CRYPTIC CROSSWORD

ACROSS 1.

It’s sickeningly sentimental, but it’s sweet how it spreads (7)

6. Smelling of nothing, before Easter (5) 9. Bear the expense of a book jacket (5) 10. Finish the mice running around in a particular area (7)

11. Move diagonally to provide for one’s needs (5)

12. Prowl about and pitch suddenly forward (5)

13. Stage wear some cut in such a fashion (7)

15. He looked after the horses of the French sort (6)

16. One will do it wrong, being a fool

(5)

18. Stir up the rubbish that surrounds us (5)

20. Charlotte may have come from Moscow to France (5)

21. Like alpaca, am completely taken aback by it (5)

22. Discomfort of a French female when the sea is choppy (6)

25. Enter uninvited under it somehow (7)

26. It beats, earth-shakingly (5) 27. In the first place it’s nothing more than over-demure (5)

28. Ale, gill of which is not lawful (7) 29. Go one better with a party in the open air? (5)

30. Star of State will begin to set (5) 31. Bird made home round top of larch and settled comfortably (7)

DOWN

1. How sour teacher becomes like a traitor (11)

2. Some held esteem for the soonest-born (6)

3. Where lessons are held for locals, touch is commonly misapplied (9,6)

4. Of the Christian Church cell, as ice forms it (9)

5. Being public, it is finished on time (5) 6. The band comes to a standstill at these seats in the theatre (9,6)

7. Gives one the right to test line out (8) 8. Jack may incite one to fight (3)

14. Was powerless to ride for nothing, so turned (4-7)

17. Lore handed down made into art

I’d fashioned (9)

19. Infallible runner GI turned out to be (8) 23. Like the mushrooms represented by the UN flag (6) 24. It is sticky as artificial jewellery can be (5)

27. For each one is through (3)