CRYPTIC CROSSWORD

ACROSS

8 Storage used to instruct estate (3-5)

9 It gives strength to arm when bit-rate’s put on ice (6)

10 Powerful company man (6)

11 He speaks French, perhaps, lusting over one (8)

12 Attend stretch of river for fishing (4) 13 Very quiet when put in water, with a lump in one’s throat (5,5)

15 Lice, for example, thus invade MP3 players (7)

17 Nerd avoiding alcohol gets hung up when soaked (4-3)

20 Music party beginner goes to, certain of revelation (10)

22 Help one Italian opera heroine (4) 24 Angels miraculously appear to me in intricate varieties (8)

26 Can you think outside television? (3,3) 27 Braved disturbance in part of speech (6) 28 Conceals childbirth remedies (8)

DOWN

1 Beseech a person to make themselves scarce (6)

2 Sailors in station on the bottle (5-3) 3 Victorian resort was the word for excitement (8,2) 4 Astronomical measurement absorbed by celebrity (7)

5 Old boy takes a new look at port (4) 6 Take fruit in roughhouse that ends in probation (6) 7 He writes letters to evolved reptiles (8) 14 Filter Hampshire river ’s given for possible film prospect (6,4)

16 Small gratuity completes ministers’ salaries (8)

18 Ale tax up when brewed in highlands (8) 19 Kiss chief of transport station (3,4) 21 Search frantically for extra drink (6) 23 Condemned, like millennial white elephant, to have nothing inside (6)

25 Desert to join LGBT community? (4)