Factfinder's Crossword

Published on Thursday 25 June 2009 16:10

This week's puzzle

Across

1 People of a large Mediterranean island (9,305 sq miles; pop about 1.6 million), whose king, Victor Emmanuel II, became the king of Italy in 1916 (10)

9 A game of chance played by betting on the order of appearance of certain cards (4)

10 Belfast-born painter (1856 - 1941), who was appointed an official war artist in 1916 (4,6)

11 Slow passages or movements (mus) (6)

12 A friar, a mendicant Franciscan (5)

15 Part of ancient Palestine, an independent kingdom until conquered by Babylon in 587BC (5)

18 Turns a ship towards the wind (5)

19 Shakespearean term meaning to undervalue (7)

20 A very pious Jew (5)

21 The first high priest of the Israelites (5)

22 An alchemist's self-feeding digesting furnace (7)

23 A Siberian and American genus of Polemoniaceae (5)

24 A notch in a tally (5)

26 A longitudinal groove, as on a pillar (5)

29 The act of scraping or shaving (6)

31 Explosive device designed to cling to a surface, especially to a ship's hull by a magnet (6,4)

32 River rising in the Cantabrian Mountains and flowing (570 miles) into the Mediterranean (4)

33 Omission to join all the parties to an action or suit (3-7)

Down

2 Verbal contest between two characters in a play (4)

3 One of a secret society among the early Mormons (6)

4 A small or worthless person or thing (5)

5 One of the main animal characters in The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling (5)

6 A slender process of various kinds ((biol) (5)

7 Plainsong, the unornamented melody used in the Western Church from the earliest times (5,5)

8 A coarse, robust form of shrewdness often found in ignorant people (US coll) (5,5)

13 A type of light loosely-knitted fabric (7)

14 Watered fabric of silk and wool resembling poplin (7)

15 Glasgow-born composer, broadcaster and writer (b1942), who was the McVitie Scottish Writer of the Year in 1992 (4,6)

16 Old term for the hatching of young from the egg (10)

17 A large African antelope with long slightly twisted horns (5)

18 Glass-annealing ovens (5)

25 Four-act opera by the French composer Bizet (6)

26 An inflamed sore (5)

27 Gummy exudation from elms and other trees (5)

28 Large island in Lake Mlaren, west of Stockholm (5)

30 William Ralph –– (1860 - 1954), a Yorkshire-born English theologian who was Dean of St Paul's from 1911 to 1934 (4)

Last week's solutions

Across: 1 Kinlochleven, 9 Nashbag, 10 Triplet, 11 Ryal, 12 Glair, 13 Boba, 16 Heelers, 17 Harlech, 18 Echoism, 21 Astable, 23 Wick, 24 Aguti, 25 Graf, 28 Caldera, 29 Lacunar, 30 Tetrahedrite.

Down: 2 Inscape, 3 Logo, 4 Cobbles, 5 Lettish, 6 Vair, 7 Nellore, 8 Strathpeffer, 9 North Berwick, 14 Helix, 15 Crete, 19 Hacklet, 20 Magmata, 21 Astilbe, 22 Baronet, 26 Pelt, 27 Scar.