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ACROSS
1 Antique bicycle in famous lane with distant object (5-8)
9 Old vessel swapping adjacent components with one getting the blame for harbor craft (7)
10 Look into return of fire pit (7)
11 Subway ran into European capital halfway (5)
12 Inside shelter, worth changing direction (9)
13 Lure of shortened cable (4)
14 Tuesday Weld’s parts frequently repeated: This one is very much like another (10)
18 Rascal gets into variegated pastels in multilayered document (10)
19 Missile silo’s cover: something to chew over (4)
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22 Boy rested uneasily where seafood can be found (6,3)
25 and 16 Poet sent back fruit to daughter adopted by icy, ghoulish family relation (5,9)
26 Rise unsteadily to swallow 59 potions (7)
27 The Rev. Spooner’s claimed the fourth locale in the Middle East (4,3)
28 Novice members repeatedly appear to be trouble (13)
DOWN
1 Pick up military shirt in a river… (7)
2 …ear conclusion of first autumn sunset (9)
3 Bush’s torture lawyer who heard a call for attention (3-3)
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4 When eavesdropping, check off bug in operation… (5)
5 …arranging tech to look up piece of spyware (what bugs could give you) (3,6)
6 By and by, returning Yale student greeting hosts, looking pale (2,1,5)
7 Complaint, for example, raised about initials on a gravestone (5)
8 City in 12 deletes article to reach legal agreement (6)
15 “Sink was hot” (a phrase that often precedes “boy”) (9)
16 See 25
17 Protagonist in Memento, say, misconstrued as cinema (8)
18 Bird’s plunder? Just the opposite! (6)
20 Where you might find young children rejecting sexually suggestive commercial with energy (3,4)
21 I relocated to the bottom of no mountain (6)
23 Genre featuring two outspoken Greek characters (3-2)
24 Ploy of Pentagon agency, briefly supported by a couple of generals (5)
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE NO. 3496
ACROSS 1 POINTS (anag.) + HOT 6 RIS + ER (rev.) 9 anag. 10 O(FAKIN’)D 11 PIE + CESUIT (anag.) 12 S + LUMP 13 F + ETA (rev.) 14 LIT + TLEP (rev.) + I(G)S 17 anag. 19 2 defs. 21 alternate letters 22 BEANS A LAD 25 W + [s]ISEMEN (rev.) 26 D(IO)RAMA 27 initial letters 28 HUN(DRED)T + H
DOWN 1 P(RIM)P 2 INS(P)ECT 3 anag. 4 anag. 5 T(R)OUT 6 ROA(D)STER 7 S(TIM)ULI (Luis anag.) 8 RED + EP + O’S + IT 13 F(ACE + TOW)EL[t] 15 TE(A + GARD)EN (drag rev.) 16 TSU(NA)M + I (rev.) + S 18 U(LYS)SES (sly anag.) 20 PO(LKAE)D (kale anag.) 22 BEN + CH 23 SPOO + R (rev.) 24 D(EAT)H
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).