BIG MONDAY CROSSWORD
ACROSS
1 Derived SI unit of radioactivity, equal to one nucleus decaying per second (9)
5 2020 fantasy adventure film starring Robert Downey Jr. and Harry Collett (8) 9 Round-grained rice variety named after a town in Italy’s Po Valley, used for risotto, rice pudding etc. (7)
10 Soft silvery metallic element of the lanthanide series, atomic no. 66 (10) 11 Norwegian Labour politician elected as the first Secretary General of the United Nations in 1946 (6,3)
12 Single instruction that initiates a series of additional instructions to perform a specific task (5)
13 Island province of the central Philippines east of Negros and west of Leyte and Bohol (4)
15 See 28
17 Third-largest moon of Neptune, discovered by Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper in 1949 (6) 19 Plant genus of the family Plantaginaceae to which the foxgloves belong (9)
21 Best Actress winner at the 2020 Academy Awards, for her role in Marriage Story (5,4) 22 Black Sea port of southern Ukraine founded in 1794 by decree of Russian empress Catherine the Great (6)
23 Former name of Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet Company, still widely used overseas (5) 27 Concerning, with regard to; used especially in probate and bankruptcy proceedings (2,2)
28 and 15 Lettuce variety with curly red-edged leaves and a slightly bitter taste; from Italian, ‘red husk’ (5,5)
29 Former province of NE South Africa (1910-94) whose capital city was Pretoria (9) 33 Human cave-dweller, especially a member of a cave-dwelling tribe in prehistoric times (10) 34 Self-governing territory of the United Kingdom in the NW Atlantic, comprising more than 150 islands (7)
35 Headquarters building of the US Department of Defense, in Arlington, Virginia (8) 36 Highest mountain in the Pennine Alps, located on the border between Switzerland and Italy (5,4)
DOWN
1 Abnormally slow resting heart rate of 60 beats per minute or less (11) 2 Three-dimensional geometric figure that is the only regular hexahedron (4) 3 Alternative name for the Furies (Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone) in Greek mythology (7)
4 ‘And he dreamed, and behold a --- set up on the earth’ (Genesis 28:12) (6)
5 Morarji ---, prime minister of India who succeeded Indira Gandhi in 1977 (5) 6 Small northern constellation whose brightest star, Vega, is the fifth-brightest in the sky (4) 7 Small ferocious Australian marsupial also known as the ursine dasyure; Sarcophilus harrisii (9,5) 8 National museum and art gallery of France, housing exhibits including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo (6) 11 Confectionery with which Jadis, the White Witch, beguiled Edmund Pevensie in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) (7,7) 14 Edible mollusc (Haliotis tuberculata) also known as the sea-ear, found near the Channel Islands (5)
16 State of north-east India on the Bay of Bengal; capital, Bhubaneswar (6)
17 Largest city of New Jersey, on the Passaic River just west of New York City (6) 18 Spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism said to be the reincarnation of Khedrup Gelek Pelzang (1385-1438) (7,4)
20 Flavouring used in spirits including the Greek ouzo, Italian sambuca and French absinthe (5) 24 Substance taking part in a chemical reaction, especially one used to test for the presence of another substance (7)
25 Standard currency unit of Haiti, divided into 100 centimes (6)
26 St ---, Italian Benedictine monk; Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109 (6) 30 Synthetic textile fibre or fabric made from regenerated and purified cellulose (viscose) (5) 31 Nicolas ---, English director of films including Walkabout (1971) and The Witches (1990) (4) 32 Simple board game in which counters are moved according to throws of dice; Latin, ‘I play’ (4)