BIG MONDAY CROSSWORD
ACROSS
1 In North America, a carbonated soft drink flavoured with vanilla (5,4)
6 Animated clay character first seen on the children’s programme Take Hart in 1977 (5)
10 Slow Cuban dance in duple time; from Spanish, ‘of Havana’ (8)
11 Herbert Henry ___, British Liberal statesman; prime minister 1908–16 (7)
12 Star of the 2018 crime thriller film The Girl In The Spider’s Web (6,3)
13 Wife of Frank Spencer in the 1973-8 sitcom Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, played by Michele Dotrice (5)
15 US singer who released the ABBA cover album Dancing Queen in 2018 (4)
16 Large constellation of the southern hemisphere lying between Cetus and Aquila (8)
17 Aramaic translation or paraphrase of Old Testament scripture, made from around AD 100 when Hebrew was in decline (6)
20 Female of animals including the bear, badger, hedgehog and mink (3)
22 Standard monetary unit of Laos since 1952, divided into 100 att (3)
25 and 33 Down. Longest-serving prime minister of Japan (1964–72); co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 (6,4)
26 Antibiotic obtained from the bacterium Streptomyces fradiae, used topically to treat skin and eye infections (8)
29 French word for Christmas, derived from the Latin natalis, meaning ‘birth’ (4)
30 Cold dish whose name comes from the Japanese for ‘vinegared rice’ (5)
31 Small red fruit of the ericaceous shrub Vaccinium oxycoccus, used in cooking (9)
34 Japanese city on SW Honshu, on the Asahi River near the Inland Sea (7)
35 Emperor of Rome from 270 to 275, awarded the title Restitutor Orbis (‘Restorer of the World’) by the Senate (8)
36 Pattern of rhythm of a piece of poetry, determined by the number and length of feet in a line (5)
37 Biological community defined as the interactions between a group of interdependent organisms and their nonliving environment (9)
DOWN
2 Scottish poet who wrote ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in 1788 (6,5)
3 Thabo ___, president of South Africa from 1999 to 2008 (5)
4 and 9 Down. Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer (c. 1048–1131) whose Rubaiyat (quatrains) were translated into English by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859 (4,7)
5 In Britain, motor-racing over a course of rough grass, performed singly or in heats (9)
6 Capital and largest city of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), founded by settler Mickey Wells in 1887 (7)
7 Largest island of Thailand, in the Andaman Sea at the head of the Strait of Malacca (6)
8 1927 musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II whose songs include Make Believe and Ol’ Man River (4,4)
9 See 4 Down.
14 ‘Alas, poor ___, I knew him, Horatio’ (Shakespeare Hamlet act 5, sc. 1 (6)
15 and 32 Down. US rock-and-roll singer and guitarist who recorded a version of Merry Christmas Baby in 1958 (5,5)
18 Member of Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers whose real name was René d’Herblay (6)
19 Crystalline amino sugar of which chitin is mostly composed, used as a dietary supplement marketed to alleviate arthritis (11)
21 ‘Who breaks a butterfly upon a ___?’ (Alexander Pope, An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735)) (5)
23 Evil clown in the 1986 Stephen King horror novel It, played on screen by Bill Skarsgård in 2017 (9)
24 Toxic crystalline element occurring in metallic and non-metallic forms, chiefly obtained from the mineral stibnite (8)
25 Ruler of a German state within the Holy Roman Empire who was entitled to vote in the election of the emperor (7)
27 One of the three Gorgons in Greek mythology; sister of Stheno and Medusa (7)
28 Complex protein produced by living cells that acts as a catalyst in biochemical reactions, as in digestive systems (6)
32 See 15 Down.
33 See 25 Across.