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 16,876, 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 58.
ACROSS
1 One checks drift regularly in two sorts of gold (7) 5 Remove some of the caffeine that’s sent back (6) 9 Old chap in car ignoring monarch’s Russian royal (7) 10 Engage popular victor who’s in love, having split up (7) 11 Step over, backing off (3) 12 Relish sailors
with booze (6,5) 13 Fast writer (5) 14 Appalling senior manager faces mob, snubbing bishop (9) 16 Check square for
big game (4,5) 17 Harmony when roughly
50 abandon disaster (5) 19 Fellow in Indian mutiny mostly rebelled nonstop (2,9) 22 Delve in garden
principally (3) 23 Communicant at altar restricts choral work (7) 24 Castle in Loire, not completely warm there, stocks drink (7) 26 Suit club in Edinburgh (6) 27 Fifty pesetas more than enough for what compositors do (7)
DOWN
1 Fittingly, a very large rugby forward intervenes (7) 2 Medicine costs spoiled this French course of study (8,7) 3 Very small bottomless
container (3) 4 This writer’s blocking rights for water carrier (5) 5 Female, one implicated in nasty blaze at the ground (9) 6 Numbers game
played in court (5) 7 Problem with viewing London club rises after renovation (6,9) 8 Withdraw broadcast
again on radio (6) 12 Carry money —
some worship it (5) 14 Public schoolboys host southern Baltic residents (9) 15 Field left covered
by lots of sheets (5) 16 Canter about in
dazed state (6) 18 Dairy product from
hog trained in tent (7) 20 Blonde conceals
liberal talent (5) 21 Understood diplomacy
impresses island (5) 25 A peak in
national park (3)