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 16,521, 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 date-stamped 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 68.
ACROSS
1 Mafioso robs Met violently (7) 5 Plugs obscure books (6) 9 Poles wear no vest all the time (7) 10 Analyses crowds pursuing peacekeepers (7) 11 Old fellows on holiday (3) 12 Aircraft’s wheels are dangling awkwardly (7,4) 13 Catherine’s clothes getting extremely tawdry (5) 14 Middle-class old individual in scruffy brogues (9) 16 Author Daniel briefly lays strips of trees (9) 17 Support for painter when cutting fish (5) 19 Call into a ground to go over copper’s assessment (11) 22 Bird’s tremulous to some degree (3) 23 Hide somewhere in North Africa (7) 24 Various sundries not completely covered (7) 26 Setter’s work leads to iritis, awful eye problem (6) 27 Ridicule artificial European track (7)
DOWN
1 Writer with soldiers avoiding Norfolk blokes (7) 2 Unusually gentle officer enters by sanction of church (7,2,6) 3 Gallery’s cut tasteless stuff (3) 4 Mature radical exercises in trousers (5) 5 Small shops, one garlanded in fancy bouquets (9) 6 Take clothes off line? It could be upsetting with tits everywhere (5) 7 Engineer researched globe, getting university award (9,6) 8 Egyptian god’s very large flower (6) 12 Liberal philosopher’s bed (5) 14 Order about drivers holding a November dance (5,4) 15 Obtain scrag end without much fat (5) 16 Suddenly leave 6 tents? (6) 18 Foreign articles desiccate dirty clothes (7) 20 Remove top headgear that’s blue? (5) 21 Dialect is described in old manuscript originally (5) 25 Nearly get rid of pouch (3)