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Toughie No. 7 — cryptic crossword

A toughie puzzle: 42 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. Inexpensive drink, or a low blow (5,4)
  2. Some physics candidates get a quick look (4)
  3. Apple crushed underfoot — a fencing stamp (5)
  4. Church sitting in rock, an earthy colour (5)
  5. Settled arrangement for computer company transport (5,4)
  6. Runs from a messy tussle give the scores (7)
  7. Curious dialect of English, easily broken (8)
  8. Made untidy by dining room editor (6)
  9. Present a badly cooked reduction (9)
  10. Speed by the river, one setting the tempo (5)
  11. Relief for a student, and the painter's support (5)
  12. Plain, large and unknown, as you would expect (9)
  13. Epic to be rewritten in verse form (6)
  14. US garlic, chopped up, is clinical (8)
  15. Cool tar spread over a tracking device (7)
  16. Name, phone, all mixed up — remarkable events (9)
  17. Cover story concealed in a Nepali bistro (5)
  18. Coppers, it's said, show good judgement (5)
  19. Primarily, sense unusual, sly stuff! (4)
  20. She softly herds! (9)

Down

  1. Obscure number is the height of happiness (5,4)
  2. Alcohol radical smashed — they left (5)
  3. Ahead of the shoal, where the young are taught (9)
  4. Earth cultivated by a Highland stream gives indigestion (9)
  5. Argument overturned, secretly listens in (4)
  6. Splinter groups: leaders of some evangelical churches that separated (5)
  7. Traditional vintage, a litre of it (9)
  8. Celebrated, put on record (5)
  9. Endlessly sound the depths for the best job (4)
  10. Chapel entrance hides a Brazilian legend (4)
  11. Letter buried in escape effort (3)
  12. Refinement, not so much of it — crude (9)
  13. Drug our agent, upset, and his followers (9)
  14. Standard: a chart in a block of text (9)
  15. Kings and queens, or what they earn from a book (9)
  16. Bursts with energy inside — Holy Fathers! (5)
  17. Stone, cut up, reveals shades (5)
  18. Firm taken in by fashionable image (4)
  19. Some webcam sales show moving parts (4)
  20. Star, we hear, is the boy (3)
  21. Bell-ringing forerunner of the news bulletin (5)
  22. Cuppas, reportedly, at the start of every hole (4)

More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.

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