Fifteensquared

Not quite as easy as some recent puzzles in this series, but all clear in the end.

Solving time: 21 mins

ACROSS

1 GE(R)T RUDE R = King Queen Gertrude of Denmark, mother of Hamlet in Shakepeare’s play.

8 SLAVER(y)

10 BEA(G)LE g (good) for d (daughter) in beadle (“parish officer”) as the setter as editor of the Church Times Crossword will know well, I’m sure.

12 BRON (born)* CO “care of” Good. Definition and wordplay side by side, but whole clue can read as a definition too. “Horse born to be wild that’s taken care of” “that’s taken” is a link in the wordplay.

14 LIMP E T

17 B LOND(on) E Harlow in Essex and (Jean) Harlow (1901-1937) the blonde.

20 CHAR LOCK My last entry. Wild mustard.

DOWN

1 HELIUM He is its chemical symbol. Clever, and, though I’d seen this idea before, for this element and others (e.g. As = Arsenic), did not get it for quite a while.

3 CUTTING CORNERS Do an empirical test with any square or rectangle – take the corners off and you’ve an eight-sided figure.

5 MA (LAPROP) (popular)* less u. Mrs Malaprop, someone who misuses words, originally from a character in Sheridan’s play “The Rivals”. Related noun: malapropism.

6 BELL TENT (tell)* in bent = a type of grass

8 SEBASTIAN CABOT Venetian navigator and cartographer (1474-1557) (AB cast into sea b)* – Good surface reading. AB, a crossword staple from way back meaning able-bodied seaman (or seawoman) – one more skilled than the ordinary seaman (OS). Here, of course it’s part of the “anagram fodder”

12 BOATLOAD Jolly = sailor (a royal marine). Good

18 ECCLES A town in the Salford area and also abbreviation of Ecclesiastes (Book of the Bible), not Ecclesiasticus, as I had thought  – thanks to Quixote himself (see below) for putting me right on this.    Took me a while to get this answer.