Toughie No. 28 — cryptic crossword
A toughie puzzle: 38 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
- Angles for a bit of selfish esteem (6)
- About sly cop cast as the one-eyed monster (7)
- Record a bad dive, love (5)
- Swamp whoever is unsettled by fifty thousand (9)
- Breakdown service taking in Russian fighter — friend in Madrid (5)
- We have, it's said, to thread through the traffic (5)
- Flat, becoming annoyed where the train cuts the highway (5,8)
- Might be spoken in the manner of a civic leader (7)
- Nuclear fallout is hazy (7)
- Brave cheek of the worker (7)
- Boring one on the street? What a dunce (7)
- Striped one going over the road! (5,8)
- Fly high with learner inside, powered by the sun (5)
- Like a fruitcake in more ways than one (5)
- Emulsion I spilt over the chauffeur-driven car (9)
- Part of what parents pay! (5)
- Magic from a scorer struggling with the unknown (7)
- Toboggan off a small shelf (6)
Down
- Number lurking in half I've eaten (4)
- Allied unhappily with a yen, in a perfect world (7)
- Verse arranged to start play (5)
- Hang about — you and I are inside, all the same (7)
- Sulphur and blazes produce a missile (5)
- Pay a visit — and change your mind (4,5)
- Elegance, one caught in the Derby, perhaps (7)
- Nothing right if ice gets in the opening (7)
- Amazed by gadgets re-engineered (9)
- Promise to state openly, dropping one (3)
- Gin amazes when shaken — they hold rounds (9)
- Lit really badly — to the letter (9)
- Bolster cooked up as a crustacean (7)
- Study any seal swimming (7)
- Garland is certain to give time off (7)
- Dangling, with the top lopped off, leaning (7)
- Some of these mistakes in the last four (5)
- Sniffed around the broken nodes (5)
- Stake raised by a Sicilian volcano (4)
- Matter, to Cicero, with no time to rest (3)
More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.
Front page · Onesies · Gentle · Standard · Cryptic · Toughie · Themed · How to solve