The welcome sight of Brendan’s name on a puzzle is a promise of and enjoyable, but not too difficult, puzzle, and so it was on this occasion. Thanks to Brendan.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN famously said that nothing is CERTAIN but DEATH and TAXES (though apparently he wasn’t the first to say something of the sort), and we have a number of answers related to the three key words: for the first: CONFIDENT, NO DOUBT, CONVICTION and SURE THING, (and maybe AGREE and SINCERE) ; for the second : END, QUIETUS, ICED (=murdered); and for the third: LEVY, RATES, DUTY. Another brilliant feat of construction.
| Across | ||||||||
| 9 | CONFIDENT | Self-assured, able to absorb study after study (9) CON (study) + DEN (study) in FIT |
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| 10 | AGREE | In time, about to come to same conclusion (5) RE (about) in AGE |
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| 11 | DEATH | Curtains made at home, apart from fringes (5) Hidden in maDE AT Home |
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| 12 | CERTAINTY | Revise a city rent that’s bound to bring better profit (9) (A CITY RENT)* |
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| 13 | NO DOUBT | Sign agreement — book available outside without question (2,5) NOD (to sign agreement) + B in OUT (available, as a published book might be, for example) |
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| 14 | TICKLER | Around lake, watch person catching fish (7) L in TICKER |
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| 17 | TIBET | Gamble on it, backed in place of many mounts (5) Reverse of IT + BET |
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| 19 | END | Purpose shown by predecessors of foe (3) The letters before F O E are E N D |
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| 20 | NONET | Group of players that’s gross? On the contrary (5) NO NET, as in the contrast between gross and net prices, profits etc |
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| 21 | SINCERE | Because, for example, ultimately it’s true (7) SINCE + last letters of foR examplE |
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| 22 | QUIETUS | Release call for peace by superpower (7) QUIET (call for peace) + US (superpower) |
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| 24 | DRAMATISE | Doctor is clad by a colleague to prepare for theatre (9) DR + IS in A MATE |
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| 26 | TAXES | Tries and dismisses following court’s conclusion (5) [cour]T + AXES |
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| 29 | CANNONEER | Old soldier in unit invested in food processor (9) ONE (unit) in CANNER (a person processing food) |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1 | ICED | Decorated with diamonds above and below (4) ICE (slang for diamonds) + D (abbreviation of the word) |
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| 2 | INWARD | Private patients are treated here (6) Patients are treated IN [a] WARD |
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| 3 | SILHOUETTE | Outline conversion of hotel suite (10) (HOTEL SUITE)* |
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| 4 | TERCET | Eschewing even bits of theory, create lines of verse (6) Odd letters of ThEoRy CrEaTe |
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| 5 | ITERATED | Educated learner’s initially expelled, with poor grade repeated (8) LITERATE (learned) less L[earner] + D (a poor grade) |
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| 6 | DATA | Figures turned up at short notice: not a lot (4) Reverse of both AT AD and A TAD |
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| 7 | FRANKLIN | Pilgrim, speaking directly, left home (8) FRANK + L + IN – the Franklin is one of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s CanterburyTales. I thought of Benjamin Franklin at first, but although he was from a pilgrim family I don’t think he counts as one himself; but of course he turns up as a key part of the theme |
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| 8 | LEVY | Exact straight line passed over centre of gravity (4) Middle letter of graVity in LEY [line] |
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| 13 | NOTES | One form of what time is? Minutes, perhaps (5) Not sure about this, but “time is money”, and NOTES are a form of money. As noted in the comments, “time is money” is also attributed to Benjamin Franklin, which make me much more confident in my interpretation |
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| 15 | CONVICTION | A certain opinion on iconic TV broadcast (10) (ON ICONIC TV)* |
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| 16 | RATES | Assesses lab subjects, having injected drug (5) E (drug) in RATS |
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| 18 | BENJAMIN | Tribe‘s difficulty dividing African country (8) JAM (difficulty – “he’s in a jam”) in BENIN – one of the twelve tribes of Israel, named after the youngest brother of Joseph (of Technicolor Dreamcoat fame) |
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| 19 | EYEPIECE | Microscopic part for pupil, say? (8) An eyepiece is part of a microscope, and the pupil is a piece of the eye |
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| 22 | QUEENS | Most powerful men on board, but not at court (6) Queens are the most powerful pieces or “men” in chess; as human beings they may be powerful in a court, but are not men in that case |
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| 23 | TEXTED | Communicated with head of French department, initially, around ten (6) X (ten) in TETE (French “head”) + D[epartment] |
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| 24 | DUTY | What’s required you must pay finally? (4) Last letters of requireD yoU musT paY &lit |
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| 25 | ARGO | A river journey for ancient boat with many oarsmen (4) A R GO – Jason’s golden-fleece-seeking Argo had 50 oars |
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| 27 | SURE THING | Reign thus, badly and absolutely! (4,5) (REIGN THUS)* |
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Thanks Brendan and Andrew
Not hard, though I’m not sure about NOTES either. No theme for me, of course.
Lots to like. Particular ticks against CERTAINTY (a better would surely win on one!) and TEXTED.
Re NOTES, the expression ‘Time is Money’ is attributed to Benjamin Franklin so I think your interpretation is correct.
I came here to try and understand 13d! I was trying to do something with an anagram (a form of) ONE + T for time, + and S that came from somewhere… so I think your explanation makes a lot more sense.
Missed out on the theme apart from the name of Ben Franklin. Enjoyed the very nice anagram for SILHOUETTE.
Thanks Brendan and Andrew.
Excellent as always from Brendan, even with such a depressing theme. Shame that dramatise wasn’t clued with the ‘z’ as that would have made it a pangram.
Thanks Brendan and Andrew.
13 D
I parsed it just like Andrew did. I feel ok with it.
Of course, someone may come up with a better explanation.
Liked EYEPIECE.
There’s always something worth looking for in a Brendan puzzle. I got as far as the death and taxes, but didn’t know it was a Benjamin Franklin quote, so I missed that (and him).
TERCET was new, and I had trouble with ITERATED because I had “with poor grade”=E-rated and then couldn’t account for the rest. END was an unusual bit of parsing, but I don’t suppose there are that many words it works for.
Blah@4
Interesting observation!
“the only certainty in life is death and taxes” as I’m sure many know but nobody has said yet.
Very clever and a lot of fun to complete with ICED, SILHOUETTE and TIBET as favourites and QUEENS as top dog, though I did spot some criticism of the clue on the G site as non PC.
I wonder what sheffield hatter will make of 11ac
Thanks Brendan and Andrew
Another treat from Brendan – I only noticed the theme towards the end of the solving process
Thanks to him and Andrew
Thanks to Brendan and Andrew.
Blah@4 – There have been a couple of recent occasions where the compiler has avoided a pangram by missing one letter, and putting in a clue which could easily have accommodated that missing letter.
Is it a deliberate ploy to tease the audience?
Loved 13, and I’m sure the “time is money” explanation is correct, although I didn’t know it was attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Missed out on the rest of the theme quotes as well. CANNONEER reminded me of one of the silliest limericks I ever heard. If I remember correctly:
A canner, exceedingly canny,
Remarked one day to his granny
“A canner can can
Anything that he can,
But a canner can’t can a can, can he?”
…and also, for Flann O’Brien fans, of one of Myles na gCopaleen’s Keats and Chapman stories, where one of them sets up as a food processor and the other asks whether he’s making it pay. He replies “I eat what I can.”
Re: 13ac – I think people are being oversubtle about this: surely it’s just minutes in the sense of notes of a meeting?
Wonderful puzzle. NOTES would have been a bit of a stretch if it weren’t for the BF connection.
I got END in the end but not before trying to use fee and fie.
I thought “with many oarsmen” a bit unnecessary (how many other ancient boats do you know?), but not a problem.
PostMark@9 – possibly the criticisms of 22d (queens) is because people read the clue – as I did at first – as meaning that a queen is not as powerful in a court as a king. Andrew’s more careful parsing does away with that wrong assumption. Thanks Andrew and thanks to Brendan for another masterful piece of work.
What crypticsue said @9. Much easier after yesterday’s mauling. Like PM @10, QUEENS was my favourite. I also thought the same thing as dantheman @11 regarding the tease.
Ta Brendan & Andrew
dantheman @11, re. missed pangrams: I have been involved in a couple of conversations here about these, and certainly I have seen the conspiracy theory of the missed pangram argued for. Here, I am inclined to think it was accidental – Brendan clearly had other imperatives to accommodate within the grid. An alternative means to secure the pangram would have been to have ATRIA and ZANY crossing in the far NE corner, instead of AGREE and LEVY, but that would have lost LEVY, which serves the theme.
(Sorry, my comment @13 referred to 13d, obvs.)
Thanks Brendan and Andrew
Like Rubber Tanks, I’m in the One form of time = minutes > notes.
Me @19 ‘camp’ omitted. Obligatory tyop.
Brilliant as ever from Brendan and so appropriate for the day after the budget while COVID still rages.
Could this not refer to musical notes? They all have a length of time.
At 13d I took NOTES to be made up (one form each) out of ONE, T (time), and S (is, as in it’s).
There’s even a tenuous BF connection with CANNONEER. According to wikipedia “The idea of aligning waking hours to daylight hours to conserve candles was first proposed in 1784 by American Benjamin Franklin. In a satirical letter to the editor of The Journal of Paris, the American inventor suggested that waking up earlier in the summer would economize candle usage and calculated considerable savings.”
And, according to The Franklin Institute, “Tongue firmly in cheek, Franklin went on to propose regulations to ensure Parisians became early risers:
First…
Fourth. Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing; and if that is not sufficient? Let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest.”
‘Another brilliant feat of construction’, indeed – and most absorbing and enjoyable, as usual.
I first noticed the symmetrical LEVY and DUTY and latched on to the theme about half way through.
I didn’t know that ‘Time is money’ was also from Franklin, so thanks to Simon @2 for confirming Andrew’s parsing (which I hadn’t really seen, either).
My ticks today were for the construction and surfaces of DRAMATISE (I, for one, am glad to see my preferred spelling, but then I don’t get excited about – or even look for – pangrams!), CONVICTION and BENJAMIN, also for the nifty definition.
Thanks for the extra nugget, blaise@24.
Many thanks to Brendan and to Andrew – sorry not to be seeing you on Saturday, after all.
Excellent puzzle which was fun to solve.
Favourites: LEVY, CONVICTION, CONFIDENT, DEATH, END, TEXTED, DRAMATISE.
I did not parse : 24d or 13d – was wondering if it referred to musical notes but could not work it out.
New for me: CANNONEER.
Thanks, both.
The BF quite confirmed my final entry-LEVY-nice cluw
Great puzzle
Thanks all.
Excellent puzzle. Many thanks to Brendan and Andrew.
Looked for the theme cued by a G threader, saw the BF/certain/death/taxes bits, but didn’t look for further association. Speaking of which, liked the, um, social currency of 22d. Tercet, a nho, was a follow instructions and pray. Not too taxing a Brendan, but with hidden depths, and thanks Andrew.
Enjoyable puzzle with theme spotted post completion, indeed a brilliant feat of construction. Thanks to Brendan and Andrew
Enjoyed this
Lots to like – favourites included: BENJAMIN, SILHOUETTE, DRAMATISE, TICKLER, TERCET (which I’d never heard of)
Thanks Brendan and Andrew
Not quite Halloween, but a splendid ghost theme from Brendan nevertheless – which I did spot. Good quality clues, as usual.
I saw that the puzzle was a Z short of a pangram – which makes it a lipogram, a piece which (deliberately?) excludes one letter of the alphabet. [One spectacular example is the novel ‘La disparition’ (The Disappearance) by Georges Perec, which omits the letter E – even more difficult in French. It was translated as a lipogram into English by Gilbert Adair as ‘A Void’]
Thanks to Brendan and Andrew
Gervase @32 – do you remember this Brendan puzzle? 😉
[Eileen @33: No – I must have missed that! Many years ago (in the 70s I think) Araucaria provided an April 1 puzzle in the Guardian with the rubric: ‘The solutions have nothing in common but the first of April’. All the crossing letters were A. That makes it a univocalic work]
I would just like to add my approbation to the comments accumulating here. I became vaguely aware of the certainty, death and taxes tendency, but didn’t know the attribution to Ben Franklin so missed the full splendour of the theme. I *was* looking for the pangram and thought that DRAMATISE (my LOI) was a wonderful deliberate tease from Brendan. I was bamboozled by the wordplay for NOTES, but after reading the suggestions above I think that the ‘time is money’ reference from Simon@2 would work so well with the Franklin theme that it must surely be the setter’s intention.
No daft Chamberisms, no 1970s ventriloquists, no tortured syntax to reverse the inclusion indicator — one excellent puzzle!
I’m not normally as ecstatic about the appearance of a Brendan as other contributors are but this landed squarely in the Goldilocks zone for me, which was something of a relief after recent tribulations. I felt smug knowing TERCET; elsewhere NONET earned a tick but DRAMATISE was my favourite. Thanks to Brendan and Andrew.
Excellent puzzle, but I was nonplussed by the parsing of 13a. The solution was clear, but I think NOD = “sign agreement” is dubious. A simple “agree” would have met the case. I kept trying to justify NT (book) outside of ODOUB and of course couldn’t make it work.
poc @ 37
I thought ‘sign agreement’ = NOD was fine, as it’s agreeing by giving a sign, brings in the misdirection of sign / pen to paper, and avoids direct repetition of the solution to 10A.
I agree with pserve_p2: other interpretations of NOTES are possible, but given the Benjamin Franklin theme, it surely must refer to the quote from him (which I didn’t know either: must brush up on my Ben Franklin).
Yes, wonderful setting to get in all the themed references, which I missed, of course.
Poc @37; AGREE is in the grid, though.
I twigged the meaning of curtains early on but failed to see what I thought was the well-hidden DEATH. I liked ITERATED, TEXTED (I thought the French ‘of’ was backed at first), BENJAMIN and EYEPIECE. I thought the ‘not a lot’ in 6D would have been better omitted. IMHO, it’s just confusing to have two sets of wordplay.
Thanks Brendan and Andrew.
I did not find this as easy as others here. Missed the theme and am not really sorry I did. Quite a few words I only vaguely knew which made it harder. I liked TIBET as the place of many mounts. I suppose one should not compare but, I enjoyed yesterday’s more. Anyway many thanks Brendan and Andrew,
Certainly no cakewalk (or theme) but thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless.
Can one really interpose speaking directly and frank in the same sentence? Don’t you need “being” to make it work?
My COD was LEVY for the lovely misdirect of exact.
Many thanks both.
A minor quibble but wouldn’t 23d have been clearer with ‘head *in* French…’? It doesn’t detract from the surface but is more grammatically correct.
Just a thought and by no means detracting a lovely puzzle.
Yet another possible reading of NOTES is in Civil Service-speak, where if you write a minute to someone, you are sending them a memo, or a note. It can even be a verb – “s/he noted” = “s/he minuted”. The usage goes back at least as far as Dickens:
“I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing, on this mighty subject.”.
But that’s for the definition; for the wordplay, I’m CONFIDENT, in fact I have NO DOUBT, that Andrew is on the money with his banknotes.
William @42: I had the same query, then thought – if so-and-so was talking and he was rather FRANK, then he was ‘speaking directly’.
Many thanks Brendan and Andrew, and blaise @12 for the limerick (although it’s given me a weird combi-earworm featuring Suzi Q and bits of Offenbach).
eb @44: Yes, that works, thanks.
Was anyone else racking their brains for racecourses to be the place of many mounts? Ascot? Epsom?
With all the crossers in for 18d, and not having twigged the theme (as per usual) I was toying with Bengalis as possibly being a “Tribe”. But an excellent Brendan offering as ever…
Simon S@38: I see what you mean. Sign meaning “indicate” works.
Robi@40 – isn’t it the point of a cryptic clue to set out to confuse the solver?
Gladys@46 – yes, me too.
Completely missed the theme (as usual).
Thanks to Brenda and Andrew for an excellent puzzle and blog.
“ICE (slang for diamonds) + D (abbreviation of the word)”
I don’t understand this.
Can someone explain it, please?
Ben@50 Iced as in decorated a cake.
Ben @50 D is an abbreviation of DIAMONDS when you’re playing cards
I loved TIBET and AGREE because I got the right answer for the wrong reason having been playing with ERA as the time
Thanks, bodycheetah @52.
So, it is two meanings of diamonds, above and below each other.
The level was just right, enjoyed the clever construction re many of the clues and the number of interesting new words for me. DEATH gave one of the themes away. BENJAMIN, LEVY and QUEENS three of of my favourites answers. Thanks to Brendan and Andrew.
I preferred yesterday’s puzzle!
Sourdough @49; the point is that ‘Figures turned up at short notice’ already gives you the answer. The ‘not a lot’ is therefore somewhat redundant. I was once told by an experienced setter never to use double wordplay but I guess if people like it, the ‘rule’ can be broken.
Thanks Andrew, I wasn’t clear on the first part of NOTES but am now (also ta SImon@2), and like the way it adds depth to the theme – I got the death and taxes part but always thought it came from Mark Twain, so only with the penultimate entry FRANKLIN did I think to check!
essexboy@44 thanks for the frank example as that struck me too, gladys@46 yes I was taken in by that surface for a while, as with that for DRAMATISE – when will I learn?
Anyway and as expected I thought it was great, thanks Brendan.
Thanks to Brendan and Andrew.
DEATH and TAXES stirred in me the possibility of a theme but I am (apparently) restricted in such areas and it sailed over my head (to long stop?). Spookily, I spent some part of yesterday evening with a friend who had come into a small inheritance (and was complaining about the tax bill). Given death and taxes etc, quoth I, paying taxes was the better option so rejoice. But she was not to be comforted.
muffin@1: Thanks for inclining to mine aid yestreen vis-a-vis the estimable Trailman. (I seem to be channeling someone from the 17th century today.)
[Gazzh@57 reminds me that Benjamin Franklin is a member of the same club as Mark Twain: people who have so many genuine good quotes that they also get many things they never said attributed to them. Others are Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, Dorothy Parker… ]
Robi@56 and Sourdough@49: I see where you are coming from but have you noticed it’s a quasi-triple?
DATA = ‘figures’
AT AD (vertically, backwards) = at short notice (AD short for advert = notice)
A TAD (vertically, backwards) = not a lot, hence – a little (as in, ‘he drank a tad too much’)
‘Plain’ triples seem to be acceptable but here we have one definition and two cryptic ways of getting there. It all adds to the fun – and yes, it should be fun, including those we apparently don’t like!
Thanks for the blog, I actually noticed death and taxes and Benjamin Franklin but not the rest so thanks for all the suggestions. Nice that all clues work fine without the theme.
A masterpiece today, a string of neat , sound clues showing originality and imagination.
I love the use of particular words to mislead here – 12Ac better, 8D exact, 15D certain , virtually all of 24Ac .
Did not know CANNONEER, sounded right, or TEXTED but both were clear from the wordplay.
Brendon is new to me and, initially, the clues read so much like normal sentences that I had to focus to pull them apart; and apart they came – gradually and pleasingly.
There was a spartan smooth elegance to the clues, which was a welcome contrast to yesterday. I’ve added Brendon to my favourites’ list so that when I go back to being an intermittent solver, I’ll look for him when I fancy a cryptic.
After my hike, I read yesterday’s copious comments. Do setters lurk or even comment here (or elsewhere), for example, to explain, clear up or even justify some clues?!
Thank you Brendon and Andrew for pointing out the theme and clearing up a few clues that I couldn’t parse.
Tim @60; yes, that’s what Andrew said in the blog. Without labouring the point: a single definition is what one might find in a quick crossword clue, but in a cryptic crossword the clue should normally lead to an unequivocal answer, and therefore a second, third etc definition is added; alternatively, there is wordplay. Thus, definition plus wordplay leads to the answer. A second piece of wordplay is superfluous. However, as I said above, there are no precise rules in cryptic crosswords, although there are some norms. If it gives the setter and solver some joy, who am I to complain if the norms are not followed?
Re Time is Money…
“He that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him…….as Poor Richard says.”
From The Way to Wealth (BF 1758)
I took Ti and Me to be musical notes, perhaps played on his glass harmonica. Wikipedia tells me he used chess 22d as a means to learn Italian; the winner specifying a linguistic task for the loser to perform at the next meeting. I wonder whether he might have played against Philidor during his travels in France ?
Thank you Andrew, and Bravo Brendan !
Robi@63 – indeed, I confess to point-labouring. It’s quiet here at work today …
You are right and nobody is right – that’s kinda my last sentence, which parallels yours.
Could Queens refer to Queens Club, the tennis courts in West London and one of the competitions that precedes Wimbledon? Or is that too specialised?
A very impressive puzzle.
…also confess to not checking the blog!
pdp11 @62
Setters occasionally drop in, some more regularly than others. Don’t expect it.
I also learnt to program on you!
Blaise @ 12: I’m a great admirer of Flann O’Brien, born like myself in Strabane. He would surely have been a great cryptic setter if he had put his mind to it.
Brilliant indeed! Thanks both.
pdp11@62 – me too: Version 7 Unix back in the early 80s – what a delight!
[muffin@68, Lautus@70 😀 I thought I’d picked an obscure moniker but I think more people have recognised it (and even programmed on it) here than on some computer forums!]
There, you are, pdp11. Brian Greer is Brendan. I wonder why he didn’t acknowledge it?
Dispatched & finished late, but certainly not too taxing.
Thanks Brendan for a beautifully constructed grid, and Andrew for blog and help with NOTES.
[gladys@59: yes and I came across many of them when checking the death+taxes source – was going to attempt to work one or two wittily into my post re the near-pangram but then found they were not BF at all. His name seems also to have been falsely attached to some heinous antisemitic rants too – just goes to show that fake news is nothing new.]
muffin@72 – what a coincidence! Thanks for pointing him out. I’ll familiarise myself with their real names. I’ve started another Brendan (28,570). I hope it’s as enjoyable as this one 🙂
pdp11 @75
This link (on this site) is useful for real names. (It’s on the bar at the top, for future reference.)
muffin@76 thanks again.
[Mark @9. I wonder what sheffield hatter will make of 11ac. I was struggling for a moment to think what you were referring to, but then it all came flooding back. But that clue was much more gruesome and, to me anyway, shocking. ‘Death by hanging?’, as far as I can recall. It was a long time ago, so well done to you for remembering.]
Brian Greer@69. I think you’re right that Flann O’Brien would have made a wicked setter. The only problem is that you’d never know whether the answers were in English or Irish or French or German or Gaelic phonetically rendered as Latin (and maybe also the other way around?).
GSM @66. I also thought of the Queens tennis club, but it’s not enough to count as misdirection or alternative wordplay and quite likely accidental. And like Gladys @46 I was initially drawn to the idea of mounts at racecourses, but in this case it *was* deliberate misdirection on Brendan’s part.
By the way, forgot to say: There was a theme? 🙂
Thanks to Brendan and Andrew.
$100 NOTES are referred to as Benjamins
I enjoyed that a lot. It was also the first time ever I think that I’ve cottoned on to a theme, and fairly early on in the game what’s more. Strangely, although I confirmed from Prof Google that the saying was attributed to BF, both BENJAMIN and FRANKLIN were within the last few clues to fall and they fell in a rush.. Once solved, they became favourites – but by then I’d forgotten about the BF connexion altogether and only reacquainted the two, with much delight, after coming here.
[NB: The spelling of the p.p. of the verb ‘to connect’ is simply for Eileen’s benefit – I had a forthright Latin master at school way way back in the day who insisted that that was the only way to spell it. Sadly, it’s one of the very few titbits of information I still retain from his no doubt excellent lessons!]
pdp11 and others: More nostalgia. I think it was a PDP-12 I used in the 70’s but I can’t be sure of the number.
Cracking crossword, that, got about half way.
Unlike yesterday, when revealed, I can actually understand the parsing.
Thanks both,
Thanks to Brendan and Andrew!
DRAMATISE was my favourite. Struggled a bit in the SE corner- spotted the theme when I was about 80% done!
I thought this was a mediocre crossword, not really worthy of comment. Then I came here and realised most of Brendan’s cleverness was entirely lost on me. Fantastic puzzle and enlightening blog! Many thanks to all.
Brian Greer@83 – I’d not heard of the PDP-12 and wondered why. It seems DEC forked the PDP-8 to PDP-11 (1970) and PDP-12 (1969). The PDP-11 begat the VAX-11, which is the path I went down.
On a more interesting note (for the majority here): yesterday out of curiosity, I picked up my (mostly unsolved) copy of The Times Crossword Book 4. It was originally edited by a certain Brian Greer. Today muffin pointed out that Brendan is Brian Greer! I found the clues in that book fairly opaque. I’ve noticed, based on a sample size of one, that Brendan has one similarity with some of the puzzles in that book: both make if difficult to separate the definition from the wordplay. Is that one of the house rules of The Times Crossword and are there others that come to mind?
[pdp11
I first programmed in BASIC to do exam marks when I was teaching. It would have been about 1975/6. The computer was a PDP11 LS23, the size of a dustbin, with, I think, 64Kb of memory. It was multi-user! I had to throw everyone else off when doing exam marks, though.]
Awesome puzzle from my favourite setter.
Thanks Brendan and Andrew…
PDP 11/70….RSX-11M+, IAS and RSTS/E early 1980s – Basic+2
[muffin, the mind boggles (as I sit typing on a PC with 32GB of memory) how a multi-user system existed in 64Kb!
When I worked at CAA/NATS in the 80’s/90’s (on VAX/VMS not PDP-11), someone told me that air traffic control was still using PDP-11’s! Imagine that – a 1970’s computer being used over 20 years later. Wikipedia says, “In 2013, it was reported that PDP-11 programmers would be needed to control nuclear power plants through 2050.” We may have our day in the sun again!]
[Sorry muffin@88 and others: Atlas Autocode 1966 on an Atlas via a Friden Flexowriter]
Thanks Brendan and Andrew
[Taffy@89 😀 ]
Dave Ellison @ 81: Elliott Autocode 1966 for me.
Sorry Dave — 91 not 81 (!)
Well, I often feel small when the crossword discussions delve into homophones and linguistics but tonight my feeling of inadequacy has reached a new low!! What the hell are you all writing about?!!!!!
[SPanza @95
Sorry, very primitive computers – virtually clockwork!]
Well done Paul, Tutukaka @86 for admitting to changing your mind about a puzzle after reading the blog (hooray!) and for submitting a post that’s about the puzzle (hooray!). My post, unfortunately, is about your post, not about the puzzle (boo!). But at least it’s not about an obsolete computer. 🙂
Hi Gert Bycee @82, if you’re still there – my apologies for the delay: I’ve been out most of the day and didn’t get round to catching up on the blog until after I’d eaten.
It pains me to say it – it’s so ugly-looking – but, since nexum is the fourth principal part (supine) of the verb nectere, your Latin master’s spelling is, etymologically, correct. (SOED – ‘the etymological spelling connexion is the original in English’.)
See also from Wikipedia:
Connexion is the original and variant spelling of “connection”, common until at least the 19th century, and still occasionally used in British English (it was the house style of The Times of London as recently as the 1980s). It is derived from the Latin connexio, hence the spelling, unlike most words ending in “-ction” which are derived from Latin words ending in “-ctio” (e.g. “protection” from protectio).
Eileen @98
Fascinating, but I’m never going to write connexion (again!). Where does “connect” come from?
What SPanza said @ 95 🙂
muffin @99
‘Connect’ comes, as the Wiki entry suggests, by analogy with the far more common supine ending ‘-ctum. The regular third conjugation verb in the Latin course I used was rego, regere, rexi, rectum, to rule, so we get ‘regent’ from the first part (present tense) and ‘direct’, ‘correct’ etc from the supines of its compounds.
Thanks Eileen, but I’m afraid you lost me at “supine ending” (though I do know the difference between supine and prone!)
trishincharente @100 honoured once again!!
Thanks Eileen. Mr Norman Marrow, late of WBGS, would most heartily approve!
[Huge overnight storm here in Melbourne and all the northern suburbs are without power!]
Great puzzle, favorite TIBET. Thanks both.
[Ben Franklin also gave us “Those who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither”. Something for all of you in Medico-Police States to think about.]
Gert Bycee, you’re welcome. 😉
[Thanks SH@97. Well, we both had our moment recently with ALL BLACKS (I take it the WSC is still played at the Crucible?)]
03:20 Gaufrid, BG and everyone here: blessed thanks. Bed-time story excellence.
Well did it last night without noticing the theme which is a pity really. Also foe was mystery to me.
Thanks for explanations Andrew and to Brendan.
Great puzzle! Got it all but “data”. Was trying to make nada = “not a lot” work!
We enjoyed the puzzle.
One clue that we didn’t fully understand: in 12 across, what is the significance of the reference to “better profit”? It just seems superfluous to us.