CRYPTIC CROSSWORD

ACROSS

1. Tending to excite a professional grammarian’s case (11)

8. Take it or leave it if one lands in the wrong platoon (8)

9. Share prices will fall slightly, so relax (4)

10. The fen where a mauve flower is sweet (5)

13. Wound dressing needed by corporal in trouble (4)

16. Put aboard what’s carried (4)

17. Get a keen edge with no end of bee product (4)

18. Bathroom powder kept in secret alcove (4)

20. Grasping woman head of hierarchy might pray for (5)

24. Oil that turns by 1st December will smell rank (4)

25. Like the cloistered life, main cost of which is dispersed (8)

26. Merely formal cry of punter to be replaced (11)

DOWN

2. List of duties put up in the laboratory (4)

3. String player may put it in bed (5)

4. Caught a girl in form (5)

5. Laid out around the East, it couldn’t be better (5)

6. Mutual correspondence to Caroline R maybe (11)

7. The bit in the middle is an epergne (11)

11. A fish used to cut a horse’s mane (5)

12. Hang in the air, having hydrogen to spare (5)

14. Element given up by edible seaweed (4)

15. Sound pained to have the law up about one (4)

19. Drink the plain-clothes officers take with hesitation (5)

21. Add decorations to the road that twists north (5)

22. A police trap one may put in a bed (5)

23. Appear as a principal hotel classification (4)

YESTERDAY’S SOLUTION

Across: 1. Aircraft 4. Weak 8. Lid 9. Clove 10. Ill 11. Mariner

12. Trope 13. Freethinker 17. Front 18. Benison 20. Out 21. Rouse

22. Off 23. Tidy 24. Thoughts

Down: 1. Aflame 2. Radar 3. Flour 5. Epitome 6. Killer

7. Pertinence 9. Conjecture 14. Roosted 15. Effort 16. Sniffs

18. Brush 19. Sloth