CROSSWORD

Clues across

1. Military doctor functions back in Sin City (5) 4. Five nasty cats soil singers (9) 9. Spell your Christian name backwards to discover miraculous food (5) 10. Crackpot patient gets housing in a motor (9) 11. Becomes tangled and learns with difficulty about poles (8) 12. Poor canoeist is lost immediately (2,4) 14. The perspicacity required of a record reviewer (5,8) 17. Rather gold? Dead right – eventually (6,2,5) 19. Bath accessory in toilet starts to feel at home (6) 21. Freeze or halt the zombies (4,4) 23. Juliet and Rocky Racoon taking note see French saint (4,2,3) 24. Superior priest with the Māori (5) 25. Orbison jumped back with a terrible shriek somewhere in Britain (9) 26. Contracts for heavenly houses (5)

Clues down

1. Water-sport enthusiasts, lacking women, develop boils slowly (7) 2. Do Russian translation for “stick-in-the-muds” (9) 3. Attend to a poem as composed: the fundamentals (4,3,8) 5. Burn cleaner (4) 6. Appreciate an appreciative audience very quickly (4,3,8) 7. Bird eats one old boyfriend (5) 8. Sound systems include the Māori language in the middle of lesson (7) 10. Applied paint with rebuild of crude loo (8) 13. One who has doubts so acting strangely (8) 15. Grin, teeth chattering, using a rope (9) 16. Half-Kiwi, jolly silly and a spoilsport (7) 18. Shows embarrassment having broken Dresden (7) 20. Very happy working in radio (2,3) 22. Transport to be paid as thanks to the cricket team (4)