BIG MONDAY CROSSWORD
ACROSS
1 First character seen in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854), ‘a man of facts and calculations’ (6,9) 10 Arboreal edentate mammal of Central and South America also known as the lesser anteater (8)11 & 32 First knighted member of the film industry (1942); producer of such films as The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) and The Third Man (1949) (9,5) 12 See 31 Down 13 Daniel ___, (1734-1820), US frontiersman and folk hero considered a founding father of Kentucky (5) 15 Large flightless New Zealand bird of the rail family (Rallidae) commonly known as the Maori hen (4) 16 Jonas ___, US virologist who developed a vaccine against polio in the early 1950s (4) 17 ‘Haughty, gallant’ libertine in the 1702 play The Fair Penitent by English writer Nicholas Rowe (8) 18 Smallest element of a gene capable of undergoing mutation, consisting of one or more pairs of nucleotides (5) 20 State of northern Brazil bordering French Guiana and Suriname; capital, Macapá (5) 22 River of central England that merges with the Ouse to form the Humber estuary (5) 25 ‘I feel again a spark of that ancient ___’ (Virgil Aeneid bk. 4) (5) 27 Second-largest island in the Mediterranean, separated from Corsica by the Strait of Bonifacio (8) 28 Principal currency unit of Georgia, divided into 100 tetri (4) 30 Hybrid offspring of a male dromedary camel and female llama (4) 32 See 11 33 Cocktail of gin and dry vermouth, typically garnished with an olive or twist of lemon (7) 35 Form of German light opera in which song and spoken dialogue alternate, e.g. Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791) (9) 36 Yellow pigment that gives turmeric its colour, commonly used as a herbal medicine (8) 37 Spring-flowering Eurasian plant of the buttercup family also known as pilewort; Ficaria verna (6,9)
DOWN
2 Large order of winged insects that includes the bees, wasps and ants (11) 3 & 21 Capital of Ethiopia; Amharic, ‘new flower’ (5,5) 4 Second bride of Jason in Greek mythology, murdered on her wedding day by her predecessor Medea (6) 5 Youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, believed to have been executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 (9)6 Monstrous descendant of Cain slain by the titular hero of the Old English epic poem Beowulf (7) 7 Japanese weapon consisting of two sticks joined together by a short chain or cord, used especially in karate and Okinawan kobudō (8) 8 Segmented part of the body of a tapeworm, consisting of a long chain of linked proglottids (8) 9 Rare inert gaseous element named from the Greek for ‘hidden’ (7) 14 Two-player card game similar to whist; from French, ‘discarded’ (6) 15 E. B. ___, US author of novels including Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte’s Web (1952) (5) 18 Chief god of ancient Babylon, who slew the dragons Tiamat and Kingu (6) 19 2022 historical action drama film starring Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman (3,8) 21 See 3 23 Of a chemical compound, having three interconnected rings of atoms in its molecular structure (9) 24 1993 hit by Spanish pop duo Los del Río that started an international dance craze (8) 25 Former European name for Taiwan; from Portuguese, ‘beautiful’ (7) 26 Noble family to which Romeo belongs in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (8) 29 Nnamdi ___, Nigerian statesman; first Governor General (1960–3) and President (1963–6) of an independent Nigeria (7) 31 & 12 French-American artist and sculptor noted for his use of ‘readymades,’ including a bicycle wheel (1913) and a urinal (1917) (6,7) 34 Largest district and de facto capital of Nauru, created in 1968 (5)