DOUBLE CROSSWORD

CRYPTIC ACROSS

1 Reasons bore pronounced popular opinion (6,5)

9 Back up grizzly old hat (4,3)

10 Bubble baths taken in liqueur (7)

11 Skirt headed off a band of brothers (5)

12 Tongue depressors centred on a pert expression (9)

13 Operating on grey mole (6)

15 For every piece of poetry is contradictory (8)

18 A maiden’s sort of thinker? (5,3)

19 Time beat rebel three times (6)

22 Down and out when unit disbanded (4,5)

24 Racket got one in the hooter (5)

25 Islands around Mainland or islands around the Pole (7)

26 Dismissing second in command and working outside the square (7) 27 Broad variety of wife, only half-maddening (4-7)

DOWN

1 Extravagant bash organised (9)

2 Scent to go astray in outdoor recreation (5) 3 Headstone set up to pass through the legs (6)

4 The more waterlogged bathed upright (8)

5 Drive inside, disrupting Christian celebration on the edge of Manhattan (4,5) 6 Rope tied to the end of main sheets (5)

7 Olive drab extremely stretched into shape (6) 8 Confused reports from the seat of power (6) 14 Haemorrhage from mangled lobes to be bound up by necessity (9) 16 Prattling on, as Jewish leader can with Greek leader (9)

17 Reveller can get excited, within credit limit (8)

18 Fin regulated weak movement of water from the outside (6)

20 Force to turn green with envy at last (6)

21 Mark the flanks of newborn litter (6) 23 Question we raised was angled towards one side (5) 24 Return some fish and fruit (5)