Wednesday 22 April

Across

1 Hunts persistently? (7) 5 Be careful with cat that’s gone wild (5,2) 9 Treatment centre hosted by Pamela Anderson (1,3,1) 10 Crete: nice, surprisingly – that’s not saying much (9) 11 Literary set gets flowers put in the ground (10) 12 Wolf down sandwich with duck filling (4) 14 Engineer restores path; it’s very high above us (12) 18 Time-poor French author misinterpreted as nostalgic? (6,6) 21 Where religious crowd congregate to see villain beheaded (4) 22 It’s more obvious having race later is nonsense (10) 25 Carnage regularly follows elderly American – and it returns repeatedly (9) 26 Keep in touch, having stabled horse (5) 27 Pure quality of German city church (7) 28 Name of female acquired on re-marriage? (7)

Down

1 Inject vitamins into skin that’s loose (6) 2 Published party minute – that’s irregular (6) 3 Dull count showing some capacity for thinking (4,6) 4 Stand-in accepts credit for clean-up (5) 5 Game played mostly by those out of their depth (5,4) 6 Starts to trudge around coffee outlet providing food (4) 7 Afghan governor hides suffering in the morning? (8) 8 Scores left during games (8) 13 Bananas perhaps too often what’s misplaced by grocers? (10) 15 Top guy provides upset pal with meat and drink (5,4) 16 Final word, effective and quite open (8) 17 Vicar delving into religious sins of the past (8) 19 Open fire! (6) 20 Violent gangster endlessly engages in evil? It’s almost guaranteed (4-2) 23 Dead, for example, like this old artist (5) 24 Stitched up in every direction (4)