The Times Crossword Friday Masterclass: 16 August 2024

[@Antinomiste]

For trifling: I think a fling is supposed to be a short-lived love affair, and tri is indeed taken as a prefix for three (trifecta, tripod), therefore a trifling is a short-lived ménage à trois!

[@mikechappell5849]

yes, a fling being short-lived was the bit Simon missed

[@BrananPR]

Yeah, a "tri-fling" was my thought as well

[@fatha2092]

Living in Indonesia has me waiting for this every week at 6 in the evening. I love how you are always doing it slowly to actually explain each clue. Thanks Simon 👍🏻🫶🏻

[@VonBlade]

Friday: best day. It's the simplicity that I adore. No inverted renbans in killer cages, just a clue and a brain.

[@longwaytotipperary]

I really enjoy watching Simon enjoy doing these puzzles!! Particularly like Simon explaining how the clues work! Amazed at his extensive cultural knowledge!

[@cz8189]

Befuddled and bemused, but learning to love exploring the arcane rules of cryptic crosswords with your guidance. I find myself especially amused by my utter glee at the rare and unfathomable leap to the occasional solution before you completed explaining the reasoning on those clues! You bring light and joy - but I have a long, long path to enlightenment before I shall stop being baffled by how swiftly your brain wriggles through the word play to solve otherwise counter-intuitive conundra ! Please keep shining your light on cryptic crosswords.

[@willjohnsnow]

Recently I haven't had time to watch these, and as I'm only doing the Quick Cryptics it's great fun to skip to the Quick Cryptic end of these videos and watch in sheer awe at the speed of these. Please keep doing the QC encore !

[@stevewood8]

I love watching these. In the back story this week we had Maverick go AWOL as Simon switched from Maths to Cookery, but for me it's the pleasure of seeing the penny drop when Simon sees the light and then explains it to us.

[@Muse-Katze]

Even with a nightly incident Simon‘s brain is capable of so much more than mine! 😉 Always a great pleasure to watch and learn. Please never stop this wonderful peaceful, positive and inspiring channel. Thanks for being as you are!!

[@jomurphy5112]

We're all totally down with how you roll. Today's takeaway tip - at uni = up. Thanks Simon

[@AtoZTrivia]

Thank you as always Simon 👍👍 I'm a relative Newby to cryptic croswwords, I love General Knowledge etc but now im getting into Cryptic

[@mydailyminefield7547]

Crosswords are my favorite. I always learn something. Thank you for including them in your content!

[@amb-z]

Anaconda was my favorite this time around. Very good crossword thank you simon!

[@jayforty9824]

I always enjoy these videos and learn so much from them, and this one was particularly lovely!

[@Emmibean77]

These are the best videos! Thank you, Simon. Well done and well explained as always

[@grenvillephillips6998]

Struggled with this week's and so was desperate for the walk-through - so many thanks!

[@derekwalsh1973]

My favourite KZbin notification of the week 😊

[@dm3591]

Love these, joined with the daily sudoku stay for the weekly criptics

[@chipsounder4633]

11 across is an anagram of dire omen. Domineer 🎉 this is a great episode.

[@annastevenson27]

Thank you once again for my fav video of the week!

[@chipsounder4633]

37:37 😂 constant checking. Eternal and marking a question is an x or a tick. Abbreviation for examiner E?. So add the mark of x to eternal and you have external.. That's how i saw that one 😂😂😂 might be bobbins.

[@OddLittleShoppingBag]

Flour, egg, and water is pasta. I think cake needs sugar and butter. For trivia interest, pound cake is so named because it originally contained a pound each of flour, sugar, butter, and eggs.

[@Anne_Mahoney]

And in Simon's world, surely cake also absolutely requires either cocoa powder or melted chocolate -- probably both. 😸

[@ConManAU]

This puzzle beautifully demonstrates one of the sneakiest words to appear in a cryptic, because in different clues the word “about” indicates an anagram, a container, and “CA”. I think it was just missing “RE” and reversal.

[@nsrikand1]

Excellently explained. Very good learning. Keep going, Simon!! Every week looking forward to it!

[@debrabowen4276]

I just love these cryptic crossword videos!

[@lolman123121]

I love the weekly Friday times cryptic crossowrd! Hopefully one day I'll manage to complete a cryptic crossword myself.

[@davidrattner9]

The best way to get the weekend started!! Cherish seeing your explanations for these Simon!!

[@kilimanjarocruz660]

As soon as Simon said theater could be 'rep' I knew it was 'overrepresented', and then I was able to parse the clue correctly. These videos are certainly making me a better (although far from capable) cryptic crossword solver.

[@cjcalogero69]

42:52 football = the beautiful game, and fair is less appealing than beautiful.

[@amitragoobar7073]

Oh I very much appreciate the quick cryptic at the end.

[@Zihuatanejo-]

Love these videos!

[@Alex_Meadows]

Thanks Simon! I always enjoy these, lovely way to wind down for the weekend.

[@DarrenNakamura]

My goal whenever I watch one of these is to get one answer before Simon says it out loud. I got this with BEET, but I'm proud to have understood FAIR GAME before Simon did, though he got it long before then.

[@Raven-Creations]

I'm not letting you bake my birthday cake! Flour, egg, and water would only make a fairly mundane batter for your fish. I learned to bake at my mum's elbow as I was waiting to lick the spoon and scrape out the bowl. Equal weights of butter, sugar, self raising flour, and eggs will get you an easy Victoria sponge (if you do the mixing right). I particularly like occupied, because the clue had such a nice surface reading it was tricky to spot where the break should go, but once you spot it you kick yourself. There was lots of tricky (but fair) wordplay in this, even for experienced solvers. Anaconda was a really surprising one, where it was only the wordplay that lead to the answer. There's no way I would have ever got the answer from just the definition. This was definitely a puzzle for afficionados, not casual solvers. It is a great puzzle for teaching though, with lots of tricks being demonstrated. Politics in America is beyond crazy at the moment. Democracy is on the line. When a demented, constantly lying, racist, sexist, convicted felon who wants to be a dictator so he can avoid prosecution for insurrection, trying to fraudulently steal the 2020 election, and for stealing top secret government documents goes up against a black woman who's a former prosecutor, sparks will fly.

[@blackbunnii9719]

Still not very good at these, but look forward to your weekly vid. Thank you for being so consistent!

[@jamesmoriarty6782]

Some of those clues today were brutal. And had me shouting "beautiful game" at the TV!

[@chitraagarwal8259]

And i was trying to think of soccer as "FA" Game 😢

[@philipbrooks402]

Thank you once again.

[@royston1928]

Brilliant

[@A_CC_K]

Forgot it was Friday! But so happy it is. Great video

[@bristolrovers27]

Highlight of the week

[@andrewgrant6516]

Legitimate target = fair game. I got one!

[@B1GB1RDB4G3L]

YAY happy Friday all!

[@Єнот-т4й]

*chuckle* Princess Royal - CHASSIS - CHAS' SIS ; did the composer really refer to King Charles III as "Chas"? That's beautiful!

[@azrobbins01]

Love these!

[@timotab]

The difference between diplomacy and tact is that diplomacy gets you out of the holes that tact would have kept you out of.

[@oak3001]

29:42 I don't have to imagine what it would be like to not know the word PILASTER. I'm not sure I know the word, even now!

[@heatherallan9767]

thank you so much

[@_pinkangels]

for the first time i got one, the "rehearse" one 🥺 thinking about do re mi fa so la ti do

[@VonBlade]

Today was fairly standard on the Snitch, doesn't require insane knowledge in the answer as such, but the wordplay of the clues was truly evil. It shows how you can follow Cryptic setting rules and still have freedom to be nice or nasty. (Edit, glad Simon noticed the same thing. I am pleased to have no leant upon my lack of knowledge about authors, painters and bible books).

[@longwaytotipperary]

Now Friday can begin!

[@davidrattner9]

It most certainly can 😁❤❤

[@longwaytotipperary]

@@davidrattner9 ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[@memeswithcringe1624]

The “ménage à trois” clue was personally very amusing to watch Simon solve as I already saw it before in the Independent cryptic, albeit under “Little ménage a trois?” instead. I think it’s interesting to point out as it probably implies that “ménage a trois” just clues in tri-fling and not trio fling like Simon initially guessed.

[@Byron418]

Happy Friday 🎉

[@selenasilverstep7981]

54:35 "containing" was probably the equal sign -- your cake recipe contains egg, wheat, and flour!

[@mjkluck]

Good stuff.

[@KrisCadwell]

I don't think I'll ever be able to solve a whole puzzle but I did think up a clue of my own for the channel. Confused floating in garbage leads to polite expletive. (7)

[@phyphor]

I'll note that many of the clues had a cheeky question mark that means what is given is meant to be read in a slightly different, possibly funny, way which helps explain why some gave pause.

[@benphelan88]

Nice to see Arsenal mentioned the day before their first match. COYG ❤

[@michaelpdawson]

When Simon first thought of PILASTER I could see the wordplay immediately...except that I thought the Times was referring to itself as "I."

[@SwimCycleRunCoach]

well solved

[@vinyl1Earthlink]

I was surprised at how much difficulty Simon had once he got the answer. I was able to parse pilaster, trifling, rehearse almost instantly - I did have many other problems, but the parsings were just extensions of standard cryptic techniques.

[@mikechappell5849]

Trifling and rehearse were not very difficult to parse, but I think pilaster is very tricky. The I isn't an obvious newspaper, and it's an unusual meaning of çharge, though I think I have seen it in a clue before

[@shellmichael9665]

At 22:30, Simon misrepresents the wordplay in the clue for 19 down. “Author’s” is not possessive. Think of it as “Author has” and it’s being substituted for “I have”.

[@leco4529]

Surely Simon’s cake recipe requires cocoa powder, to make it a chocolate cake.

[@easy-goingechidna]

✨For the algorithm✨

[@sucrose11]

i live for fridays :)

[@frenchguy7518]

Trois is such a difficult word for English speakers, must commend Simon for trying.

[@esti369]

Does Simon not realise you also need to add chocolate to a cake?! 🤔

[@StarsMoonsAndSuns]

It's probably not correct, but I interpreted "less appealing than soccer?" to mean game with fewer "appeals" to a referee (as in, a game that is more fair). But "appealing" as in fair/beautiful makes a lot of sense!

[@toerag572]

That was my guess, too.

[@timotab]

ANd a note to American viewers: in the UK, Daddy Long Legs refers to the Crane Fly (an insect), not harvestmen (an arachnid)

[@Anne_Mahoney]

For me it also refers to a novel (whose title comes from the spider, I admit).

[@iaincook5835]

I have entered the halls of the superheroes! I solved the first clue straight away and Simon took ages! The other clues, well....

[@DaShikuXI]

I solved pilaster in a completely different, and likely faulty way. When it said "most unlikely to charge", I figured that was "laster", because if say a battery lasts a very long time you would not need to charge it. So the battery that is most unlikely to need charging is the laster. Newspaper then gives Pi to put in front of laster to make pilaster, as there is an American newspaper called the Post-Intelligencer.

[@longwaytotipperary]

I like clues= recipe!!

[@timotab]

Soccer / association football is often referred to as "the beautiful game". So a "fair game" would be less appealing.

[@rbettsx]

22:55 "Author's" is the contracted present perfect, not the possessive ... 🤓.. (I'll see myself out)

[@gordonglenn2089]

As a USAmerican, never having heard the term "beautiful game" for soccer [futbol (in Central America)], I read the clue differently. If something is acceptable but not so "good" it might be just "fair" quality. Collectors might use Good/Fair/Poor condition, e.g.

[@danielcarrier3577]

To elucidate on other comments, the famous Brazilian footballer Pele coined the expression "The beautiful game" for soccer.

[@Deadman7433]

Are these clues different to minute cryptic type clues where there is a definition part of the clue and a word play part

[@MrBenAttenborough]

Got 23 across before Mark. Don't know what this says about me!

[@andyrichardson842]

Being a Liverpool fan you wouldn't be familiar with "the beautiful game" 😆

[@Єнот-т4й]

I'm a Wolves fan - I don't get that reference often either!

[@Kleyguerth]

59:55 I'm not sure "domineer" is common vocabulary...

[@faddy91]

interesting that this was difficult when it seems there was a lack of Simon using the dictionary to justify single letters. Perhaps the charades were more difficult being short synonyms vs being specific crosswordese words.

[@colinstuartsmith]

Nothing archaic Simon, I solved it and managed to understand the word play

[@filkube8540]

Was anyone else disappointed in the times for referring to a spider as an insect? 😅

[@Antinomiste]

First? Yay for crosswords