Cryptic crossword No 2,960
Thu 18 Dec 2025, set byPhantom
Special Instructions: My traditional annual celebration of the MyCrossword Clue Contest.
Congratulations to this year's winners Flush, Yorick, EssBee, Fez, Meles, Dingo, Aircon, ALP, widdersbel, Temple, DMC - and yours truly!
Across
- Drink bodily fluid on the counter (3)
- Bond and his boss missing from stage (3)
- See 26d
- Before unopened present (3)
- Traps out-of-form Nasser after England's first two are put down (8)
- Headware I lost is so long (2-2)
- When it's left or right on a map, anyway (2,5)
- What's Sooty and Sweep's bread and butter? (7)
- Gag about Trump's first wife pinching Melania's butt is a scorcher (8)
- Suiting a newly-made saint (8)
- Speak at length about hits to anyone who'll listen? (3)
- Bloody boring thing, cheese on toast (7)
- Third piece in Joseph Haydn medley is a bittersweet confection (6)
- Regularly exhaust wolf (3)
- Rulers' mistakes, with muppet every so often taking over, right? (8)
- Put off after date tipped beer over friend's head (5)
- See 31a
- Grand clown in charge follows tips from Melania (8)
- Note could be read two different ways (5)
- Accommodation for unemployed writers? (6,4)
Down
- Three in a bed initially struggling to sleep (9)
- Primate swallows bird (3)
- Heartless parakeet tormented parrot (6)
- Sort out box for trimmed veg which has been left in the field (6)
- Outrage as her sentencing is reviewed after regular thefts (7)
- Cleverest leaders of annual popular quiz (6)
- Gobbles up paté omitted from Last Supper by mistake (6)
- Period costume finally on front half of rail (3)
- Fighter's right out of bounds (3)
- Nothing lacking in Fed's double-difficult puzzles (9)
- A Hindu deity's alias (3)
- Frank improves over time (6)
- It's dangerous to release this male drug lord (7)
- Footballer's good to go for start of the season (6)
- Free sex? Empty trousers! (6)
- With you, they might make videos about potatoes, say (6)
- Wood cut without force (3)
- See 26a
- Crop tops from Harrods aren't raunchy underwear (7)
- See 11a
Sign in to leave a comment
Sign in to leave a comment
0 comments