Toughie No. 45 — cryptic crossword

A toughie puzzle: 42 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. Presses on, somehow, for the answers (9)
6. Belch as polish is returned softly (4)
9. Ribbon for the monarch, and a slender candle (5)
11. Thanks for the wrecked guitar, Ted! (9)
12. Weapon for the knight wrapped in lace (5)
14. Trial when one has a say in it (5)
15. Where the road bends, and where history does too (7,5)
17. Feast concealed by Zulu authority (4)
20. Grant, rain lashing down, is telling the story (9)
22. Tower carried by a grumpy Londoner (5)
23. Fifty finishes and advances (5)
26. Get igloos erected for the rock expert (9)
27. So the giant is turned round (4)
28. Over with nothing scored, and a cruise for the liner's first (6,6)
31. Canoe tossed about in it! (5)
33. Plug in Rio for the wireless (5)
34. Foreigner ate with daughter and was cut off (9)
36. Pub, er, next to the bull (5)
37. Poses for the artist, or takes the exam (4)
38. Put forward to the editor, and recommended (9)

Down

1. Conservative approach makes a perfect corner (5,5)
2. Watering hole partly in Vespasian's villa (3)
3. Eccentrics — a sailor, gin, all mixed up (9)
4. Complacent about a grand fish, say — the illegal trade (9)
5. Notes jumbled by the shorthand typist (5)
6. Ably set out, but rotten (7)
7. Vessels seen in Saturn's rings (4)
8. Quarry appeals, by the sound of it (4)
10. Some cheap land — this is the plot! (4)
13. Cross a coca to get the chocolate tree (5)
16. Roaring, but with nothing lost, keen to go (6)
18. Maul it roughly for the final syllable (6)
19. One in France looked after, yet left alone (10)
21. Don urging reform gives the basic training (9)
22. Say 'they', perhaps, before the church (9)
24. Heather found growing in America (5)
25. Function and power supply for the estates (7)
29. Shortly, and by an unknown author (4)
30. Expensive son, one of the loved ones (5)
31. Circles lose it and become globes (4)
32. Revise, turning the tide (4)
35. Truly awful trinkets, primarily! (3)

More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.

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