Brain teaser

A CROSSWORD TO PUT YOUR MIND TO.

ACROSS

8 What you are told to make if life gives you a certain fruit (8)

9 Made of – or relating to – grain; a 22 down crop (6)

10 What you’re looking at right now! (4) 11 To exclude someone from your will (10) 12 The main 24 down of the day (or perhaps someone making a lot of noise?) (6)

14 A hoofed ruminant (and legendary flyer?) (8)

15 Decorate or embellish 2 down, as with parsley (7)

17 Removes from a nautical vessel (7) 20 Something that separates from a main stem, region, etc (8)

22 A light evening 24 down (6)

23 A highly venomous southern African snake (5,5)

24 A form of 2 down (or the important part of an issue, argument, etc) (4)

25 A form of 2 down (or something melodramatic, sentimental, clichéd, etc) (6) 26 The person responsible for providing 2 down in a monastery (8)

DOWN

1 Coarse grains, usually from durum wheat, used to make pasta, couscous, etc. (8)

2 Grub eats provisions – Kai nibbles nosh – Chuck supplies rations – Tucker dishes fodder...! (4)

3 A room used to store 2 down, originally where raw 24 across was covered in fat to be preserved (6)

4 The calorie-counter’s temptation? (7) 5 The analysis of verse into metrical patterns (is canons an anagram?) (8)

6 “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of ______ that makes unhappy marriages” – Friedrich Nietzsche (10)

7 A severe shortage of 2 down (a constant threat in Biblical times) (6)

13 Models of excellence or perfection, such as Sir Galahad in medieval legend (10)

16 More tempestuous (of the weather, or a relationship!) (8)

18 What Baden-Powell told boy scouts, and Scar told an army of hyenas, to be (8) 19 The destination of 2 down (7)

21 Very dirty – may appear before “rich” or

“lucre” (6)

22 A basic necessity could be a paper fastener! (6)

24 An occasion on which 2 down is necessary! (4)