Times 27,767: Liblab Thug

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Cracking Friday puzzle I thought, with lots of interesting GK require to successfully negotiate its nuances: just look at the triple bill from 12 through 16 down…

I enjoyed “mug’s hot!” and “behind houses” but I think my COD may just be the CD at 9ac, as it has a lovely surface, lacking in any crypto-garble. But there are many many super clues in this mix: very much obliged to the setter for this offering. And that’s all I have to say for now!

ACROSS
1 Cost singular to get to Mars (7)
DAMAGES – DAMAGE [cost, familiarly, as in “what’s the damage?”] + S(ingular), to find a synonym for the, here deceptively capitalised, “mars”.

5 Put out leg to trap bird in port (7)
KOWLOON – K.O. [put out] + ON [(cricket) leg], to “trap” an OWL. Kowloon is part of Hong Kong and so one would assume quite porty.

9 Glower, being the subject of jokes? (9)
LIGHTBULB – a cryptic definition, where the glower is something that glows rather than an evil stare, and the subject of jokes is not a human one. How many setters/solvers does it take to change a lightbulb? Answers below the line please.

10 Hastily make approach (3-2)
RUN-UP – double def with RUN UP [hastily make]

11 Bag and basket for lifting rubbish — everyone in favour (3-3,7)
HOT-AIR BALLOON – HOT AIR [rubbish] + ALL in BOON

13 Manage to expose less of that! (3,2,3)
CUT IT OUT – CUT IT [manage] + OUT [to expose]

15 Bright students turning away from books (6)
SUNLIT – The N(ational) U(nion of) S(tudents) turning away from LIT, to head to the pub probably.

17 Put up after with welcome drink (6)
WHISKY – SKY [put up], after W(ith) HI

19 Reserve’s virtually shelved, being not the quickest (8)
SUBSONIC – SUB’S ON IC{e}

22 Rare being casually dressed in court? Carry on (2,5,6)
IN SHORT SUPPLY – IN SHORTS [casually dressed] + UP [in court] + PLY [carry on]

25 Back-to-back golds by previously unknown Spanish hero (5)
ZORRO – OR + reversed OR, with the last but surely not least of the unknown triplets (X Y and Z) coming previously.

26 European most of the way flanked by keeper, presumably? (9)
FINLANDER – LAN{e} “flanked” by FINDER, because “finders keepers”.

27 Right and left-wingers penning notes (7)
REDRESS – REDS “penning” RE’S

28 Member that comes across price for delivery on time (7)
TRANSOM – RANSOM [price for delivery] on T. A transom is a crosspiece, perhaps best known as the horizontal divider thingy sported by some windows.

DOWN
1 Fool to impersonate an army officer (4)
DOLT – DO [impersonate] L(ieutenan)T

2 Maybe barista’s warning, still, of criminal? (7)
MUGSHOT – a barista might warn you that the MUG’S HOT. “Still” as in picture, here.

3 To annoy persistently is mean! (3,2)
GET AT – double def, the second as in “just what are you getting at?”

4 Cramming lots from university into apartments (8)
STUDIOUS – U in STUDIOS

5 Runs through Kansas to catch baseball player up (6)
KEBABS – K(ansa)S “catching” reversed BABE (Ruth)

6 Battered cars would smoke on field (3,6)
WAR CLOUDS – (CARS WOULD*)

7 Bad mistake to have ambition (3,4)
OWN GOAL – OWN [to have] + GOAL [ambition]

8 Perhaps a little brandy, with food, even (3,3,4)
NIP AND TUCK – NIP [a little brandy?] AND [with] TUCK [food]. Apparently “nip and tuck” can mean “neck and neck”.

12 Missionary’s motley crew, the size reduced (10)
SCHWEITZER – (CREW THE SIZ{e}*). This is Albert Schweitzer, the winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. He set up a namesake hospital in French Equatorial Guinea, now Gabon.

14 So-called propagandist’s excessively outspoken lines about Kennedy on vacation (5,4)
TOKYO ROSE – TOO [excessively] + homophone of ROWS, “about” K{enned}Y. A Tokyo Rose was any female English-speaking radio broadcaster of Japanese propaganda in WW2. This was very much my LOI because I didn’t know the term, leading to a bit of an alphabet trawl to crack _O_E.

16 Embrace superior manner that’s upset French protestant (8)
HUGUENOT – HUG [embrace] + U [superior] + reversed TONE

18 Not all, on reflection, consider us nicely covered (7)
INSURED – hidden reversed in {consi}DER US NI{cely}

20 Drownings done, say, at sea (7)
NOYADES – (DONE SAY*). I think this was one of the first words I can remember learning from the Times Crossword, in the 80s when I was a tiny nipper!

21 Man’s more than a crook maybe (6)
STAFFS – to man is to STAFF. A crook is a STAFF, add the S to get more than one.

23 Square loaf mostly devoured by old man (5)
PLAZA – LAZ{e} “devoured” by PA

24 Familiar form of English city rising initially behind houses (4)
BRUM – R{ising} “housed” by BUM [behind]. This is what Brits call England’s (second?) city Birmingham, in case any foreigners are confused.

65 comments on “Times 27,767: Liblab Thug”

  1. Nice puzzle…I had HOLLANDER for a while instead of FINLANDER, since a holder is also a keeper. Maybe deliberate?
    NOYADES was an easy write-in for all Scrabble players who may have studied ADENOS + 1 in the past.
  2. I loved this. I needed the wordplay to spell HUGEUENOT and had to drag NOYADES out of some dark recess. Somehow I have heard of TOKYO ROSE so once I had TOKYO I just filled it in without thinking more.
  3. Agree with Verlaine, LIGHTBULB as a subject of jokes is most amusing. Many great clues, taking 39’29” to finish and 5 minutes floundering before FOI RUN-UP.
    Is 12 U’s in a grid a record?
  4. Very much a Friday puzzle, that I thought was going to take me forever; a burst of activity in the last 5 minutes got me the half-dozen or so remaining clues all in the north. I should have been faster, though, given that I was sure of K__S at 5d, SHOT at 2d, LIGHT at 9d, and the anagrist for SCHWEITZER & NOYADES, none of which came to me quickly. TOKYO ROSE from the KY; I’d all along thought there was just the one. I’ve always associated cramming with NON-studious types like me, desperate to get the textbook digested on the night before the final exam. ZORRO’s bailiwick is Los Angeles, and of course he’s an invention of an American writer, but since it’s colonial Los Angeles I suppose he can pass for a Spanish hero. Great puzzle in any case.
  5. Happy to finish, but had to go away for lunch with NW corner empty to reset the brain. NHO noyades, thought Kansas might be Ka, but all else known. Very hard to get some of them with abstruse cryptic definitions, like the lightbulb, kebab as run through, finders-keepers, even Zorro as Spanish – I always think of him as American, as Kevin noted. LOI studious after a BIFD damages, where I never saw mars only Mars. COD probably SUBSONIC, beating out MUGSHOT because no barista has ever handled a mug.

    Edited at 2020-09-11 04:01 am (UTC)

    1. You can get something like a flat white in a mug at some Starbucks. Not for take-out.
      Or anything at all in a mug at Malongo Café, on rue St. André des arts in Paris (sigh).

      Edited at 2020-09-11 04:27 am (UTC)

    2. No barista has ever handled a mug?! I mean, not these days, anymore, but you’ve never been to a cafe with mugs? Perhaps it’s an American thing.
      1. In reply to both Guy and Jeremy: I was being facetious… but here in Australia Starbucks barely exists, local cafes are far superior; and coffee snobs abound (including me).
        1. I was in Oz last year and very impressed by the quality. What they serve in Starbucks is simply not coffee. Nespresso is also not worth drinking AFAIC.

          Edited at 2020-09-11 05:31 pm (UTC)

  6. I had to cheat for my LOI, KOWLOON, which I expect to see someday, if ever again, klued in a more amusing fashion.

    I couldn’t quite believe the clue for DAMAGES… since that word, plural, can mean “cost” as well, and the only cryptic element is the superfluous clue for the S, plus the deceptive capping of the def.

    The lightbulb is not so much the subject (the butt) of those jokes as a prop.

    “Member” for TRANSOM had me guessing. I liked WAR CLOUDS, though the definition is oddly literal.

    The hosts at my much-regretted regular karaoke nights go by the stage names H-Bomb (Heather) and TOKYO ROSEnberg (Tony).

    Edited at 2020-09-11 04:33 am (UTC)

    1. “The lightbulb is not so much the subject (the butt) of those jokes as a prop.”

      But “subject” doesn’t mean “butt” here

  7. Took just on the hour, but at least no pink squares this time after several “missed by that much” puzzles this week. I liked being able to recognise NOYADES, a crossword word for me too, MUGS HOT and the def. for TRANSOM. I agree though that LIGHTBULB was the cream of the crop for today.
  8. 43 minutes, not helping myself by having HOLLANDER at 26a for a while—I mean, it sort of works—and also NHO SCHWEITZER or NOYADES. I took a punt on the spelling of the latter and happily picked the right combination, but it seemed something of an obscurity to clue so ambiguously.

    11a HOT AIR BALLOON something of a write-in as one disturbed my solving on Sunday; not even Covid-19 can keep them out of the skies around here… Enjoyed 28a TRANSOM and 9a LIGHTBULB.

  9. Happy to finish a Friday puzzle for once! I did check NOYADES — my rule for using aids is that I will check something if I have all the crossing letters and have a guess at the answer from the wordplay. Everything else I could work out. Quite the puzzle to overcome!
  10. I found some of this quite hard and needed 50 minutes to complete the grid with recourse to aids for the unknown NOYADES. O-A or A-O? was the question.

    Not that I didn’t know it anyway, but it was handy that MUGSHOT came up as the answer on a TV quiz programme yesterday evening so it was right at the front of my mind.

  11. What earthly comfort can console,
    It drags a dull and lengthened pace,
    ‘Till friendly death its woes enroll.

    How cheery!
    Well I’m glad others enjoyed this: the deceptive capital, the OWAAs (Obscure Word as Anagram) and the dreadful clue for Staffs.
    30 mins with Noyades and Transom bunged in with a harrumph.
    Thanks setter and V.

    Edited at 2020-09-11 07:18 am (UTC)

  13. Fabulous crossword – thank you setter!

    It would take a big tall hub to change a lightbulb 🙂

  14. I have the definite feeling we’ve had NOYADE(S) before, although I suppose I dragged it up from what’s left of my high school French.
    1. We had NOYADE in July 2019 (27405): ‘Revolutionary period involved in no end of vile execution by drowning’
  15. 46 minutes with the unknown NOYADES looked up.There were six ways to arrange the vowels, and none felt right. Otherwise, I enjoyed the challenge. LOI was KEBABS. I did know TRANSOM. SCHWEITZER was the first name I thought of when I saw ‘missionary’. He was a household name back in the fifties. COD to MUGSHOT. A fine puzzle.Thank you V and setter.
  16. 17:18. Great stuff. No idea about SCHWEITZER but he was readily constructible with a few crossers, and although I’ve heard of my last in TOKYO ROSE it took an alphabet trawl to jog my memory.
    Puzzled by the concerns over ZORRO: of course Antonio Banderas is Spanish.
    1. I was surprised, at first, to see that you and Matt didn’t know of Schweitzer, but a moment’s thought suggested that he’s really disappeared; back in my childhood he was as well known as Mother Teresa is now, and probably of somewhat more use.

      Edited at 2020-09-11 08:06 am (UTC)

  17. I submitted in just under 30 mins but I had three wrong. Nayodes, Erst and Transit.

    COD: Hot Air Balloon.

    P.S. Note to our blogger. Brum is England’s first city! And Aston Villa are going to win the Premiership 2020/21. 😀

    1. Even I, as a closet Villain, don’t see much beyond another relegation battle for the Claret and Blues.
  18. Not too bad for me for a pretty hard crossword, NHO NOYADES (pronounced nwahyahd, apparently),

    COD: CUT IT OUT for everything meaning something else in the clue. Then again most of them were like that.

    Yesterday’s answer: Rigoletto was a (court) jester

    Today’s question: which city did Zorro inhabit?

  20. ….for a while which held me up. Also had to do the alphabet trawl for ROSE. I found this pretty tough taking over an hour but at least finishing. COD for me was HOT AIR BALLOON. among, it must be said, a number of very good clues as has already been mentioned. Thank you V and setter.
  21. 27:31. That was nice and chewy. LOI BRUM. DNK NOYADES, TOKYO ROSE and failed to parse a few, so thanks for clearing everything up, V.
  22. I got ???SHOT reasonably quickly but took for ages to get MUG. After that the NW corner fell into place.
    Another one who started with HOLLANDER
    Excellent puzzle.
    My favourites were LIGHTBULB, MUGSHOT and HUGUENOT.
  23. 25.22 for a crossword packed with difficulty rather than yesterday’s elegance.
    I am ashamed to say it took me a while to get SCHWEITZER, who made a name for himself in a ridiculous range of disciplines – his “Search for the Historical Jesus” is still a touchstone for theologians. Do read his Wiki entry to be amazed at what a man can be in one lifetime.
    SUNLIT was my last in, bamboozled by the students assumed to be LL and the books either NT or OT.
    STUDIOUS was slow in too, with a Q expected among those Us and with 2 Zs already in the grid.
    I’d picture a TRANSOM on a boat rather than a window: perhaps that’s just me.
  24. Time off the scale as I was interrupted but even so was struggling with several clues, particularly LOI NOYADES – unknown but sounded better than the alternatives so I may have heard it before.
    Did not like 21D but once I got FINLANDER (which also took some time) it was clear.
  25. Tough one – and unfortunately for me I didn’t recall NOYADES, so I went for NAYODES. 12m 58s with that error.

    Other unknowns were KOWLOON, TOKYO ROSE & SCHWEITZER.

  26. With seven of them on the last two to go in: brum and transom. I saw the wordplay on brum (houses is the giveaway) but spent too long wondering what an arft might be. Transom I had to bung in without understanding, so thanks to Verlaine for the explanation. The most famous noyades were the ones in Nantes during the Revolution, when they came to put down the royalist Vendee rebellion (see Trollope’s fine historical novel) and indulged in some horrific mass-murder. It hasn’t been forgotten in the Vendee. Lovely crossword – my only qualm being the apostrophe in man’s at 21 down.
    1. I lost a few seconds recapturing my inner schoolboy and chuckling at an anagram of arft. My old headmaster did say I’d never grow up.
  27. …but not many for me on this unlightbulby scramble. Couldn’t locate Rose though everything else finally rounded up. A pity since otherwise would have found the satisfaction of the Friday summit; still, in retrospect a good few collector’s items enjoyed even if it all took over an hour. I think I liked the elegant drownings the most, with a nod to the quizzical keeper.
  28. AS can happen on a Friday, I never really felt as if I was on the right wavelength but enjoyed my meandering path to completion, and the appropriate lightbulb moments. A metaphor for life, there.
    1. No problem with noyades, a method of execution used in the Solway Firth, as well as revolutionary France.
  30. ….LIGHTBULB moments, and found the NE corner particularly intransigent. Never parsed HOT-AIR BALLOON, which I was held up on by having GET TO rather than AT. Never seen KEBAB as a verb but it works nicely enough.

    FOI RUN-UP
    LOI STUDIOUS
    COD BRUM
    TIME 18:36

  31. I took a while to get going, with BRUM my FOI. It didn’t get much quicker as I floundered around the grid,but I did eventually emerge triumphant after 46:03. GET AT was my LOI. I’d been unable to choose between GET AT and GOT AT until I squinted harder at the clue and saw that meant, was actually mean! Lots to like as the pennies dropped and the bulbs lit. I wasn’t diverted to Holland as I had STAFFS before looking at 26a. Thanks setter and V.
  32. Like Z I was fully expecting a Q to come into view what with all the Zs, Us, Ys and Ks, but it didn’t knock me off the wavelength and I clocked in at 20.26. I’d managed to remember NOYADES in a roundabout way. The HUGUENOTs were rounded up when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and then during the Revolution, as Leskoffer says, it was the Catholics who got the treatment.
    1. It’s the Cathars I feel sorry for, wiped out to a man despite all those lovely Languedoc castles ..
  33. The usual game two halves for me with plenty of those moments, which make crossword solving such a delight. Never got GET AT.
  34. Just over 36 minutes today although I did have to biff a few including WHISKY, SUBSONIC and IN SHORT SUPPLY. I also guessed TOKYO ROSE from a lipstick shade I used in my youth!
    DNK ZORRO or TRANSOM so thanks to V for the helpful explanations.
    I can’t decide between NIP AND TUCK and HOT-AIR BALLOON for my COD – both were amusing.
    Thanks to the setter for a great end to the week.
  35. Enjoyed this v much .. though noyades and Schweitzer made for rather tricky anagrams. And I had not previously thought of Errol Flynn as Spanish, though looking back I can see that the films were hinting that way
  36. but I fell at the last 24dn opting for BRIT instead of BRUM. Doh! No BUM steer here! Thus I also failed at my LOI 28ac by bunging in TRANSIT. Well over the hour, but what a treat!

    FOI 13ac CUT IT OUT!

    COD 9ac LIGHTBULB

    WOD 5ac redolent of my days in Hong Kong (sigh!) when we used to take the Ferry to Kowloon-side,as did Suzy Wong and Lionel Blair.

    21ac STAFFS as per Mr. Myrtilus was truly dreadful and I wasn’t particularly enamoured with 27ac.

  37. I usually feel sorry for Verlaine when I manage to complete a Friday puzzle in less than an hour as it couldn’t have been much of a challenge / much fun for him so I’m delighted to see that we were both happy today when I kebabed the blog. Jeffrey
    1. With the Snitch currently registering this as a 129, this is the least “green” puzzle we’ve seen for a couple of weeks. I’ll take what I can get 😀

      Edited at 2020-09-11 07:44 pm (UTC)

  38. Went to see the Kowloon Bridge when she ran aground off the S Irish coast in the 80’s. Worked for a few while in a little town north of Bratislava where the office address was nam dr a schweitzera. So only paused for the unknown noyades.
  40. I stared at this for 8 minutes before the first answer (SUNLIT) went in and expected it to be a DNF. So I was pleasantly surprised to check out in 43 minutes. I knew TOKYO ROSE from the musical “South Pacific”. She appears in the lyrics of “There is Nothing Like a Dame”. I knew NOYADES from my school history. Hard to forgot those executions by drowning. A bit of a stinker but I enjoyed it as I got more into it. Ann
  41. Couldn’t get 1ac ‘Damages” (odd clue) nor 3d “Get At”. Guessed at “Noyades”, as it seemed more probable than the alternatives.
    Enjoyed the crossword despite not finishing.
  42. Didn’t like this one at all. 3dn GET TO is to annoy persistently, GET AT is not.
    Too many possessive obsessive clues with apostrophes.

    From Jeepyjay

  43. Took me around an hour after two stabs. I can only say it was a tough gig and I was knackered after 18 holes of golf and a few glasses of rose.

    Some really high class cluing which needed a lot of working out. Still not convinced by lightbulb, got the glower reference early enough but subject of jokes, really?

    FOI dolt but the next seemed to take a lifetime. LOI studious for which relief much thanks.

    Just back from another 18 holes of various distinction and eager to see if I’m s bit more on board today.

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