This puzzle is a landmark for D(0)C: his first crossword appeared in The Spectator in the issue dated July 4th 1981 and his puzzles have appeared almost every third week since then. The unclued lights (three of two words) and the others when paired correctly represent initially the total which D(0)C reaches with this puzzle.
Across
7 This week’s theme has nothing in it for me! (3)
11 Channel’s only books (6)
13 Fruit and nuts (7)
15 Capital loss had affected savings accounts, originally (5)
16 Players training in small college court (5)
17 Welcome note during auction (6)
18 Wearing a hat, with a glazed look? (5)
20 Claim a point out of spite (6)
22 Japanese sock in fashion, coming back? By no means (7, three words)
27 Jazz fan, Partridge, from Spain (7)
29 These guesstimates partly follow on without interruption (5)
30 Lizards from an aperture in Bow beginning to squeak (6)
32 Vegetables observed when turning over front of plot (5)
34 Group in Arctic eagerly reveals cold period (6, two words)
36 Main target, regularly, for an aspiring cleric? (5)
37 Strange manoeuvre missing A1 vetch for Caesar (5)
38 Getting up an armed insurrection? (7)
41 Like the Manx race? (11, hyphened)
Down
1 More of the same sort of thing? That’s commerce! (10, two words)
2 Tops and just one T-shirt for starters (8)
4 Questions Tom about night-time protection in the tropics (12, two words)
5 Told of kin? (7)
6 Elephants dropping bit of poo around island (8, two components)
10 It’s picked by old lags in public school, we’re told (5)
12 Familiar with outside — I left bemused (6, two words)
19 Clumsy Thor nudged his alter ego? (10, two words)
23 Spanner that’s a cut above the rest? (8)
26 Situated at bottom of the skull, badly tarnishable then gone (7)
28 English maestro rejecting soprano’s...
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