Cryptic crossword No 3,838
Tue 25 Aug 2026, set bychopin
Special Instructions: This puzzle - my first for a national outlet – originally appeared in the Independent on Sunday on the 17th March 2024 under the pseudonym Bard.
Across
- Sporting footwear with a snappy outfit, both trimmed (5,3)
- Fishy expression - up to no good (4)
- Acrostic of "find accommodating receptacle to entomb dead" (6)
- Antipodean’s vital amber liquid, we hear (4)
- Ex-PM brewing lager with last vestiges of her late barley (4,4)
- Afghans regularly overthrown in epic story (4)
- Cause of extreme weather faked online (2,4)
- Play outside transport terminal in Chiswick (4)
- Born horny? This might calm one down (6)
- Graduate student briefly put right about Sartre's Nausea (3,2,3)
- School rebuffed pupil’s denial, employing a process for detecting plagiarism (10)
- Owner's organised report about dog permit oddly ignored (10)
- Don't take part in operation against ticket seller (3,3)
- Maybe Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence toasted thus? (3-5)
- "Poorly managed reef, greater action necessary" - Kenyan oceanologist taking sides (6,4)
- Succeed in quiz about cancelled or difficult subjects (4,6)
Down
- It's clear from the outset - girls love anagrams and silly spoonerisms... (5)
- Snooker player Hendry’s last cup, perhaps (7)
- ...like mine (3)
- Macabre effect of 22d 13ac is as yet unknown (7,2,2,4)
- Bird chewed a pencil (7)
- Post Office is working to shut up malicious writer (6,3)
- Unusually fine story that’s hard to describe (9)
- London and SE might be OK, somehow (3,3,5)
- Hunter concealed in middle of ox-bow lake (3)
- Hemp wound up counterpart with tackle on the right wing (5)
- How walks up Kilimanjaro and fun runs are backed, or by whom? (7)
- Boundless energy from a cat with one special ability - absorbing carbon! (6,5)
- Welsh dish provided in bloody small portion (7)
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