Toughie No. 22 — 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
- Brush, when cultivated! (5)
- Eight spat out in a mess, making pasta (9)
- Some growers show vetch (3)
- Crowded midday meal — sandwiches for the trip, perhaps (6,5)
- Crazy king trapped by a cow on the rampage (5)
- Placed in reverse, it shows a face (4)
- An overdue refit for Cook's ship (9)
- Plant found in Tuscan nature reserve (5)
- Ward staff produce a command and some fibs (9)
- Minor turned round with knight, looking gaunt (5)
- Naked, clutching grand, gives a gentle prod (5)
- Prison officer's dance is zany (9)
- Settle up about wages (5)
- Epic tenor performing at a party (9)
- Starts to enjoy a tasty snack! (4)
- Collect a church service (5)
- Devastating blow to the chest, delivered from within (5,6)
- Leaders in Beware Of Adders — a constrictor (3)
- Pa, honesty abandoned, in tights (9)
- Fees pocketing time make pieces for two (5)
Down
- Killed a great many (4)
- Discerned as dodgy, so cancelled (9)
- Parboil badly, showing extremes of mood (7)
- So energy channelled into cities makes clubs (9)
- A boss in the lead (5)
- Hall don, unusually, from low country (7)
- So much, in music, is kept in constant order (5)
- Essentially, leery ninth is all over the place (10)
- Extra darkness masks a detection system (5)
- Thrash, reportedly, a citizen of the screen (4)
- Trap and grass a local retailer (6,4)
- Psychiatrist's era — one of contraction (9)
- A bad plate, dropped, is easily changed (9)
- Ham type, badly cast, shows fellow feeling (7)
- Caused a weak red mixture (7)
- Smile broadly when fish is deprived of river (4)
- Girl's ring is a rope for the cowboy (5)
- Tea fashionable in a range of shops (5)
- Nitro, when blended, gives an opening (5)
- Beach, with daughter gone, is without (4)
More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.
Front page · Onesies · Gentle · Standard · Cryptic · Toughie · Themed · How to solve