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Toughie No. 42 — 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. Tricky poser about lines (5)
  2. Confused logarithm produces a step-by-step method (9)
  3. Dye picked out when Nancy weds (5)
  4. Record weight for the unattached one (9)
  5. Lawyers' body all but one (3)
  6. Evening meal for the Tories, say - a formal do (6,5)
  7. Some hot toddy gives an essence of roses (4)
  8. Chop, we hear, gives a shade (3)
  9. Fitting assembly of huntsmen (4)
  10. Bather swimming - a girl, perhaps (6)
  11. Where prayer mats point - and bingo callers gather (5)
  12. Health checks dropping Al: these are the ones in white coats (6)
  13. Shoe cobbled together with stockings (4)
  14. Relative concealed in this island (3)
  15. Radiate, with time running backwards (4)
  16. Motor's junk gets the sack in a clearance! (3,4,4)
  17. Leaders of industry, notably Siemens, are the ones in power (3)
  18. Wild ode spread about the outlaw (9)
  19. A vine growing wild - green (5)
  20. Trim the vessel's form (9)
  21. Put up at the Masons' place (5)

Down

  1. Clinic accommodating a few of the more habitual (5)
  2. Sty mate is the correspondent one never meets (3,6)
  3. Fame for leading light's daughter with the Order of Merit (7)
  4. Truancy, minus the doctrine, is the one not here (8)
  5. Low-down, that is, on the one who grants wishes (5)
  6. Time to pass after a run, but there is a return of the illness (7)
  7. Thanks, sailor - one of the Golden Horde (5)
  8. Dough, and loads of it, for the rich fellow (9)
  9. Times reset as news pieces (5)
  10. Church is slipped into the records, making cuts (7)
  11. Murders: one and the detectives break into houses (9)
  12. Herb: son held in security (5)
  13. Trial provided one editor who spoke under oath (9)
  14. In oblivion, toes curled up! (8)
  15. Fridges, or the cells one cools off in (7)
  16. Everlasting energy from a battered antler (7)
  17. Irish troubles produce a sage (5)
  18. Raita spilt on the headdress (5)
  19. Small, married, from the east - a Scandinavian (5)

More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.

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