Times 24,193 Meet Benjamin Twain Franklin

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 30 minutes

There’s quite a lot of odd pieces of knowledge required for this one . Whilst doing the blog I found myself repeatedly referring to Wiki to check dates and facts and so on. I don’t recall quite so many cryptic definitions in one puzzle before and none of them anything much to write home about. I trust there is something at 17A that I’m not seeing but I think it’s a reference to Benjamin Franklin rather than Mark Twain. Perhaps our American friends can shed some light on this. I liked 5D, an excellent clue for a somewhat unpromising word.

Across
1 DEMIGOD – cryptic definition; half human, half divine; to err is human, to forgive divine;
5 CEREBRA – (career+b=bachelor)*;
9 SCORE,DRAW – cryptic definition; a football match in which both sides score the same number of goals;
10 BRASS – two meanings; 1=slang for money; 2=a brass memorial plate in a church which is sometimes rubbed;
12 GRAND,SLAM – GRAND=slang for £1,000; SLAM=make impact; the biggest possible contract at the bridge table;
14 STAINLESS,STEEL – (asset still seen)*;
17 INHERITANCE,TAX – cryptic definition; a tax on assets levied on an estate; I thought it was Benjamin Franklin rather than Mark Twain who talked about death and taxes being the only two certainties in life?;
21 MANHANDLE – MAN-HANDLE; double homophone; MAN sounds like Thomas Mann 1875-1955; HANDLE sounds like George Frideric Handel 1685-1759;
23 ACCRA – reversed hidden letters; m-A-r-C a-C-i-R-f-A;
25 PRIMITIVE – PRIM(IT-I-V)E; PRIME=prepare canvas; V=see; “old painter” is the definition (my typo corrected by Peter – see comments);
26 HAGGARD – H(A-GG)ARD; reference Rider Haggard 1856-1925;
27 MAGENTA – M-AGENT-A; M was James Bond’s boss; obscure battle of 1859 in Italian War of Independence;
 
Down
1 DISMAL – LAMS-I’D reversed; black=DISMAL; blue=DISMAL; nice use of “black and blue”;
2 MOONSET – MO-ON-SET;
3 GRENADIER – GRENAD(a)-IE-R; Grenada is an island in the Caribbean;
4 DEREGULATED – (eg dated rule)*;
5 CAW – C(r)AW; r=rook (chess); excellent clue;
7 BRAILLE – yet another cryptic definition; reference Louis Braille and his system of raised dots (outstanding characters) invented in 1821 that enables the blind to read
8 ASSEMBLY – two meanings; 1=parliament=diet; 2=daily opportunity for head teacher to rant;
13 ABSENTEEISM – (semis beaten)*;
15 SEESAWING – SEES-A-WING; WING=part of mansion rather than house;
16 MISMATCH – M-IS-MATCH; M=maiden (cricket); MATCH=lighter;
18 HIND,LEG – and another cryptic definition; to talk the hind leg off a donkey is to rabbit on and on;
19 AUCTION – A(U)CTION; U sounds like “you”; ACTION=(legal) case;
20 VALETA – VALET-A; VALET=man paid to attend; more usually “veleta”, a quick waltz;
25 PAD – P-AD; AD=commercial; member=limb or more delicate part of male anatomy;

56 comments on “Times 24,193 Meet Benjamin Twain Franklin”

  1. First time for quite a while that I have failed to complete the day’s crossword (though there have been a few archive grids that stumped me.)

    On the plus side, I was quick in what I did – eight minutes to get down to the last two, neither of which I cracked. VALETA was one – I could have got this by recourse to the crossword solver and its list of 6-letter dances, but I think it’s been packed away. I was on the right lines, but I’ve never heard of it.

    And the other is 22dn, for which you have provided no explanation – so I still don’t know what the answer is. Anyone shed any light for me? The only thing I could think of to fit was APPIA, which is something to do with ancient greco-roman stuff (Appian Way rings a bell) but I couldn’t make any sense of it.

    1. I have it as ALPHA. Two meanings 1=dominant; 2=first letter of Greek alphabet. We always struggle to know which ones to leave out!
  2. As in the alpha male .. yes, makes perfect sense. I wasn’t on the right wavelength for that.
    1. There’s more – alpha is the first letter in Αθήνα=Athens (ta, Google translate) – I’m sure I’ve seen this trick before with something like sigma/Sparta.
  3. 12:37 for me, with the last two symmetrically opposite DISMAL and VALETA taking ages to get at the end. Probably would have been under 10 minutes otherwise. Never heard of valeta (or veleta), but it eventually came to me when I decided it wasn’t going to be M + (synonym for paid). I had to work through the alphabet to get LAMS for hits.

  4. A very odd puzzle.

    What I did, I did quickly – 14 mins – except that like Jack the only word I could see at 1ac was DAMAGED (and the cryptic didn’t make much sense), and like Heyesey I did not get VALETA (which I have never heard of).

    I think many authors – including Franklin and Twain have used the “death and taxes” phrase, but I believe its origins go back to Defoe or earlier.

  5. I liked this crossword; not too hard, but some thinking required. cod definitely 18d.

    However it is surely generally accepted that Franklin made the quote about the only certain things being death and taxes (quite a neat clue, this error apart!) – USHistory.org certainly thinks so, and provides a reference:
    http://www.ushistory.org/Franklin/quotable/quote73.htm

    Interesting though that googling “certain death taxes twain” gives you 708,000 hits and “certain death taxes franklin” only 289,000.

    1. ODQ attributes this to a few poeple, including Franklin (1789) and Defoe (1726), but not Twain. Also listed as an “early 18th” proverb, which may be their way of saying “we don’t know who said it first”. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Quotations, a similar US reference, also doesn’t give Twain.
      1. Twain definitely did use it in one of his published books, but he definitely was NOT the first person to do so. Franklin used it in a private letter to someone-or-other, and may or may not have been the originator – there is not, I believe, any definite proof of earlier use. Arguably, the usage by Twain is better-known than that by Franklin, but if you expect people to look it up in quotation dictionaries it would be unfair to give Twain.

        I’m not the expert here, so I can’t judge whether the clue is reasonable or not.

        1. ODQ gives a precise citation for Defoe in 1726 – a slightly different version, but the sense is there.
          The notes for their “proverbs” section (for which I should have said “early 18th century”) say that dates are generally for the “first written appearance of a form of the proverb in English”. For more detail, you’re referred to the Concise Ox. Dict. of Proverbs, which I don’t have.
          1. Well, as my granddad always said, you live and learn, and the longer you live the more you eat.

            So we’re on Daniel Benjamin Twain Franklin Defoe? Poor guy, having a mouthful of a name like that. 😀

            1. Clearly a much-mined theme. We could probably throw Dickens’s Mr Barkis into the mix as well! In “David Copperfield” he has Mr Barkis, the husband of Copperfield’s old nurse, Peggotty, say: “It was as true as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them!” I must say that it seems to me completely unreasonable of the setter to cite Twain, surely by some margin the least well-known possible source for this quote or anything like it (if he is one at all). Perhaps the setter can provide us with chapter and verse? The wording of the clue is also clumsy: it speaks of “certain things” whereas the answer is one particular type of tax. “Payment to state one of the things of which Twain spoke?” might have been fairer and more exact.

              Like others, I too fell into the DAMAGED trap at 1ac, on the basis that “being partly able” might = damaged. I knew the wordplay didn’t work but couldn’t think of anything better. Now that I know the right answer, I think 1ac is an axtremely clever, unusual and inventive clue. Likewise 5dn and 20dn, the device in the latter of having the qualifying adjective come after the noun in the definitional part of the clue was brilliantly deceptive – well deceptive enough to hold me up for a good while, anyhow.

              1. I don’t think your “clumsy wording” argument is valid; the “certain things” are both death AND taxes. The “payment to state” comes about because it’s a tax payable after a death.

                It does seem as though citing Twain for the quote is not the best policy – unless this is one of those cases where “everybody knows” who said it first but he actually didn’t. It does not seem to be such a case. (I knew the saying immediately, but I had no idea of its provenance. I just assumed Twain must be right.)

                1. Fair point on death and taxes. Quibble withdrawn!

                  Twain shares with Talleyrand, the great French statesman of yesteryear, the fate of having a great many sayings (both accurate and apocryphal) ascribed to him. Confronted in a quiz with a familiar quote (particularly of the world-weary kind) of whose provenance you are unsure, you stand a reasonable chance of success, I’ve found, if you plump for one or the other.


  6. 27 minutes for this with one wrong at 1A which I missed the point of completely and bunged in DAMAGED in desperation and without much confidence.

    Otherwise I thought it was a fairly straightforward solve but perhaps not so easy to explain some of the clues.

    There are 25 “A”s in this puzzle plus ALPHA at 22d! I also spotted a number of additional words in the grid: ACTS, AREA (twice), REAL and ERST. I wondered if there might be a NINA going on, but if there is I haven’t got it.

    1. As you were! Only 23 once DAMAGED was corrected, and ACTS and one of the AREAs have to go too.
  7. This is the first time for months that I have not completed a puzzle with or without aids. I thought that I had heard of a valeta as a dance, but when Onelook could not find it, I had to defeat.
    1. OK already: to admit defeat. And I had 1 ac wrong as well. The world is going to the dogs.
  8. 31 minutes to do all but one, with another 10 minutes to get valeta, mainly because I imagined it was spelt like the capital of Malta.

    I failed abysmally on yesterday’s, supposedly easy, Rufus in the Guardian. Rufus is the master of the cryptic definition and the problem with CDs is you either get them or you don’t. There is no second chance. At least it put me in the right mindset to do today’s puzzle with, I made it, 5 CDs and 2 DDs. There was also a 5-letter anagram, which is quite unusual for this puzzle.

    Still, there was lots to enjoy here. I particularly liked the wordplay for moonset, absenteeism and primitive. I was also pleased to get the Battle of Magenta, having recently done the risorigimento as a module in my Italian A-level course.

    Wasn’t it Ronald Reagan who made the remark about death and taxes?

    Forget that last remark. I don’t want another heated discussion

  9. Glad to see I was not the only one to go for DAMAGED. I saw other half as DAM…. and being partly abled, you are DAMAGED. DEMIGOD never occurred to me….
  10. 7:50 here, disappointing after a quick start, and still think it should really have been around 6. Slowed down a bit by 20, 25A, 1D (wanting hits to be RAPS), but most of all an initial MISHANDLE at 21A – a very poor show when I’ve actually read some Thomas Mann, though about as long ago as I was reading Francoise Sagan. I thought someone might go faster, but I guess VALETA in particular (seen before somewhere) saved me – so far …

    27 MAGENTA: file with SOLFERINO – another that’s both a battle and a shade of red.
    25 PRIMITIVE: if the def. is simply “old”, then “painter” serves no purpose in the clue. COED has “a pre-Renaissance painter”, so the def has to be “old painter”.

    Is 5 CDs a record? Maybe in 2009, but in the days of Adrian Bell I think there were quite often more. Last Saturday’s Telegraph puzzle had about 9. By my reckoning, the 1965 puzzle in the Times 75th anniversary book has 19!

    1. PRIMITIVE typo corrected – thanks Peter.

      VALETA has been in Mephisto/Azed – I also knew it from that source. On that topic, if anybody is thinking of doing their first Mephisto 2536 of last Sunday is very easy indeed.

      You are correct about CDs – they used to abound, which may be why I don’t really like them! I don’t recall as many as this in a Times Daily for ages.

      1. Thanks for the Mephisto hint; I’ve been attempting them for the last few weeks, but there’s far too many obscure words for me to hold out much hope of completion. I think my best so far is nearly-two-thirds, leaving a huge chunk with no crossing letters to help identify anything.
      2. I’ve known of the VALETA for as long as I can remember from a recording in my grandfather’s collection of 78s called “Good Old Dances” featuring Jack Hylyon’s band and Tommy Handley (of ITMA fame).

        I still have some of these 78s but no means of playing them and unfortunately this particular favourite was broken probably about 50 years ago.

        But I’ve just discovered a Jack Hilton website and this very recording made in 1929 is available to listen to on-line, so when I get home this evening I shall take a trip down memory lane.

        1. Curses, I still can’t delete and edit at work and I managed to misspell Jack Hylton twice.

          Jimbo, I tried the Mephisto for the first time this week and made some progress but I’m afraid the progress wasn’t steady enough to hold my interest and I gave up with only a third of it completed.

      3. I’m not finding it that easy. I have dipped into it on a few occasions and am still only half done.
    2. From the pen and voice of the blessed Joyce Grengell

      So, stately as two galleons, we sail across the floor,
      Doing the Valse Valeta as in the days of yore.
      The gent is Mrs Tiverton, I am her lady fair,
      She bows to me ever so nicely and I curtsey to her with care.
      So gay the band,
      So giddy the sight,
      But it’s not the same in the end
      For a lady is never a gentleman, though
      She may be your bosom friend.

  11. I couldn’t complete the NE corner because I was so sure BREAD was the answer, not BRASS. I figured it was referring to the sacrament of Communion ‘Do this in memory of me’. I still think its the better answer, albeit the wrong one.

    Can someone explain why ‘see’ = ‘v’?

    1. v=vide (latin)=see. You need to remember this, it crops up all the time.
  12. Not strictly related to today’s crossword, but – I’ve just been reading the review of last month’s clue-writing competition.
    1. That wouldn’t be you amongst the runners up would it? If it were to be: Well, done! And to Tom B. as well. Any others hiding their lights under Bushells?
  13. The last Azed puzzle I reported on at fifteensquared was a relatively easy one, so I pushed it as one for beginners to try, and included general advice in my report as well as clue explanations. Mephisto puzzles are in a very similar style to Azed plain puzzles, so I think all the advice applies.

    Here are links to the puzzle and my report.

    1. You can also try the tiny “tips and tricks” tag on the RHS of this blog.
  14. The clock says 39 minutes, which is just above average (with one mistake, at 20d), but this felt a lot harder along the way. The SE corner in particular held me up for a good ten minutes of that. COD for me either 26ac or 22d.
  15. Not my cup of tea, I don’t really get into cryptic definitions, and there were too many of them for me in this one. And I went for DAMAGED.
  16. Just over 16 minutes, the first puzzle I have done for a few days, but I have to admit, like others, to DAMAGED at 1 across.

    The rest went in very steadily, although I can’t remember ever getting so many on the cold-solve first run through. VALETA and MAGENTA were the last to fall. I couldn’t remember whether the battle ended in A or O, but the dance came once I had the A and the E.

    I have always understood V to be the International Vehicle Registration for Vatican City and equating to the Holy See, but I note from Chambers that the Holy See is actually the Roman Catholic bishopric of Rome rather than just the Vatican City. So I have learned something new that V actually stands for ‘vide’.

  17. Ditto, ditto and ditto. Didn’t fall for DAMAGED but didn’t have a clue about VALETA. Thought it was going to be a doddle with an extremely quick CAW (seconded for COD) but then a stop, start, stop and final fall asleep on sofa dreaming of valeta’s never danced.
  18. I got there in the end, after an overnight break. Last night I gave up on it, not sure if it was me or the puzzle. Finished it this morning and still felt that one of us was a bit out of kilter. Seeing that Peter and linxit and one or two others had no real problems, I guess it must be me. Nurse …!
    1. … which brings us back to the only two certainties in life …..
      Death and nurses.

      I’ll get my bullet proof vest!

      Mike O

      1. I would like to get offended on behalf of nurses everywhere… but, from what I hear, you’re right!
  19. Stumped by VALETA. Never heard of it. Other than that unfortunate truth, 37 minutes for everything else. I quibble with the citation of Twain at 17A (which we Americans would always attribute to Franklin), and I also don’t think that DISMAL=’black and blue’ is very precise. The use of ‘a gee-gee’ in 26 seems like a real stretch. Is there any such thing as a ‘gee-gee’? On the other hand, I appreciate the clues for 5D, 2D and 3D very much. COD choice is MOONSET. Better luck tomorrow, I hope. Regards to all.
    1. Both “gee-gee” itself, and GG as an abbr. for it, are common slang on this side of the pond for a horse. I assume it comes from jockeys saying “gee up!” to get the horse moving.

      So for English solvers at least, it is fair: gee-gee = horse = GG. I don’t know to what extent, if any, setters are required to take into account that non-British people also attempt the crossword. It is ultimately a British paper.

      1. Well thanks for that, heyesey. Another piece of UK slang I did not know. If it is commonly used over there, then no complaints from me. It’s one of the accepted challenges for a non-UKer like me, that when tackling this puzzle, I’m often confronted with words and phrases that I’ve never seen, or that mean something entirely different over here. It’s educational.
        1. Kevin, you might also note that the word “gee” means the letter “g” so whilst all the stuff about horses is correct (gee-gee is particularly used by children rather like moo-cow and baa-lamb) as far as the clue is concerned “restraint of a gee-gee” translates literally as “AGG”
  20. i wrote in 9a,5a,8d,5d,14a,17a without pausing for thought and shortly afterwards got 2d,3d&4d. I thought I was on track to do my first ever unaided Times crossword but apart from putting 1a as damaged, that was as far as I got. How disheatening to get 9 clues in about 3 minutes and no more!
    1. Concentrate on the upside; you’re quick, and all you need now is more experience.
  21. I know after 44 comments, I’m probably not right but could Twain (with false capital) mean two i.e. death and taxes? Much easier puzzle than usual, I found, 18 mins, and I must have been lucky with DEMIGOD and VALETA (the latter I probably met in the harder puzzles).
    1. Pretty much – DAMAGED is tempting but doesn’t really work, and nothing else has been suggested. 100-1 against anything else being given as the answer tomorrow.
      1. For the record, the correct answer to 1A is DEMIGOD as confirmed the next day.
  23. From memory Twain (as Clemens) featured prominently in a double episode of “Star Trek the Next Generation” both in the past and in the future (with the benefit of time travel) and his ramblings on taxes, death, extra terrestrials and other matters were prominent as I remember. The series is still being continuously replayed at least in Australia. Perhaps the US writers think he coined the idea.
    I guessed DEMIGOD (over DAMAGED) only because of the “half” reference. At least in Australia “his other half” means his wife so I couldn’t see past the notion of his “wife’s errors” and thus couldn’t see the half referred to him.
    LAM is one commonly used alternative for hit in our local SMH cryptic.
  24. Was this a trap? Was the setter trying to tell us something? Do those of us who fell for it have DAMAGED CEREBRA
    1. not me, but i definitely have a HAGGARD MAGENTA…..

      btw I was hoping there was an old painter called PRITEPILO, which was conceivable (at least when on the train) using PREP for preparing the canvas. Sadly it was not to be.

  25. I found this one to be a fun stroll in the park – even at 1a where DEMIGOD emerged from the cryptic. The VALETA dance at 20d was my LOI but I did see the “Jeeves” followed by A. I tried checking it with Oneacross but that did not have it – as has already been noted. It was very rewarding to log in here and see that it was correct.

    There are 4 “easies” left out:

    11a Part of what’s eaten on cruise, for example (2,3)
    (wha) AT’S EA (ten)

    24a Result of bulb wrongly lit up (5)
    TULIP. Anagram of (LIT UP).

    6d Crazy attack with bishop in centre (5)
    RA B ID

    22d Dominant leader in Athens, originally (5)
    ALPHA. As in “Alpha male” and the first letter of ATHENS in the original Greek.

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