Cryptic across
1 Midpoint of an OT empire? (6)
4 Boy, with setter aboard, makes for OT summit (6)
9 Historian implied American connection (7)
10 Eventually let Brexit leader in London borough (5)
11 Old West town from a Mailer novel (7)
12 It’s Amos’ place to enumerate koalas passing through (5)
13 Confined state planned and accepted by Huguenots? (5,2,6)
16 He met his maker, being single, returning to church (5)
18 Care about a Norman abbey in a Hitchcock feature (7)
20 Port Paul used needs visa, or ticket, to travel back through (5)
21 Tack 180 degrees after a short time in classical Italian islands (7)
22 Ceremony where habit is required? (6)
23 Court game one from place in Co Clare after date number three (6)
Cryptic down
1 Camel tottered, stumbling over a kind of diviner (5,8)
2 First two letters to designers concern radical colour scheme (5)
3 To entice with crack (7)
5 Archimandrite, perhaps, puts one over on bishops with this bit of the scriptures (5)
6 Upset marketeer about to flip over leaving? That’s simples! (7)
7 Open royal links here, twinning towns in Lancashire? (6,2,5)
8 Ailerons RAF used to land here in the Firth of Clyde (4,2,5)
14 Smooth individual, getting Reagan removed from office (4,3)
15 Bloomer a doctor overcomes in making a saint (7)
17 Book’s old English, spotted even through the wood mounting (5)
19 Vehicle one needs to board at noon at the latest to see a pile of memorials (5)
Quick across
1 Composer of Ein Deutsches Requiem, various motets and other sacred works (6)
4 Pertaining to the Law of the Jews from Mt Sinai (6)
9 Steadfast: stem (7)
10 Indian side-dish of cucumber and yoghurt (5)
11 Irish county, county town Carrick-on-Shannon (7)
12 Move slowly in traffic: swimming style (5)
13 Impossible to clean, these, the Fifth Labour of Heracles (6,7)
16 Christian who greeted Timothy and is, probably, the second Pope after Peter (5)
18 Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, the latter of whom she killed (7)
20 City of Ohio known as the ‘Rubber Capital of the World’ – home to Firestone and Goodyear (5)
21 Patron saint of shoemakers (7)
22 Ancient Greek city on the slopes of Mount Parnassus; site of a famous oracle (6)
23 --- --- MacGregor, Scottish outlaw romanticized by Sir Walter Scott (1818) (3,3)
Quick down
1 Good guy in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) (5,8)
2 Last-named of Elioenai’s seven sons, descended from the royal line of Judah (5)
3 Etruscan goddess adopted by the Romans (7)
5 Named shared by four kings of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms between the 7th and 8th centuries (5)
6 David’s wife, formerly wed to Nabal (7)
7 French aristo émigré rescued by Sydney Carton in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859) (7,6)
8 Related to the dukes of Northumberland, a member of the group that planned the failed Gunpowder Plot (1605)... (6,5)
14 ...in Shakespeare’s King Lear of the same year, the eldest of the king’s three daughters (7)
15 ------- Vespucci, 1451-1512, explorer, supposedly his name was adapted for the New World regions (7)
17 Title assumed by Sikh males from the Sanskrit for ‘lion’ (5)
19 Three-toed pig-like animal of Asia and Latin America with a fleshy snout (5)
Entries to Crossword 0627, The Catholic Herald, Herald House, Lamb’s Passage, Bunhill Row, London EC1Y 8TQ or email editorial@ch.rd0.co.uk (Answers in by January 22)
Cryptic answers to No 0626
Across: 5 Beatitudes, 8 Lent, 9 Fearsome, 10 Sharia, 11 Avaunt, 12 Ashdod, 15 Judges, 17 Ululates, 18 Peer, 19 High Church.
Down: 1 Hector, 2 Staffa, 3 Ithaca, 4 Edessa, 6 Simon Peter, 7 Methuselah, 13 Deluge, 14 Detach, 15 Joshua, 16 Depict.
Quick answers to No 0626
Across: 5 Black Magic, 8 Zeus, 9 Mareshah, 10 Merari, 11 Arcady, 12 Gilgal, 15 Gospel, 17 Atalanta, 18 Ling, 19 Sexagesima.
Down: 1 Elisha, 2 Scampi, 3 Umbria, 4 Egg sac, 6 Chaldaeans, 7 Benedictus, 13 Galaxy, 14 Linage, 15 Gdansk, 16 Salome.
Winners (0625 Cryptic) Mrs Grafftey-Smith, Rodbourne, Wiltshire; Isobel McCully, Glasgow.
Winners (0625 Quick) Michael Ó Niatháin, Cork, Ireland; Mrs M Boardman, Chippenham, Wiltshire.
