£100 PRIZE CROSSWORD

1 Part of a skeleton in the back of the book (5) 4 A long-suffering person in the doctor’s waiting room (7) 8 A rank in the army that’s confidential and secret (7) 9 Who is before the French, uninjured and in one piece? (5) 10 An awful tiff on the 4th of July about the number of stars on America’s flag (5) 11 A time to get your breath back, we hear, to collar a crook (6) 14 Eric travelled round Lanark at first to find an ancient object (5) 16 A woman who inspires a poet to act funny (5) 18 Surprisingly muscly, awkward and ungainly (6) 21 Puff a cigar and cure the fish (5) 24 Little Alasdair and Ned each returned heavily burdened (5) 25 The great success that lively imp Ruth can produce (7) 26 Warnings? Yes, that’s about Religious Education (7) 27 Really dislikes being involved in the backchat especially (5) 1 A little gossip secretly tests how hot the tea is (4) 2 Sign without using your name – use a character from the monogram (7) 3 Flexible waistband material that comes from Castile (7) 4 A serving of soup – i.e. spicy – and some pastries (4) 5 Wrote about the building Rapunzel lived in (5) 6 Run off in secret for an away match (5) 7 Playhouses where the rates are outrageous (8) 12 The spirit from one of the Small Isles in the Inner Hebrides (3) 13 A rebel cat goes off with an item of jewellery (8) 15 Little Moira flies north to see the Isle of Man briefly (1,1,1) 16 Aspire to greatness – what a clay pigeon shooter has to do (3,4) 17 Scruffy, slipshod and slovenly – by leaving bunk empty (7) 19 Stuck in the mud, Derek unearths a milk dispenser (5) 20 Anne’s looking up Ayrton the late great race ace (5) 22 A group of visitors turned up to see soul music star Redding (4) 23 Rebuild the huts in this way (4)