Each Saturday we try and tackle the crossword set by Kate Mepham in the newspaper. Boy, is it tricky! I only missed ten answers out of 114 clues so I thought I did quite well today. In fact, when I compared notes, some of the answers I didn’t know even when I was told them!
Here are my ten fails… do you know any of them?
- anthropologist who coined the genus name Australopithecus; a missile thrown from behind the oche; or a tapered tuck in dressmaking (4)
- from the Malay meaning tie or bind, a traditional Indonesian resist-dye method and cloth used for cushions, lampshades, rugs and dresses (4)
- apochromatic lens inventor who established the Carl Zeiss Foundation (4)
- Napoleon’s brother-in-law who served as King of Naples 1808-15, a flamboyant cavalry leader shot following a failed attempt to regain his throne (5)
- bird of prey with a forked tail (3, 4)
- auction house that sold da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi for $450.3m in 2017 (9)
- Roman general written about in a book by his son-in-law Tacitus (8)
- Spanish word for a promenade between rows of poplars (7)
- first name of Effi Briest author whose surname Fontane features on the Berlin Walk of ideas book-stack sculpture (7)
- book by Benedict Spinoza (6)
I’ll share the answers tomorrow!
Lois Elsden 