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ACROSS

 1  Someone who brought Oscar home protects distressed Grouch
with prayer (10)

 6 Cautious women, we hear, concealing a summer activity (4)

 9 Profit involving a share of rye or barley, perhaps (5)

10 Tapestry artist following G. Puccini character’s imitation (9)

12 What you might wear on the slopes to bypass bugs (3,5)

13 Ask probing questions about federal organization, and settle early
(6)

15 Drowsy moon’s terribly advanced (9)

16 Singable clip taken from ghastly rickroll (5)

17 Spoken instructions on how to turn 2 into 8 (or 18) inches (5)

19 Obnoxious agent beginning to tweet after talk show (9)

21 Look at area in the back of the boat, staying on top of water (6)

22 Tautology juxtaposed with random chat? That doesn’t go
together (8)

25 Hospital resident with terrible pain and connection to
nephrologist, marginally (9)

26 Farewell, gold-plated pass (5)

27 A lunatic flips over fish (4)

28 Component of tire ending in a mess (10)

DOWN

 1 To begin with, children (1–17, e.g.) should never be put in these! (5)

 2 Start to undermine monarch with, um, the makings of a nuclear
weapon (7)

 3 Replicate and recombine 28s of monastic breakfast food (8,5)

 4 This might help you make strategic decisions: infuse egg, for
instance, with hydrogen or yttrium (4,6)

 5 Puppet made from wood and love (4)

 7 Unfinished card game, according to rumor (7)

 8 German octet pursuing me with carefree luxury craft (9)

11 Sing about spy, poet, and actress (6,7)

14 Relative redistributed letters from priest (10)

15 Thus, a boner pill originally terrified Bernie Sanders, for example
(9)

18 Drag Affleck to Reverend Spooner—that’s where you might get
some relief (7)

20 Weave tangled net at port, say (7)

23 Spook hits on family member (5)

24 Coward backs Trotsky (4)

SOLUTION TO PUZZLE NO. 3476

ACROSS 1 anag. 9 AB(DICA)TES
(beast anag., acid rev.) 10 DE-POT
11 PE[s]TER + LORRE (rev.)
12 hidden 13 IND(OO)R (rind anag.)
14 A BA(TTOI)R (Tito anag.)
18 T + OWNS + HIP 20 PARK + AS
23 rev. 24 anag. 26 P + URGE
27 C(OUR + TES)AN (set rev.)
28 anag.

DOWN 1 [p]AU[l] + DI(T)ED 2 VIC(A + R)IOUS 3 rev.
4 INSC(RIB)E (since anag.) 5 [s]-END-S 6 SOP(RAN)O
7 anag. 8 anag. 15 TEAK + [n]ETTLE 16 RE(SIDE)NT
17 DIV(ORCE)E (core anag.) 19 “word” 21 hidden
22 anag. 23 [t]ALPS (rev.) 25 initial letters