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Toughie No. 53 — 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

  1. Ancient priest, a doctor with posh identity (5)
  2. Maria, Juan messed about with grass (9)
  3. Retriever, perhaps, turned round — an object of worship (3)
  4. Brief spell of work with king inside gets scant sympathy (5,6)
  5. Wild paean produces a pause in breathing (5)
  6. Referee, say, gets fifty for an unknown — formally (10)
  7. Ruse worked out by the consumer (4)
  8. Alan, dry, rolling up a cord (7)
  9. Takes mushroom wrapped in Acts of Parliament (7)
  10. About a frock — put right (7)
  11. Energy, a mine and books make one distinguished (7)
  12. Reservations about what's left of the ticket (4)
  13. NASA tutors trained as space travellers (10)
  14. Fashionable inside, posed as one of the blessed (5)
  15. Interrogation that could leave you badly burned, or barely qualified (5,6)
  16. Sir, translated! (3)
  17. Gross rage erupting in the attacker (9)
  18. Communist after hesitation went astray (5)

Down

  1. Follow and arrest — churchman's neckwear (3,6)
  2. Unclear how to defend uni after reorganisation (9)
  3. Violate decrees at random (9)
  4. Low pound and one produce cash (5)
  5. Hit back at a literate revolutionary (9)
  6. Just one holy name, primarily, for the Evangelist (4)
  7. Some of Bavaria's finest opera songs (5)
  8. Change, as reported, at the communion table (5)
  9. Small, quiet and unknown! (3)
  10. Recycle, with reference to function (5)
  11. Aid, stress, upset — these are catastrophes (9)
  12. The customers are upset — tell niece! (9)
  13. Before the screen pointer there was this forerunner (9)
  14. Content, with fit asides rewritten (9)
  15. Bishop in the rear makes a reinforcing rod (5)
  16. Surat developed a holy text (5)
  17. Exploiting some campus ingenuity (5)
  18. Conjunction of genetic material turned up (3)
  19. Less well done, and harder to come by (5)
  20. Loafer finally dismissed, doing nothing (4)

More: Toughie cryptic crosswords.

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