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Toughie No. 19 — cryptic crossword

A toughie puzzle: 40 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. The main alteration! (3,6)
  2. Daughter had a little bishop, what a nerd! (5)
  3. Shingle churned up gives the language here (7)
  4. Coach row gives a close-fitting top (7)
  5. The croc, badly cut up, becomes fancy needlework (7)
  6. Most feeble when we skate awkwardly (7)
  7. Devoured, reportedly, by the crew (5)
  8. Impudent tune, something to blow the cobwebs away (5,3)
  9. Travelled by horse, love, to the cowboy show (5)
  10. Shellfish disturbing the calm (4)
  11. Bargain over the pine planking (4)
  12. Motorway through Leon? What a dud! (5)
  13. Mattress made over at its most stylish (8)
  14. Lines within part of Europe's borders (5)
  15. Retainer wrecked taverns (7)
  16. Illustrious nine met, unusually (7)
  17. Two hundred wrapped in a broken taboo — the weed (7)
  18. Convict trapped in nasty settlement (7)
  19. Right inside the moulds, it hardens (5)
  20. Position not working — resign (5,4)

Down

  1. Small change in the pantry (6)
  2. A Roman gig, badly run, gives a picture of the arteries (9)
  3. The sigh wuthering over the high ground (7)
  4. Rejection concealed in a hurry (3)
  5. Joint lubricant for hard graft (5,6)
  6. Hopelessness when praised is misplaced (7)
  7. Avoid the Levite who has mislaid his leader (5)
  8. Forbids an implement where the drinker sits (8)
  9. Lifer breaking out to ransack (5)
  10. Treatment masked by much emotion (5)
  11. Changes in the passage of charged particles (11)
  12. Poem playing at the picture house (5)
  13. Dead prose, rewritten, makes an outlaw (9)
  14. Some of the great energy consumed (5)
  15. Shut away in a cupboard with the editor (8)
  16. Ace nuns muddled over fine distinctions (7)
  17. Flirted wildly! (7)
  18. Scattered terns wheeling about the west (6)
  19. Bunny, tail docked, becomes a religious teacher (5)
  20. By way of the leaders of Vienna, Innsbruck and Amsterdam (3)

More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.

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