Crossword and Sudoku brain-teasers.
ACROSS
11 Author whose novels include Lucky Jim, The Green Man and The Folks That Live on the Hill; a friend of Philip Larkin with a literary son (4)
12 London district that forms a borough with Kensington, site of an annual flower show hosted by the Royal Horticultural Society (7)
13 Gourd fruit served in sandwiches, gin cocktails, burger buns, Greek salad, fattoush, tzatziki and Pimm’s (8)
14 Head accessory worn in the Royal Enclosure at Royal Ascot, traditionally black silk plush or grey felt (3,3)
15 Material such as clay hardened by heat, used as the basis of china, porcelain or earthenware (7)
16 Couplings for pipes; emblematic devices on the upper inner corners of flags; or, organisations for workers (6)
17 The Country _____ of an Edwardian Lady; book of watercolour illustrations and handwritten notes by Edith Holden chronicling her rural life (5) 18 Growing near dens of vixens and their male counterparts and loved by fairies according to folklore, one of the most poisonous plants in our flora, Digitalis (9)
21 Actor who served as an army captain before taking over from Sean Connery as James Bond to become the longest-serving actor in the role (5)
24 Potter from Staffordshire noted for powderblue and white jasperware and fine creamcoloured Queen’s ware (8)
27 Book for sets of stamps, coins, photos or autographs; or, a collection of music on CD, iTunes or other format (5)
28 Author of a book on household management whose picnic plan includes two roast ducks and six each of lobsters, loaves of bread and bottles of claret (6)
30 Used by Thomas Gainsborough to create one of his notable portraits, a colour with shades including lapis lazuli, turquoise, peacock and indigo (4) 32 _____ of Arms; chief heralds with authority to grant coats of arms (5)
33 From the French meaning “stretched”, one of the battlements in classical ballet where the extended foot never leaves the floor (5)
35 Material used in carpentry and studied in xylology; or, the comedienne who wrote Acorn Antiques and Dinnerladies (4)
36 Solar disc in Egyptian mythology (4)
37 Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey (5)
39 Clump of lawn torn up by a pony’s hoof during a game of polo or by a golf club during a stroke on a fairway (5)
40 Shoemaker’s model of a foot (4)
41 Painting of a woman stealing pigment from a rainbow by Royal Academy founding-member Angelica Kauffman (6)
43 The colour of the ball worth four points in snooker (5)
44 Quality of balance or proportion represented in Vitruvian Man (8)
46 Cerne _____; Dorset village near a chalk hill
figure of a naked giant (5)
48 Style/technique of training hornbeams into a narrow screen or hedge (9)
50 From the Latin meaning “table”, a southern constellation; or, a society for people with a high IQ (5)
54 Old contraption with rollers for wringing laundry or smoothing linen (6)
55 The _______; film-making partnership of Powell and Pressburger (7)
58 ______ Farm; home in Pilton of Glastonbury Festival-founder Michael Eavis (6)
59 Publisher of books on peerage and etiquette, each bearing a rose, thistle and shamrock colophon in gold (8)
60 _____: Impossible; films with Tom Cruise (7) 61 Spots on dominoes or dice; or, seeds of apples, pears and quinces (4)
DOWN
1 Fossilised spiral shell of an extinct mollusc common in Lyme Regis or Charmouth (8)
2 Dutch artist noted for his illustrations of impossible constructions (6)
3 Explorer who died with his crew on return home from the South Pole (5)
4 Nylon fastener inspired by burrs (6)
5 Title of the Russian emperors from the reign of Ivan IV until Nicholas II (4)
6 Land for cultivating crops or rearing livestock for meat, eggs, wool or milk (4)
7 Food served with wafers or in a cone; a traditional seaside treat (3,5)
8 Member of a movement founded Lord BadenPowell senior to a Cub (5)
9 Description of an animal that eats a variety of animal and plant foods (8)
10 “Father of immunology” who developed the world’s first vaccine (6)
19 Material used in lampworking (5)
20 Electron’s path around a nucleus; or, the Moon’s trajectory around Earth (5)
22 County divided into Ridings in which Emily Brontë set Wuthering Heights (9)
23 Richard Curtis film with Bill Nighy (5,4)
25 Colour of emeralds, baize, lovat tweed and kale; or, a grassy area in the centre of a village (5) 26 Cloth used for jeans and dungarees (5)
29 Double-reed musical instruments (5)
31 Venetian artist who painted Portrait of a Woman inspired by Lucretia (5)
34 Sister island of St Kitts (5)
35 Playwright depicted by Rupert Everett in his film The Happy Prince (5)
38 La _____; autonomous region of northern Spain, capital, Logroño (5)
39 One of the actresses in Nothing Like a Dame with Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright (5)
42 Large conservatory-like building for cultivating lemon or fig trees, camellia, gardenia, exotic plants ... (8)
43 Meaning “beautiful country” in Italian, a creamy cheese from Lombardy (3,5)
45 Red haw-like fruits found in hedgerows, used to make natural skincare products, cordial or syrup (4,4)
47 Jacket for school uniforms or yacht/sports clubs inspired by one originally styled by Lady Margaret Boat Club (6)
49 Nickname of a legendary beast said to inhabit the deep waters of a lake in the Scottish Highlands (6)
51 One of the two continents with Asia occupied by parts of Russia (6)
52 Book and art collector who married Talitha Pol in 1966; the son of an oil baron once the world’s richest man (5)
53 Mute _____; portrayed by cello in Le Cygne by Camille Saint-Saëns, birds subject to the annual ceremony of upping (5)
56 Collection of tents or bivouacs and the place where they’re pitched (4)
57 ____ Lynne; novel by Ellen Wood (4) A sudoku grid has a 9x9 grid that is further subdivided into nine 3x3 boxes. To solve the puzzle, each of the rows, columns and 3x3 boxes should contain all the digits from 1 to 9. The solution to this puzzle will be published in next week’s issue.