Skip to the page

Toughie No. 5 — cryptic crossword

A toughie puzzle: 44 clues on a 15×15 grid. Solve it online — check your answers as you go, ask for a hint, and read how each clue works once it is solved.

Across

  1. Some of the upper crust, for each (3)
  2. So cruel, tour turned out to show a person's real nature (4,7)
  3. Bounder in a mess makes a recovery (7)
  4. Tail the second unknown — sinister (7)
  5. One slap badly aimed, in Spanish (7)
  6. Knight, or the Royal Navy, from Sunderland perhaps (8)
  7. Name one? Not a single one (4)
  8. Like a monarch, inviting (6)
  9. Add an era, making a tail (9)
  10. Snail, disturbed, gets it exactly right (5)
  11. Short cardigan, or what one does with the shoulders (5)
  12. Alternating current written into the constitution, one letter (9)
  13. Hop, try, scramble for the cup (6)
  14. Copy the baby's bed (4)
  15. Unsafe spoiler, badly made, taking in the upper class (8)
  16. Ribbon of red thinned out (7)
  17. Nature I let out (7)
  18. Learner in wild bingos — little horrors (7)
  19. Riverside break — Monday off, perhaps (4,7)
  20. Part of a mega scandal — hot air (3)

Down

  1. Vicious swimmer thrashing in a harp? (7)
  2. Reinforcement about the pub (5)
  3. Cadge and clear off? Dicey (5,3,2)
  4. Below, a gaffe losing bishop and left (5)
  5. Cups smashed on the point of change (4)
  6. Solitary, by the sound of it, an advance (4)
  7. Specialist in waterworks — brain doctor dropping the north-east (9)
  8. Chuck at the cape shows reserve (7)
  9. Nag, one of the gutter press (4)
  10. Our Lady, oddly motherless, is a woman in Rome (5)
  11. Second horse — there is the catch (4)
  12. War god brought up medical fluids (4)
  13. Trendy, changeably, as always (10)
  14. Division stirred up in patriot (9)
  15. Mischievous curve (4)
  16. Two hundred, um, in the sub? Give in (7)
  17. Suave, lacking energy, of the town (5)
  18. Ballyhoo from the overexcited, cutting right (4)
  19. Trouble with sisters? One holds out (7)
  20. One working in feet and metres (4)
  21. Promised, having lost the place, crept forward (5)
  22. Duck on the wing and yet to be paid (5)
  23. Public access to hills, primarily (4)
  24. Dance leaders in Ross, Elgin, Elie, Largs (4)

More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.

Front page · Onesies · Gentle · Standard · Cryptic · Toughie · Themed · How to solve