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Word Salad.
ACROSS
1 Hopeless quest: grabbing operagoers’ top hats (6)
4 Can she woo? Go crazy (8)
10 Tests the mornings of yesteryear? (5)
11 Meddlesome, leaderless mob corrupted virtues (9)
12 I printed another way: in bold (8)
13 Fire on retreating barge ultimately breaks wind (6)
14 Marked, like hot coffee? (7)
16 Artists’ underwear (7)
17 Part of a plant in New York securing faulty crate (7)
19 Painter’s ride in vehicle with greenish exterior (3,4)
21 Up a tree as part of an improvised performance (2,1,3)
22 Bygone memory: the first smoked meat (8)
25 Roster of short-term workers open to being seduced (9)
26 Clumsy person’s kindergarten jump (5)
27 Humanitarian organization breaking records (Guinness’s latest) (3,5)
28 Listen to a piece of vocal music, for example? OK (6)
DOWN
1 O’Toole-Hepburn movie in which pride comes after a fall? (3,4,2,6)
2 Tauter “Dancing Queen” is foremost for ABBA, e.g. (7)
3 Getting rid of doctor, men sued to get result (5)
5 Chooses flying spot (4)
6 Musical TV show is so extremely fashionable (4,5)
7 Somber expert making a disapproving face (7)
8 Breaded veal entree wins zilch in contention (6,9)
9 Actress and knight love to rise in time for start of operations (5,3)
15 Eccentric includes air conditioning in lease (9)
16 Veered from detailed uprising, changing 50 to 5 (8)
18 Asserted decimal is misaligned (7)
20 Less clear requisite to pop a query (7)
23 It is like Kyoto, but different! (5)
24 White malarkey is on the wane (4)
ACROSS 1 anag. 5 [r]USES 10 FIRSTL + I.E. + U + TENANT (flirts anag.) 11 YET + I 12 anag. 14 [c]O[mmand] 17 THIRD D(EGRE[t])E BURN (Thunderbird anag.) 20 PRO-VINCI + AL[l] 23 anag. 26 anag. 27 hidden 28 PLA(YMA)TE (Amy rev.)
DOWN 1 HER + ETIC (cite rev.) 2 “wrote” 3 C(RIT(ICI)Z)E 4 hidden 6 ANIMAT[e]S (rev.) 7 SE[a]TTLE + DIN 8 [j]IFFY 9 & 24 HEAT + HENS 13 rev. 14 SETUPS + HOP 15 anag. 16 M + EEK 18 FE + MALE 19 letter bank 21 IN + CA 22 CAME + L 25 A + QUA
Joshua Kosman and Henri PicciottoJoshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto are The Nation’s puzzlers. To read more about Kosman, click here. To read more about Picciotto, click here. Kosman and Picciotto explain what they’re up to in “Solving The Nation’s Cryptic Crosswords” (also available as a PDF). Check out The Nation’s Current Issue page each week for the latest puzzle.