The Times Crossword Friday Masterclass: Episode 38

** TODAY'S PUZZLE **
In the 38th edition of our attempt to solve a Friday Times crossword, Simon takes on today's puzzle which has some great clues and some school memories!! Oh and it's harder than usual too!!
The puzzle is available to play on The Times crossword club website (which is behind their paywall):
www.thetimes.co.uk/puzzleclub...
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[@MichaelTrick]

Simon is amazing, but to click "Submit without leaderboard" and then immediately wonder why he is not on the leaderboard does say a lot on how his brain is wired.

[@jonhansen9622]

I thought the same thing 😂

[@hoagy_ytfc]

Ditto with "ordinaire isn't in the dictionary" when he typed it wrong and it was literally the top word :) Thanks again Simon, these are always educational and fun.

[@danparsons1423]

And shows how rarely he gets them wrong when he doesnt realise them all being green means correct! :)

[@grahamania]

Yay, another Friday morning (USA) of thinking "How did Simon know that" about 20 times!

[@wibbol]

Three minutes in and I’m already amazed that Simon reached “ice” from “rocks” through “diamonds” instead of the direct definition (as in “on the rocks”). The word knowledge on this man!

[@stevewood8]

Early on, Simon says that he'll leave his subconscious to work on the 'chum's pants' clue. Then, at 39:26 his brain seems to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention, telling him that it's TOSH, but Simon ignores him, and presses on regardless! Poor brain - so often told 'bad brain, naughty brain''. Give your brain a break, Simon, he's doing a fine job.

[@longwaytotipperary]

❤ for Simon’s brain!!!

[@Skamba]

If you freeze at 16:55, you can actually see that ordinaire is in the Dictionary. Simon forgot to include the 'I' when fully typing it.

[@mmmccomb7322]

Yes I noticed that as well, and so went to check it on my Chambers app. The rather disappointing definition is (informal) 1) Vin ordinaire, 2) Table wine. So question mark definitely needed in the clue!

[@Willd2p2]

@@mmmccomb7322 "vin" isn't part of the definition because it's needed for the wordplay (essence of vin gives the 'i' in the answer). The definition is simply "ordinaire?" which I think does need the question mark, because the English word ordinaire seems to not really be a synonym of mediocre whereas the French word certainly is.

[@mmmccomb7322]

@@Willd2p2 I was talking about the definition in Chambers, which was what Skamba was discussing as well. "Ordinaire" is defined in that dictionary as: (informal) 1) Vin ordinaire, 2) Table wine.

[@dglthrawn1]

For 28a, the sky can be referred to as the vault of heaven.

[@RustyBrakes]

I have an idea for an April fools prank video: your video of the day would be a cryptic crossword in which you DON'T explain your thought process, and Mark would do the same with a sudoku. I would find it hilarious to see CtC with no talking

[@Moolers]

That would be really interesting to see.

[@Taversham]

Or solving a normal general knowledge crossword as if all the clues were cryptic, using semi-plausible sounding nonsense to get to the answers

[@djvibekiller]

Or solving a super easy sudoku but pretending to be stumped by it for like an hour

[@andrewgrant6516]

Please don't spoil the illusion. Surely Simon narrates his entire life. I'd love to see a video of him explaining the washing up, and insisting the casserole dish goes on patreon because nobody would want to watch it.

[@arthurcharest9061]

Thanks Simon, another fun video!

[@elLooto]

My gods, I'm starting to get some of these.

[@longwaytotipperary]

I ❤ to watch Simon do battle with cryptic crosswords!

[@davidrattner9]

And Simon 💜s doing the battle for us, along with getting the pleasure of testing more of his amazing brain power. 😃

[@longwaytotipperary]

So glad that he does!!!❤️

[@timsullivan4566]

Quite appreciated how you took pains to explain the nuances of cryptic clues such that there were never any "loose ends", so to speak.👍👍👍

[@amyworrall9246]

Regarding “apostrophe”, Simon you’re forgetting your Gilbert and Sullivan. It’s used in them in that meaning a lot. “You have interrupted an apostrophe, sir!”

[@AuntyAwesome]

yes godwits are migratory birds for anyone curious! They fly between alaska and new zealand non stop taking 8-10 days! Such beautiful birds too

[@CineMiamParis]

A nice example of « apostrophe » in the final minutes of Chaplin’s Great Dictator. For a bit he « addresses » the crowds, then moves to talking to the woman he loves: « Hannah… Hannah, can you hear me? » Goosebumps.

[@cqzen217]

It's so funny how different brains think. 'Mankind' was just about the only one I could do and it was the clue Simon struggled with the most!

[@timotab]

AN apostrophe is a short parenthetical address (to a person, or personified object), in the middle of a speech or poem.

[@peterdunlop7691]

Would that be like an actor breaking the fourth wall during an onscreen? The apostrophe is their speech to us, the real audience?

[@profregan6937]

The best thing of the week , forget Friday. Glorious, humble, enlightening.

[@davidrattner9]

Continuously loving these Simon!! Makes the end of the week and start of the weekend that much sweeter!!

[@emilywilliams3237]

I agree. Fridays are especially fun now with FOUR videos from CtC every time (Wordle, crossword, and two sudokus). We are so rich, aren't we?

[@davidrattner9]

@emilywilliams3237 without a doubt we are rich...along with having people like you and long way be a part of this. That is the icing on the cake for me. I am lucky and rich every day!! 🙂

[@emilywilliams3237]

As always, David, you are kind and encouraging.@@davidrattner9

[@HolyAlondite]

I'm proud to have gotten MANKIND from just the M. Though I do have to credit watching enough of these videos to know that MD worked as an abbreviation......and admittedly, I did need to look up synonyms to figure out what the base word was, even if I knew my justification as correct, I just didn't know the specific word they were using

[@st0rmforce]

Same. I stumbled on it from getting the wordplay wrong, thinking it started with MA, understanding that humans was the definition and guessing the answer. Then working back from the answer, I could see how it works.

[@stuartgoesbirding8999]

Bar-tailed Godwits are migratory waders that complete some of the most remarkable journeys on the planet.

[@supergandalf8854]

Loving these, variously gob-smacked by the brilliance of Simon, grateful for the very helpful, and necessary, explanations and very, very occasionally, smug when I get one that Simon doesn't know. But it's very gratifying none the less. More please!

[@juliannicholls]

I'm definitely gaining cryptic crossword capability from watching these every week. I did the Latest BBC Focus magazine crossword in one go in about 20 minutes this morning.

[@wossaaaat]

Oooh, that time again eh. Never understand it, yet can't stop watching it. Thanks Simon!

[@mjkluck]

Love these solves.

[@JyotiDas-72]

Thank you for continuing to post these. They are one of my favorite things about Fridays.

[@amyworrall9246]

I parsed Tosh wrong - got “pants”, but thought that chum in the sense of the rotten bits of food/meat used as fish bait could mean tosh in the rubbish sense.

[@timsullivan4566]

I your final review, believe you forgot to check on the reason for "sky" for "vault" in "STINKY" (a definition for"vault" being something reminiscent of a vault-shaped ceiling - as Shakespeare did in "King Lear" with "Howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones! That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone forever.") but I hasten to say this was merely a time-induced and minor oversight at the conclusion of an extraordinary Master Class. Kudos and thank you!

[@mistersquirrel8378]

I am so proud right now. I have nothing to do with cryptic crosswords at all, but at 23 - Grand House, etc, my brain snapped the answer in an instant. Never before have I felt so accomplished before lol

[@bobblebardsley]

I liked this crossword a lot, I'm not 'good' at cryptic crosswords and I think that might have actually helped me here, because the less advanced solution was correct in a lot of cases. e.g. a 7-letter word for humans with an abbreviation for medical doctor at its extremities = mankind, took me about 3 seconds and then I worked backwards to figure out what 'depending on' meant in the clue. There were a few examples of that where I could only think of one possibility and that turned out to be correct, whereas Simon instantly had about 20 options in his head and no way to distinguish between them.

[@beckynett]

English teacher here. An apostrophe is a literary device used by a speaker or poet to ADDRESS an absent party as if he or she were present (O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman) or to ADDRESS something inanimate as if it were a person ("Death, Be Not Proud" by John Donne).

[@robinstyles9997]

Thanks for this!

[@Anne_Mahoney]

Just a quick comment while waiting for the SudokuCon livestream to get started: the Friday crossword videos are a highlight of the week, right up there with GAS, and I enjoyed this one even though I got started late and ended staying up past bedtime: worth it! 😸 (What livestream, you ask? You should be able to find it: don't get two itchy; we haven't had enough traffic for the obvious web addresses to be in search results yet, but there are links in the GAS puzzles. Hope to see you all soon!)

[@JohnLeeShaw]

Kudos once again Simon, for another instructive and entertaining masterclass. And I do feel we should all raise a glass to Plodder, wherever he is, for the invention of weird and wonderful words and phrases! What a lucky boy he was, when I remember some of the nicknames I had at school, I have no wish to revisit those days 😅 I actually started this puzzle quite well, getting 1a and 9a quite quickly (thanks to your masterclasses, I have no doubt) and 2d was very easy to spot. 1d I was sure had something to do with patriot, but funnily enough, didn't spot 'riot' in my mind's eye, so found that I couldn't validate it. As for the rest of the puzzle, well, I have a long way to go as a cruciverbalist, that's for sure! Incidentally, when it comes to castles, I think I am right in saying that 6 times World Snooker Champion, Steve Davis, used to live in a castle (or bought one, or something or other -- I remember my Nan telling reading me something from a newspaper many moons ago). And one or two other snooker players have also, Matthew Stevens possibly. Castles can actually be picked up quite cheaply I believe, if one has the funds to renovate and modernise them! Thanks again -- have a nice weekend, one and all! 😀

[@Gorm169]

Misspelling "ordinaire" so you can claim it's not in the dictionary, despite it being on screen, was certainly an interesting move.

[@DontMockMySmock]

I believe "sky"/"vault" is a reference to the sky being the "vault of heaven."

[@nordicryan]

For the thumb clue, i got thumb by thinking of a source of opposition as a Thumb War

[@altreusplays]

23 down was a rollercoaster!

[@andrewgrant6516]

Double definition works for me. If a thing is tosh, it is pants. If a person is tosh, they are your chum.

[@Ruddigore]

A nice solve. A few tricky words there. I personally don't think an 'average' Times Cryptic has a snitch of 100, I would put it lower, around 85 to 90. If a solver can complete a Times Cryptic that's over 100, they should give themselves a pat on the back.

[@Ray_Ridley]

It's a thrill to get a couple of answers before Simon, but then I'm relaxing in my armchair and not having to do it live.

[@grenvillephillips6998]

I struggled with that one and my only consolation was getting 13 across before Simon.

[@paulmatthews7744]

I hope Plodder is watching. He may or may not be stalking you at this point. 😀

[@AlonAltman]

I can't believe I got CASTE before Simon did!

[@XdivineExp]

Sometimes I don't even realize it's Friday until I see the Masterclass show up in my feed. In fact this time I was so unsure, I thought Simon posted it on not a Friday, which is weird because I know I have guests coming over today, and I know they're coming over on Friday, which is today, but I still somehow thought this was posted on not a Friday. Bad brain. Bad.

[@tomhandle]

Sailor goes to bed on his head, they have to come down. (7 Letters)

[@altreusplays]

Proud of myself for knowing apostrophe

[@emilywilliams3237]

This is really interesting, especially since the snitch apparently rated this puzzle so hard, but you seemed to breeze through it. No no, I know - you make it look so easy because you are so brilliant at this. (Do you ever construct for the Times these days? I know you have done at least a couple of Listener puzzles - based on my recollection of my deep dive into the accounts of the Listener dinners ...)

[@Raven-Creations]

I thought mankind was quite a nice clue. I was onto the wordplay quickly, so I was looking for a word for humans starting with M and probably ending in D, with a word for relying on having its outside letters replaced by M and D. I actually found that one of the easier clues. You just have to parse it correctly. I'd never heard that definition of apostrophe, but it had to be that from the wordplay. It's a pity your dictionary doesn't include the etymology of words. For instance, is tosh from the advert, or does it predate it?

[@bobblebardsley]

The Oxford English Dictionary website has an entry for tosh meaning "neutral or jocular form of address" which says "OED's earliest evidence for tosh is from 1954, in the writing of Edward Hyams." (It has other older uses, but specifically for that 'friend' use of the word...)

[@Raven-Creations]

@@bobblebardsley Thanks. I really should take out a subscription to the OED.

[@bobblebardsley]

@@Raven-Creations I don't have one, it just came up on google then any other page was paywalled 😅 Just got very lucky!

[@markcroxteth2108]

super

[@glum_hippo]

That clue for 'patriotic' is a gorgeous surface. What is butter boy, though?

[@glum_hippo]

Emesis is a polite term for vomiting. Right up there with micturation in terms of word quality.

[@SomeRandomGuyOnYouTube]

Simon mentioned in a previous video that he went to a private school (i.e. a fairly posh school, in England.) "Butter boy" was a term used to mean pupils in the first year at school, among whose chores was collecting butter, milk, and other items for the senior pupils' breakfasts in the morning.

[@EmilKamppp]

AI trying to solve crosswords: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d2K0q4mHo52bfpo I know this is crosslinking to a different channel, but I enjoy watching Mark and Simon solving crosswords in general, and I'm interested ib AI, and now they happened to cross.

[@B1GB1RDB4G3L]

03:22 "When I was Butterboy" - Simon what is a Butterboy? :0

[@CineMiamParis]

Would love to know as well

[@thescrewfly]

Allow me to copypaste another comment here (if YT will let me): @SomeRandomGuyOnKZbin 14 minutes ago (edited) Simon mentioned in a previous video that he went to a private school (i.e. a fairly posh school, in England.) "Butter boy" was a term used to mean pupils in the first year at school, among whose chores was collecting butter, milk, and other items for the senior pupils' breakfasts in the morning.

[@heatherallan9767]

"when I was but a boy... " (only/ simply / a mere lad / back in the day .....) :)

[@CineMiamParis]

Thank you ! @@thescrewfly

[@GeorgeFrideric71]

​@@thescrewflyLol. Very inventive. He was just saying 'but a boy' though, as the person above points out.😂

[@johnmerriam8661]

I've lost my voice from shouting "yes, castle without the l"!!

[@Astervista]

And then shouting that the castle is the house of the king and not always a fortress. A castle is always a house, sometimes it’s also a fort. Edit: I was wrong look below. A castle is still definitely a grand house

[@Illithien]

@@Astervista "the castle is the house of the king" Wouldn't that be a palace? And a castle is always a fortified building, often inhabited by knights (and possibly the king, especially in wartimes).

[@Astervista]

@@Illithien Ok I correct myself I was slightly wrong, I checked: if you have only fortification you have a fortress, if you have only a residence for a king you have a palace, if you fortify a palace you have a castle. I was somehow under the impression that a palace was a city residence, and a castle was a countryside residence.

[@richardfarrer5616]

If you apostrophise, O Simon, you address someone just as I have you.

[@williambarnes3868]

Taxonomic ORDER. Very annoying when you give the answer and immediately refuse to enter it, in this case CASTE. Sky or the vault of the heavens. The solving of 13A was TOSH!

[@je_suis_le_canard]

Too dedicated to "house" as opposed to something like a "grand residence". I was about to say almost no one lives in a castle at this point in history, but then remembered Simon is in the UK...

[@QuadraticPerplexity]

(Re 5 down) "mi" and "me" are two different notes (the latter being a flattened mi)

[@pokinDave]

It's easy to remember since ME is pronounced "May" and used in the MInor scale whereas as MI is pronounced "ME" and used in the MAjor scale. Ok so it actually makes no sense at all but it's because it's from Italian

[@steveunderwood3683]

Castle Howard. Chateaux by the dozen. How is a castle not a grand house?

[@GeorgeFrideric71]

Why 'daughters' rather than 'daughter'?

[@no-feetmcgee5577]

With NEMESIS, ENGAME, and VENDETTA in the grid, I worry about what the setter may be plotting...

[@ashawthingart]

Next time you explain Seaman can be AB can you say it is able-bodied seaman not able seaman. I love your crossword videos but this reference winds me up 😀

[@hoagy_ytfc]

Except that it stands for "Able Seaman" and not "Able-bodied Seaman". Wikipedia says (admittedly without citation): "Some modern references claim that AB stands for able-bodied seaman as well as, or instead of, able seaman. Able seaman was originally entered using the abbreviation AB instead of the more obvious AS in ships' muster books or articles. Such an entry was likely to avoid confusion with ordinary seaman (OS). Later the abbreviation began to be written as A.B., leading to the folk-etymological able-bodied seaman. The "correct" term, able seaman, remains in use in legal documents, in seaman's papers, and aboard ship."

[@elrobbo6]

Are you a wizard?

[@vinyl1Earthlink]

I would go ahead and submit - there are nearly 100 solvers in the SNITCH, and one unusually high time won't have much impact. You will have to change your fancy graphic intro, since although Mark is still a 12-time Times Crossword champion, he is no longer the reigning champion. Your solve was similar to mine, held back by lack of knowledge - however, I did know the oratorical meaning of apostrophe, which is simply an address to a particular person or object.

[@karthick_michigooner7431]

castle without l

[@ThePeadar2211]

Oh, I just noticed that you will need to change your intro. Mark is no longer the reigning times crossword champion.