GENERAL KNOWLEDGE CROSSWORD

SOLUTION TOMORROW

Play our accumulator game! Every day this week, solve the crossword to find the letter in the pink circle. On Friday, we’ll provide instructions to submit your five-letter word for your chance to win a luxury Cross pen. UK residents aged 18+, excl NI. Terms apply. Entries cost 50p.

ACROSS

8 To cut down expenses (8) 9 ____ Vikander, Swedish actress who played the adult Lara Croft in the 2018 film Tomb Raider (6) 10 A boiled sweet, especially one flavoured with peppermint (6) 11 An unforeseen and disastrous failure with possible widereaching effects (8) 12 Legendary island lying west

of the Strait of Gibraltar (8) 13 ____ pudding, a dessert of a purée of fruit encased in bread (6) 14 Name of the blue whale skeleton in the entrance hall of London’s Natural History Museum (4) 16 Liverpool suburb that contains the city’s John Lennon Airport (5) 17 A receptacle for money

behind a counter (4) 18 Sharpness of wit or

quickness of perception (6) 20 A start of play in football from a dead ball situation, such as a corner or free-kick (3,5) 23 ____ Points, set of plans in 1918 by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson for a postwar peace settlement (8) 24 A temporary ruler, often during the absence or incapacity of a monarch (6) 25 ____ moment, informal term for a temporary lapse of memory in an older person (6) 26 The bursting forth of

lava from a volcano (8)

DOWN

1 To take away from a

sum or amount (6) 2 A game of cards, usually for two players, in which each player receives six cards (8) 3 Heather, England women’s

cricket captain appointed in 2016 (6) 4 TV entertainment show presented by Joel Dommett in which celebrities anonymously perform hit tunes (3,6,6) 5 The only city in the county

of Cumbria (8) 6 ____ tooth, one of the hindmost molars on the upper and lower jaw cut after childhood (6) 7 Large, circular fairground attraction offering rides with views around its edge (3,5) 15 A quick or sometimes

casual examination (4-4) 16 A dry white wine

produced in the Loire Valley in France (8) 17 To drive too close behind

another vehicle (8) 19 The Costa Cálida is in this

Spanish region (6) 21 A necklace or armband in the form of a twisted metal band (6) 22 A quarter section

of a flag (6)