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 16,551, 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 66.

ACROSS

1 Called out girl’s name (7) 5 Six tons filling island’s hole (6) 9 Gifted lecturer put away dinner at first (7) 10 Beast’s back, reptile originally, consisting of plates (7) 11 Cut top off grass? Just a little bit of it (3) 12 Prudish American votes surprisingly for camp article (6,5) 13 Choose to back some great celebrity (5) 14 A violent mob’s hiding burial place for weapons (4,5) 16 Parade around swine in a valley (9) 17 Proprietor won trips to meet Her Majesty (5) 19 Manger’s lice ruined dairy product (6,5) 22 Beat up and rob

dope (3) 23 Nice old friend imports equipment for folding sheets (7) 24 Pass a solitary

large officer (7) 26 Disturbance on entering Shetland island (6) 27 Customer endures

mobile (3,4)

DOWN

1 Resolve to consider dropping temperature (7) 2 Overt tone in inn scuppered new policy of neutrality (15) 3 Bird of prey discarding last young animal (3) 4 Bones a sleuth found in middle of Africa (5) 5 Bosses keep calm about European carbohydrate (9) 6 Improvises accompaniment using five loudspeaker units (5) 7 Order workers under canvas to reveal contents of tablets (3,12) 8 Cheese for sale, primarily for lawyers (6) 12 Ring to collect sort of square part of flower (5) 14 A fussy Christian snubbing independent revolutionary (9) 15 Book space for shrub (5) 16 Space for flower (6) 18 Soldier’s uniform (7) 20 Abandon furlough (5) 21 Person introducing acts seems clever occasionally (5) 25 Cover swimming pool

that’s not finished (3)