THE PRIZE CROSSWORD
WIN £1,500
There’s an amazing £1,500 prize for the first correct solution drawn at random in our general knowledge Prize Crossword. Entries must arrive by Friday, March 4 (photocopies not accepted). Today’s solution will appear next week and the winner’s name on Sunday, March 20. SEE BELOW THE GRID for details on how to enter.
Across
1 American author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
1920 novel The Age Of Innocence (5,7)
8 Island in the South
Pacific; the largest in French Polynesia (6)
11 William ---, English playwright and poet of the Restoration who influenced the comedy of manners genre (8)
12 Meat from the back or
sides of a pig (5)
13 Something that is owed, such as money, goods or services (4)
14 Richard Warren ---, American businessman who co-founded a famous chain of department stores (5) 15 Small, rough-haired dogs originally from Scotland (5,8)
17 Bed covering filled with small soft feathers or warm material (9)
19 Any of a variety of
Indian dishes consisting of meat or vegetables braised with water or stock and lentils (7) 23 Humphry ---, English inventor of a safety lamp who coined the name ‘laughing gas’ for nitrous oxide (4)
24 To act or proceed without allies or help (2,2,5)
25 --- pony, breed of large, heavy pony found in the hills of northern England (4) 26 A type of lettuce with very
crisp pale leaves (7)
28 Infection of the intestine with
bacteria or amoebae (9)
31 A member of a group of British painters and writers including Rossetti and Millais, founded in 1848 (3-10)
34 Republic in West Central Africa, the capital of which is Libreville (5)
36 Another word
for enemies (4)
37 A quick-moving Italian dance popular during the 16th and 17th Centuries (5)
38 City in western Russia, on
the Dnieper River (8)
39 A meal, or the food
provided at a meal (6)
40 French valet of Phileas
Fogg in Jules Verne’s novel Around The World In Eighty Days (12)
Down
2 Pilotless radio-controlled
aircraft (6)
3 Perennial plant of China and Japan cultivated for its flowers, which have black-spotted orange reflexed petals (5,4)
4 Very small brown bird
with a slender bill (4)
5 The chief port of Egypt,
on the Nile Delta (10)
6 River in Central Italy which
flows through Rome (5)
7 A subtle point of delicacy
or distinction (6)
8 A powdered chemical used in photocopying machines and laser printers (5) 9 Roman emperor who ordered the building of a famous wall across northern Britain (7)
10 In the Bible, the portable tent used by the Israelites as a sanctuary for the
Ark of the Covenant (10)
16 Hans ---, German physicist and developer of an instrument for the detection of radiation (6)
18 Tired or exhausted (5)
20 Victoriano ---, Mexican general who became president of the country by coup in 1913 (6)
21 A soft Italian
cream cheese (10)
22 16th-Century English lawyer who led the Pilgrimage of Grace, against the dissolution of the monasteries (6,4)
25 The expanse
of the sky (9)
27 A person who makes and serves coffee in a coffee bar (7)
29 George ---, 20th-Century US statistician who devised a self-named opinion poll (6)
30 The largest of the four
main islands of Japan (6)
32 A short shaft or pin supporting something that turns (5)
33 Monies lent at interest for
a period of time (5)
35 Francisco ---, a court painter to the Spanish Crown (4)