

4 --- tide, either of the two tides that occur at the first or last quarter of the moon (4)

5 --- school, a state primary school in the US; also called grade school (10)

6 A type of Latin American big-band dance music, or a dance performed to it (5)

7 In the Church of England, a member of the clergy in charge of a parish (6)

8 In cricket, a shot in which the ball is hit more or less square on the leg side from a half-kneeling position (5) 9 A type of sugar

occurring in milk (7)

10 Constance ---, Irish politician who was the first woman elected to the UK House of Commons (10) 16 Tall, tree-like fast-growing grass with hollow woodywalled stems (6)

18 The language of ancient Rome and the Roman Empire (5)

20 The catchment areas of rivers and their tributaries (6)

21 The second wife of

Henry VIII, and mother of Elizabeth I (4,6)

22 Term indicating years numbered from the supposed year of the birth of Christ (4,6)

25 The largest city in the US state of

North Carolina (9)

27 A robot resembling

a human being (7)

29 A roof of canvas or other material supported by a frame to provide protection from the weather (6)

30 and 1 Across King of

England 1042-66 (6,3,9)

32 A fertile patch in a desert, occurring where the water table reaches the surface (5)

33 Domesticated South American cud-chewing mammal, used as a beast of burden (5)

35 and 14 Across American entrepreneur who founded Amazon in 1994 (4,5)