CRYPTIC CROSSWORD WIN £500

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 17,275, 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+, excl NI. Terms apply, see Page 52.

ACROSS

1 Crosses poet Robert (7)

5 Acquire beer regularly

in seedy joint (6)

9 Bob and Alec possibly lacking a degree, describing some old streets? (7)

10 Comprehensive information about revolutionary in charge (7)

11 Complaint, not good, is

publicly revealed (3)

12 Peter’s again mislaid

make-up for actors (6,5) 13 Second group of players

has source of heat? (5)

14 Fine ride arranged by wealthy German painter (9)

16 Secure rule about entrance to this Somerset town (9)

17 Rex with day gone avoids

tightly packed crowds (5) 19 Cheat limits sadly quality

required in sport? (11)

22 Tree found in

Israel mainly (3)

23 European prompt to acquire diary and pastoral work (7)

24 Put down and

omitted? (7)

26 Very large flower for

Egyptian deity (6)

27 Really troubled about latest sign of increasing sensitivity (7)

DOWN

1 Bishop without rector

calculates gestures (7)

2 Line new website devised about lead in Hamlet during breaks? (2,7,6)

3 Set stage in a

contest put up (3)

4 Grasslike plant beginning

to sprout on border (5) 5 Breakdown of fuel

naturally done? (9)

6 Approach series

ahead (3-2)

7 Excited pair receiving fern shorn of cover and climbing plant (8,7)

8 Put an end to spirit

in the U.S. (6)

12 A couple of months in Georgia for Greek character (5)

14 Corpulence in fast set

when in a loose state (9) 15 Variety of wheat in largely useless alcoholic spirit (5)

16 Marine mammals in part

of the UK, reportedly (6) 18 Dome, say, renovated at

a point in the future? (7) 20 Energy required by independent German for Swiss mountain (5)

21 Some disdain dialogue in cricket-playing country (5)

25 Hens not following bird

with large eyes (3)