The Times Crossword Friday Masterclass: Episode 21

** TODAY'S PUZZLE **
In the 21st edition of our attempt to solve a Friday Times crossword, Simon takes on today's puzzle, which is a very challenging and clever example of the form!
The puzzle is available to play on The Times crossword club website (which is behind their paywall):
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[@imaginarycastle]

The word event is written out in "sEVENTeen" AND in "elEVEN Twelve". These Friday cryptic solves have become my favourite videos on the channel, thank you for making them!

[@Anne_Mahoney]

Wow, good vision there, catching "event" split over 11/12!

[@charliejoseph6465]

The only one I got immediately when he read the clue. I think sometimes your mind can be too clever for cryptics.

[@kevinmartin7760]

Note the lack of an Oxford comma after the 12, so "11, 12 and [also] 17" is not an enumeration of three items. It is only two items: (11,12) and also (17) and had absolutely nothing to do with any of the other clues.

[@Anne_Mahoney]

@@kevinmartin7760 Good catch! Unless perhaps The Times doesn't use the Oxford comma? Some British writers don't, and I don't know the paper's style or whether that style manual also applies in crossword clues.

[@aenamabag]

Nice catch. I thought it was that a contestation, to contest, is to VENT, and to straiten is to EVEN.

[@martinyyt]

Loved Simon's reaction when he spoke *that* word and realised what he had done. Great solve, too.

[@EmberWishes147]

20:47 was funny but I laughed myself into a coughing fit at 21:07 when Simon said "lex" then cast a cautious look back to see if Alexa was going to pick up on it! 😂

[@zealot2147]

20:47 is a great Simon reaction, the instant glare and disbelief, so funny

[@ariavaggio]

I laughed so hard at this😂

[@RustyBrakes]

In a freaky coincidence, the cafe I'm in just started playing "Sultans of Swing" at the very moment Simon said Mark Knoffler

[@Layla51]

I was shouting SEMIOTIC at the screen, hoping to help you out😆 Thank you for a great solve. I really enjoy these videos as I am just beginning to try and solve cryptic crosswords.

[@basilicon.]

Someone ought to make a "best of Cracking the Cryptic" compilation where random moments like Simon triggering Alexa occur

[@Tom-Tron]

elEVEN, Twelve!!!! Love watching these videos but the clues are often way way above my ability level. I started doong the cryptics in my local paper which I guess you could breeze through and often only get halfway through them. Would you maybe consider doing cryptic crosswords that could be on the easier side to try and help us less gifted ‘solvers’ please

[@bobblebardsley]

Apparently there are folk theories as to the 15/30/40 scoring system in tennis but nobody definitively knows its origin.

[@Teverell]

Maybe Arabic = Semitic. (It would be a lot more obvious if the setter had said 'maybe Jewish', TBF.) Love = 0 = o. Circles love= semi-o-tic. Semiotics = the study of signs and symbols. That is the *only* clue I solved on my own, everything else was a total blank until you gave the answer!! Please keep doing these, they're great fun to watch!

[@GordonjSmith1]

'Shouting at screen' has become a thing with me! Not because I can solve the puzzle but because I can occasionally solve a clue!!! Bravo - love it. Friday joy.

[@bloodspatteredguitar]

I am a novice in these puzzles and really enjoying picking up the tricks of the trade from these videos. It's funny when Simon solves the puzzle but doesn't quite put the pieces together- finding event in 17 but not realizing that 11, 12 was exactly the same; and after deciding he needed a word for maybe arabic around an o he literally said semitic. These moments allow me to feel clever, even if I wouldn't have a chance to solve any of them without the hard work done for me!

[@makienxhemmiktar]

please keep doing these on Fridays. Very relaxing and good mental gymnastics. keep it up!

[@profregan6937]

Simon doing the Friday crossword is the best entertainment of the week by far . His explanations are exemplary as is his perseverance.The best thing on KZbin !

[@bryanroland9402]

Glad you're doing regular crossword videos again. That's what first attracted me to the channel several years ago.

[@jimcameron6803]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the compiler was trolling you with 23A. "Let's see how many people I can get to speak the dread name!" Being a big fan of Umberto Eco, I got 9A pretty much straight away. 21A gave me a lot of trouble though; I'd never heard of the answer and spent ages trying to think of the name of a patriotic song that fit the letters. Eventually filled it in from the wordplay. Fun crossword, and a great solve from Simon as usual.

[@andrewgrant6516]

Semiotic thickness. A legendary phrase amongst Doctor who fans.

[@jonhansen9622]

These crosswords are always well above me, but I enjoy watching you and Mark explain how to get to the answer

[@longwaytotipperary]

Lots of new-to-me words/phrases, but that’s one of the reasons I enjoy watching Simon explain it all!!

[@davidrattner9]

Majority of these that Simon does I learn new slang/jargon/words/phrases/British trivia..just like you adore that I get educated😊

[@longwaytotipperary]

@@davidrattner9 yep!😉

[@impeeratorii]

Its funny as a non-native speaker I have no hope of solving these (and I enjoy listening to the clever wordplay). But as a math teaxher, I got the 12 across, because I immediatly thought it would be about the letters of the names spelt out. Eleven, Twelve and Seventeen all have EVEN in them and also then refering to the word in 17, vringing (as Simon showed) the Event.

[@watchmakerful]

EL-EVEN, T-WELVE: E-V-E-N-T. SEVENTEEN: E-V-E-N-T 😀 Look at the letters in TWO words written in a row.

[@longwaytotipperary]

Ohhhhhhh, I see now!! Thanks!

[@n8style]

nice! didn't see that!

[@BijickY]

That was the first one I ever got before Simon. 🎉

[@compacta_d]

I'd write it. elEVENTwelve sEVENTeen

[@grenvillephillips6998]

Struggled to see pines as pants, which gave me a single error, but did well considering the high snitch-rating. I did laugh at the alexa trick!

[@Anne_Mahoney]

These crosswords have become one of the high points of the week. 😺🐈‍⬛

[@listey]

🎶 That's D in the corner. That's D in the spotlight. Losing its religion. 🎶

[@craftsmanwoodturner]

But that works for B, C, D, E, G, P, T and V! We'd be singing all the time...

[@SomeRandomGuyOnYouTube]

el(EVEN T)welve, nothing to do with 11 Down. Arabic is a Semitic language.

[@MrBigrig5]

Bravo again Simon! Tried this one today and got about halfway but 9a also stumped me. My favourite videos of the channel!

[@emilywilliams3237]

Love these cryptic solves - I feel that I learn something every time, but whether I can retain any of it is to be debated! Thanks, Simon.

[@davidrattner9]

Just a pleasure and joy for me Simon to see you tackle these every Friday!

[@no-feetmcgee5577]

To add to the numerous comments describing the "elEVEN Twelve" wordplay, I believe the actual definition in that clue was simply "what happens". :) I really, really hope that this constructor watches CtC and put "Alexa" in on purpose. XD

[@vinyl1Earthlink]

I parsed event without much difficulty, since we have recently had indirect hiddens, often in cycled words. I also put in semiotic at once - you had to be at Yale grad school in the 70s! Fortunately, I thought of loopiness before looniness. I would still say to Simon that if you want the fastest time, it's better to work through all the clues in order, getting all the easy answers first, and then working the crossing letters.

[@MarcMcMillin]

very much still loving these! 🙂

[@listey]

I always understood the tennis scoring as 0, 15, 30, 40 was because they used a clock face for scoring and getting around to 60 won the game. 40 used instead of 45 so there was room at 50 for Advantage, in the event the game went to 40-40 as it was needed to win by two points. Whether this explanation is true or not....who knows!

[@jonnybolton4659]

I'm pretty sure it used to be 45 before they brought in the win-by-two concept. They then needed more space on the clock face so 45 became 40 and Adv is 50

[@PollardGeorge]

In number 12, I, as a proud Texas and consumer of much Mexican food, know that it is spelled 'chili powder.' Then I looked it up to verify and found that, like the superfluous 'u' in color, British English adds and extra 'l' to chili. Another reason I cannot do the Times cryptic crossword.

[@martinwilson5210]

Thank you great solve again😊

[@duncanwilliamson3242]

heard once that tennis used a clock face for scoring early one, and the reason you go to 40 not 45 was to leave enough room to indicate who had advance

[@LiamWakefield]

Always useful.

[@TrekBeatTK]

I’m screaming “semiotic”. I actually got a few of them before Simon. Good for me.

[@phyphor]

I knew 21a from using it in the first grid I ever set. Good to see how a professional clues it.

[@SH1T3RR0R]

I heard the tennis score used to be recorded with a clock face. One player being the hour hand and the other player being the minute. At a guess I'd say 50 on the clock would have ment advantage. Basically right hand side of the clock means normal scoring. Left hand side means match point if one hand is there or deuce battle of 2 hands are there.

[@danielwebb8402]

You made my Alexa wake up and speak too))

[@liamsun2543]

It's just a hidden in elEVEN Twelve. Honestly it's a bit of a blind spot for experienced solvers, digital numbers are normally referring to numbered clues, people forget that they can just represent the numbers themselves, especially if it's between 10 and 30.

[@MisuVir]

I suck at these crosswords and was thinking this was the easiest clue. I think it was the only one I managed to work out myself. :)

[@gauravmitra150]

About the tennis score, what I remember. It is counting the quarter hours in minutes. First quarter hour is 15, second is 30, third is a bit tricky. It is actually 45, but when counting in french, fourtyfive is quartante-cinq, but it is shorten to quarante, therefor it is 40, and then you have a full hour, or a game. And zero is called love in english, because, the symbol for zero resembles an egg, or œuf in french. And with a slight sound shift you make œuf to love.

[@brindlereo5972]

Simon just got trolled by the setter

[@realgod1002]

in 12 across if we fully write out elEVEN and Twelve u can read Event. so you were on the right track with that idea. that was a sneaky clue

[@hermitoldguy6312]

I learned the word "semiotic" when Sheldon explained it to Penny in an episode of "The Big Bang Theory", with regard to a sock hanging on a door handle.

[@bohs2000]

The Davinci Code, Langdon unhappy that people say "symbology", when there's already a word

[@CrackingTheCryptic]

Possibly the most underrated comment we've ever had on the channel. I'd forgotten this episode but TBBT is one of my favourite ever shows. Bazinga!

[@Raven-Creations]

On Alexa - "Almost quite funny". You're wrong, it was hilarious. I laughed so hard I tweaked a muscle in my ribs. For 12A, you were hung up on 11 and 12 referring to the clues/answers; it was much simpler. Both "11, 12" and "17" were to be written out. The 12 was to provide the T - elEVEN Twelve, and sEVENTeen. Semitic (Arabic is a Semitic language) around O gives SEMIOTIC - relating to the study of signs and symbols. I learnt the word thanks to Baldi, a BBC radio drama about an amateur sleuth who is a priest and semiotics lecturer.

[@francesT5877]

I missed by getting loopiness and event wrong. Really good puzzle.

[@KalikiDoom]

Denier - the coin is pronounced, in the origin as /dinar/ - but it sounds very similar to the word 'denier' /dinajer/.

[@Atticus837]

First! Always a joy to see the extra crossword videos!

[@MitsuoRLCoach]

21:06 im laughing so hard

[@DontMockMySmock]

sometimes I feel like maybe I should take a crack at these, but I think if I did then I would have to find some American ones. I'm not nearly british enough. I never would have imagined that brits spell "chili" wrong for no earthly reason. It's a Spanish word (well, technically Nahuatl but it comes to English from Spanish)! If you put a "ll" in it it's gonna be pronounced "chee-yee"!

[@awzome8888]

11, 12: elEVENTwelve. The only answer I got quicker than you was carrot.

[@sebastienlecoq3956]

The tennis scoring system originate from the palm game (jeu de paume) that use the 15-30-45-game scoring. The origin of this counting is unclear, with 4 major hypothesis. One of those hypothesis revolves around the money and gambling, and especially a coin that was worth 15 'sous' in a sexagesimal system Gamblers then counted point by their monetary value. The name of that coin ? The (gold) denier.

[@erickehr4475]

I got 9ac fairly quickly from the wordplay. Semiotics is a word I have come across a few times and each time I have had to look up its meaning, as I have always forgotten it by the next time it appears.

[@theskyisteal8346]

11 across quite simply refers to what appears in "elEVENTwelve" and also in "sEVENTeen"

[@Joe-po8rx]

I'm going to pretend that Simon is a big fan of thrash metal

[@Anne_Mahoney]

I had not even known thrash metal was a genre.

[@soremekun]

You said Alexa!!!!!

[@kasfunatumeandel6372]

11,12 is elEVEN Twelve

[@michaelpdawson]

Dire Straits the best band ever, when you've just mentioned the Kinks? Heresy!!!

[@thescrewfly]

Heresy and nonsense!!!

[@archivist17]

Nice solve, but 12 Across was painful! You were massively overthinking it.

[@TheHunterMPG]

Simon, what is the Chambers app you use? It looks very handy!

[@SnugglesPlays]

I asked this question on last weeks cryptic crossword video and I don't recall getting/seeing an answer. I would also like to know this. 🙂

[@ryaneakins7269]

I think he's said before that it's an old CD-ROM that he's had for a while.

[@TheHunterMPG]

@@ryaneakins7269 Thanks, that makes sense, it reminds of that old Encarta look!

[@studgerbil9081]

Dire Straits is in fact the best band there ever was.

[@nickmoore5105]

I found the word “luminairism” strange - is it relevant to the clue somehow? Apart from to give the letter L

[@bobblebardsley]

18:46 I haven't seen the correct answer yet but both NINES (as in 'dressed to the') and PINES (as in a dog with separation anxiety panting) feel valid and both LOONINESS and LOOPINESS seem like reasonable answers so my money's on LOOPINESS but it's basically pot luck which one you choose. Also I don't think I've known a single bit of the general knowledge used so far (except maybe HAL but I doubt I would have guessed that was referring to a specific computer) so it would not be going well for me.

[@plusjeremy]

Dressed to the nines doesn’t have anything to do with pants though, does it?

[@bobblebardsley]

@@plusjeremy That really depends on how often you wear pants.

[@bobblebardsley]

@@plusjeremy (More seriously, do pants/pines actually mean the same thing? The closest I can think of is pants as in "got the hots for" and pines as in "heartbrokenly missing" and there's still quite a gap to close between those two definitions. I would never say "he was panting for her" or "the dog was panting for its owner" as a substitute for pining. Maybe I've missed an alternative definition.)

[@erickehr4475]

Both “pant” and “pine” mean to “long for”. So although they technically have the same meaning, they don’t really have the same connotation, and so could hardly be substituted for each other in a sentence without changing how it would be interpreted. I would say “panting” is waiting with excitement, while “pining” is waiting with a sense of sadness.

[@ConManAU]

@@bobblebardsley Both Chambers and Merriam Webster give "Yearn" or "Long for" as a definition for "pant", so apparently it is legit but I also haven't heard it before.

[@philipbrooks402]

Simon, re the Snitch ratings. Isn't it possible that some of those very fast solvers have not 'cheated' by completing it first before filling in the grid given that in the dim and distant past a solver like Roy Dean could solve The Times crossword in 3 minutes 45 seconds using pen and paper?

[@ConManAU]

It's possible, but when a relatively unknown person is consistently solving an extremely hard puzzle in less than half the time of known champion solvers you've got to apply Occam's Razor to the situation.

[@SomeRandomGuyOnYouTube]

Such people are referred to as Neutrinos, and the Snitch website attempts to detect them. Their times don't count towards the Snitch. It's all explained on the website. Basically if your record of solving times doesn't correlate well enough with the overall difficulty level, that's considered suspicious. Of course people can still game the system by looking at the Snitch and adjusting their fake time accordingly, but one would hope that there's only a small number of people pathetic enough to do that.

[@JaborWithaY]

My understanding is that most "real" solvers tend to be slower on the harder puzzles, while the "neutrino" solvers that don't get counted in the snitch rating have roughly the same times regardless of difficulty. (Also, even if they're somehow that fast at solving it legitimately, the fact that their times are seemingly unrelated to the difficulty means there wouldn't be much point in including them when scoring how difficult the crossword is!)

[@listey]

​@SomeRandomGuyOnKZbin cheats is probably too strong a word. They just haven't played within the "Spirit of Crosswords".

[@henrymarkson3758]

Nobody can solve the Times cryptic in less than half the time it takes Mark Goodliffe. I mean nobody! Even relatively weak solvers can solve the Times Cryptic with the use of Google, dictionaries and word unscramblers. Then quickly type in the solution.

[@stevebellhouse1869]

elEVEN Twelve

[@Brunners90]

I actually looked up the tennis thing - it's because the scores used to be kept on a clock face & they were moved one quarter round with every point, so it was originally 15, 30, 45, 60 (win) - for some reason we shortened 45 into 40 and still use that scoring today.

[@jonnybolton4659]

The reason for the switch from 45 to 40 was to make room for Advantage; originally you didn't need to win by two points so there was no concept of Advantage - at 45-45 the next point wins the game. Then when they brought in advantage they needed a space on the clock face so 45 became 40 and Advantage was 50

[@dethbygaming]

The clue for 12 across was just dumb, I'm sorry but that's not okay to do. When you write out eleven, twelve you can see the word event (elEVEN, Twelve) and it happens in seventeen too (sEVENTeen). I don't think that should have been allowed to pass the review. Also there was a time when clock faces were used to score tennis matches, way back in the middle ages. Each point was a quarter of the clock face, or 15, 30, 45, and a win on 60. However, when the idea of deuce was introduced to prevent a one-score difference meaning a win, they needed a way to ensure that the deuce score would still fit within the clock face. So they changed 45 down to 40, and 45 became advantage. At least that's what I've heard.

[@vk5ztv]

Nothing wrong with 12 across - a classic bit of misdirection by the setter, which is entirely appropriate in a cryptic crossword.

[@watchmakerful]

Arabic is not "maybe", but definitely Semitic.

[@hermitoldguy6312]

Arabic is Semitic, but Semitic is not Arabic, so "maybe Arabic, maybe Aramaic,..."

[@DevilboyScooby]

Not a fan of things like "first novel" meaning "She", it feels quite exclusionary to anyone who has never heard of that book, and good crosswords (imho) shouldn't require that much historical cultural knowledge.

[@Majora96]

This doesn't make any sense.

[@zealot2147]

Welcome to cryptic crosswords