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ACROSS
1 Novel written by Venus de Milo? (1,8,2,4)
9 Charges a duty for the speaker (7)
10 Nation is the first to be captivated by fish (7)
11 Criticize the musical sense of a piece of software, and vanish (9)
12 Hyper dude I chased originally (5)
13 Finished 501? (4)
14 Be patient when discussing heaviness and expanse of water (4,3,3)
18 Friend on independent capital: “It’s like this puzzle’s number” (10)
19 Damages a planet (4)
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21 One of señorita’s requirements is equality about land’s boundaries (5)
23 Beast, large and green, coming back to swallow funny hat (9)
26 Acknowledge chaotic merger of town and university post office (3,2,2)
27 Al Ritter’s 20 (4-3)
28 It involves much counting and relocating components, up to four times each (7,8)
DOWN
1 Conflict interrupts commercial grant (5)
2 Handcrafted sitar, retuned by orderly to excess (9)
3 Premier of England has garment for getaway (6)
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4 Follow tennis rule where every second counts (5)
5 Using the same characters, ignited an epoch and an unfinished epoch (9)
6 Embellish or label New Testament (8)
7 A substance used by fiddlers is made of frog’s innards and Kissinger’s gut (5)
8 Kidnappers sent crash out of control (9)
13 Baba ghanoush, perhaps, and a bit of hummus on underpants—“like, ew!” (9)
15 Butt of a practical joke with food, mostly eaten by a quiet stream (5,4)
16 Revolting sight: pâté and pasta (9)
17 Prude ran, maneuvering like an eagle (5,3)
20 Cool “naked brick” material (6)
22 Red Lobster’s leader raised a baseball team (5)
24 Watch Republican abandoning classical poet (5)
25 Veto the rise of no crooked politician (5)
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE NO. 3442
ACROSS 1 GAP + E 3 “goal: de-lox” 10 anag. 11 C + HIM + E 12 T + OOLONG 13 I + NV-ITE 14 hidden 16 anag. (&lit.) 19 S-AND-P APER 21 B(LEE)P 22 TOOSH (anag.) + OR + T 24 anag. 26 MO + VIE 27 anag. 28 anag. 29 SLUR[p]
DOWN 1 GRE(ET + IN)G’S 2 P(HOT)O 4 OWNERS (anag.) + HIP 5 DO + LL 6 LICE + N[o]SE 7 phonetic hidden 8 S + WED + E 9 2 defs. 15 VAN + CO(U)VER 17 SORE (anag.) + L + OSER (anag.) 18 SU + PER + STAR (rev.) 20 PHONE ME 21 anag. 22 TEMP + T 23 GIJ (rev.) + O + E 25 HE + GEL
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.