CRYPTIC CROSSWORD
FOR your chance to win, solve the crossword to reveal the word reading down the shaded boxes. HOW TO ENTER: Call 0901 293 6233 and leave today’s answer and your details, or TEXT 65700 with the word CRYPTIC, your answer and your name. Texts and calls cost £1 plus standard network charges. Or enter by post by sending completed crossword to Daily Mail Prize Crossword 16264, PO Box 28, Colchester, Essex CO2 8GF. Please include your name and address. One weekly winner chosen from all correct daily entries received between 00.01 Monday and 23.59 Friday. Postal entries must be datestamped no later than the following day to qualify. Calls/texts must be received by 23.59; answers change at 00.01. UK residents aged 18+, exc NI. Terms apply, see Page 62.
ACROSS
1 Boycott island church’s treacherous conditions (5,3) 5 Church caretaker very nearly secures some work (6) 9 Hollywood genre a sort of 1 Across? (4,4) 10 Yell from a topless Greek, excited, grasping essence of fluid (6) 12 Not demanding a piece of cake (4) 13 Shorts in US and articles from Europe? Rubbish (10) 15 She may succeed, cooking new corn crisps (5,8) 19 Getting used to new ways, college sect invested in gold quota (13) 23 General clergy gets worsted perhaps (10) 25 Writer’s short article’s a fabrication (4) 28 Attraction that leads to MOT failure? (6) 29 Medic has tug positioned for men on board (8) 30 Sister company hosts one RC ambassador (6) 31 Superior Sioux struggled to retain gold dedicated to wife (8)
DOWN
1 Polish and French self-service food (6) 2 An ancient mariner climbs mountains (5) 3 Generous type (4) 4 A politician ignores mushroom in Paris bun (7) 6 Stock joke on the web? (5) 7 Simple embargo protecting European vegetable (5,4) 8 Assign another rating to idiots in residence (8) 11 Aristocrat exercises monarch (4) 14 Head count (4) 15 Dipstick stops crony moving accelerator (9) 16 Average couple avoids one (3) 17 Arrest American wearing nothing (4) 18 Pub roughly put in wine store tower at entrance (8) 20 Unattractive guy managed to drink litres (4) 21 Personnel brought in a new levy that’s dreaded by farmers (7) 22 Article is about son’s dissertation (6) 24 Policeman seizes fashionable Asian garment (5) 26 Beast loves grass coming up (5) 27 Feline sound partly interrupts rising (4)