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Toughie No. 43 — 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. Patrons get some crust, freshly baked (9)
  2. Stone block spotted in Nicholas' laboratory (4)
  3. Motionless, yet a picture (5)
  4. Down-to-earth sort retails at sea (7)
  5. Resistance to change involved in a rite (7)
  6. Rage bottled up in commercial, broadcast (5)
  7. Fashionable person, but utterly heartless (7)
  8. Break off, with us cutting into the spend (7)
  9. Prime position for recent, refurbished platform (6,5)
  10. Rubbish overturned on a rocky height (3)
  11. Speaker's self is in favour (3)
  12. Crammed full, this midday meal! (6,5)
  13. Four wrapped in bad language — how offensive! (7)
  14. Graduate king before molten rock — a Turkish sweet (7)
  15. Damaged talon, relating to key (5)
  16. Conclusion? Not so much. Interminable! (7)
  17. Jeer at draws, getting shoes for the baby (7)
  18. Joins forces, losing energy — standard measures (5)
  19. Some fired shots at the Communists (4)
  20. Drink and dream in the cathedral city — utterly! (9)

Down

  1. Acrid mixture with current, to do with the heart (7)
  2. The drink over loose coins — a transformation (3,6)
  3. After work, one hesitates over the narcotic (5)
  4. Some of the wheat entering was consumed (5)
  5. Vessel in trim! (9)
  6. Cartoon shows players' kit (5)
  7. Drunk about a measure of wine (5)
  8. Cut both ends off the salient? How strange (5)
  9. Bowled over by a run in tights? It holds water (7)
  10. Hold this to your ear and the ocean roars (8)
  11. Salesman with roof coverings for cold-blooded creatures (8)
  12. Smash to the east and south — triumphs! (9)
  13. Unusually attentive but far from certain (9)
  14. Unpaid player, a mature one, out of sorts (7)
  15. Catch what's said! (7)
  16. Some of the ribbon needed by the French maid (5)
  17. Cancelled out some of the fun, didn't it? (5)
  18. Seasons with old sailors (5)
  19. Live dance music from the forties (5)
  20. King and queen united — Danish money (5)

More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.

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