THE PRIZE CROSSWORD
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, March 4 (photocopies not accepted). Today’s solution will appear next week and the winner’s name on Sunday, March 20. You must complete the iSpy box to enter. SEE BELOW THE GRID for details on how to enter – and good luck!
Across
1 American author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
1920 novel The Age Of Innocence (5,7)
8 Island in the South
Pacific; the largest in
French Polynesia (6)
11 William ---, English playwright and poet of the Restoration who influenced the comedy of manners genre (8)
12 Meat from the back or
sides of a pig (5)
13 Something that is owed, such as money, goods or services (4)
14 Richard Warren ---, American businessman who co-founded a famous chain of department stores (5)
15 Small, rough-haired dogs originally from Scotland (5,8)
17 Bed covering filled with small soft feathers or warm material (9)
19 Any of a variety of
Indian dishes consisting of meat or vegetables braised with water or stock and lentils (7)
23 Humphry ---, English inventor of a safety lamp who coined the name ‘laughing gas’ for nitrous oxide (4)
24 To act or proceed without
allies or help (2,2,5)
25 --- pony, breed of large, heavy pony found in the hills of Northern England (4) 26 A type of lettuce with very
crisp pale leaves (7)
28 Infection of the intestine with
bacteria or amoebae (9)
31 A member of a group of British painters and writers including Rossetti and Millais, founded in 1848 (3-10)
34 Republic in West Central Africa, the capital of which is Libreville (5)
36 Another word
for enemies (4)
37 A quick-moving Italian dance popular during the 16th and 17th Centuries (5) 38 City in Western Russia, on
the Dnieper River (8)
39 A meal, or the food
provided at a meal (6)
40 French valet of Phileas
Fogg in Jules Verne’s novel Around The World In Eighty Days (12)
Down
2 Pilotless radio-controlled
aircraft (6)
3 Perennial plant of China and Japan cultivated for its flowers, which have black-spotted orange reflexed petals (5,4)
4 Very small brown bird
with a slender bill (4)
5 The chief port of Egypt,
on the Nile Delta (10)
6 River in Central Italy which
flows through Rome (5)
7 A subtle point of delicacy
or distinction (6)
8 A powdered chemical used in photocopying machines and laser printers (5) 9 Roman emperor who ordered the building of a famous wall across northern Britain (7)
10 In the Bible, the portable tent used by the Israelites as a sanctuary for the
Ark of the Covenant (10) 16 Hans ---, German physicist and developer of an instrument for the detection of radiation (6) 18 Tired or exhausted (5)
20 Victoriano ---, Mexican general who became president of the country by coup in 1913 (6)
21 A soft Italian
cream cheese (10)
22 16th-Century English lawyer who led the Pilgrimage of Grace, against the dissolution of the monasteries (6,4)
25 The expanse
of the sky (9)
27 A person who makes and serves coffee in a coffee bar (7)
29 George ---, 20th Century US statistician who devised a self-named opinion poll (6)
30 The largest of the four
main islands of Japan (6) 32 A short shaft or pin supporting something that turns (5)
33 Monies lent at interest for
a period of time (5)
35 Francisco ---, a court painter to the Spanish Crown (4)