"We've done a reasonable jon in the north west".... very generous of you to include me, but I'm afraid I was as much use as a glass cricket bat

I managed about half of the crossword before giving up and deciding to watch Simon work out what I'd missed! Thanks for the video - always a treat at lunchtime on a Friday.

Absolutely love that BROMANCE was an answer haha!!

Once again, Simon’s lack of knowledge that I knew about and outstanding knowledge of other things I didn’t leaves me bemused 😂 thanks for the entertainment. I’m still not planning on solving any of these crosswords anytime soon, but I have been solving sudokus like a fiend!

The eye roll with 'Crossword Compilers LOVE C- G-' was the best!

Great solve. Some really hard ones in there. Very happy to get "tradescantia" immediately, since I have several of those chilling in my kitchen window. :)

Thank you so much for making these videos! It is such a pleasure to watch you solve these difficult puzzles every week and I'm learning so much from your explanations. Incidentally my Tradescantia plants are taking over my garden and it was a buzz to finally solve a clue before you did, but also very impressive to watch the way your brain worked to come up with the correct answer!!

Simon is always warning us that the compiler is trying to get us to split clues up in the wrong way, but today he seemed to get fooled by a lot of such clues.

It always makes me chuckle when Simon reads a clue, declares "I have no idea what this is!" and then declares one second later "I know what this is!" His brain moves fast! :)

The ones Simon struggled with I saw quickly, and vice-versa. He got redolent almost at once, and had little trouble with tradescantia, while I put in hunter and taxation as soon as I read them. PS: You didn't go far enough in your standard/evergreen search - while you saw that evergreen could mean a song or piece of music that is popular for a long time, you overlooked nearly the exact same thing in the definitions of standard.

In biology at uni the term Taxa was used quite a bit to describe the ecology of an area, e.g. this forest comprises several different Taxa. 😊 loved the video!

so lovely hearing the birds singing in the background. im in New England in the us and we are not so lucky as Old England for spring weather right now

Also as regards the "why are all the definitions of standard on one page instead of standard¹, standard² etc" I think it might be because they all share a common etymology (estandart, in square brackets at the bottom of the definition) and are therefore different definitions of the 'same word' whereas some other words have the same spelling but completely distinct etymologies. I might be wrong though - I'm not sure if they do the same thing when a word has multiple pronunciations, too.

"Invisible controlling powers" .... cheeky

The notification literally put a smile on my face. Edit: Who could forget Duncan McKay, the crooked purser who is drowned by the kraken in Return of the Obra Dinn!

Tough day at the office this one! I love/hate when Simon reads out his understanding of the clue and it makes me get it immediately, but seems to then reject that understanding himself! 3 of these in there this time.

As always, the Crossword solves are amazing. I have no idea how they work, but it is so much fun to watch the language twist and turn like this.

Congratulations on making 60 of these weekly gems! 😺

"Re" for "about" often comes up, but it might be less awkward to explain if you note that it's short for "regarding"!

I'm growing to appreciate these videos even more than the sudoku videos and I hope the algorithm grows to appreciate them as well!

Lovely puzzle. I think you missed part of what makes the wordplay of 25a) so clever. Area 51 is an area in the Nevada desert which is rumoured to store captured alien life forms and is thus something of a mecca for alien conspiracy theorists, hence 'Area 51 opens up belief in invisible controlling powers'.

It'a always a great Friday with this Masterclass series! 🙂

I love watching the difficult ones and seeing simon's thought processes at work. Fast becoming thr higlight of my friday :)

Thank you for the masterclass. Today was a good example of why I like to solve puzzles with my wife. She can often explain the “why” when I have got the answer, and vice versa. It’s much harder on your own. :-)

Enjoyed this thanks. I too was stuck on STANDARD and others.

My favourite ones are when you don’t know the word but get it correct by the word play. I’m so impressed! Love these videos!

Well done! Thanks to following Simon's crossword solves I must be improving, because I was able to beat him to getting "purser" and "taxation". and to seeing the justification for "Loire"...

I did surprisingly well on that one, and so I must be improving!

I know it wasn't, but 10 Across could have been 'absurd' given the checking letters. I always appreciate that Simon doesn't use "nothing else will fit" as a satisfactory reason to give a particular answer, no matter how cryptic the clue may be.

Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings... didn't have a pole. But my brain immediately went to "pole dancing Gandalf" so thanks for that mental image! xD

You are doing crosswords at a level I didn’t know was possible

Always a pleasure!

These people out here saying 7 minutes is slow and I get about 2 right in an hour 😂

I was flabbergasted at a good half of these, genuinely. Cryptic crosswords are certainly one of the most outwardly difficult puzzles out there.

Great way to get Fridays going!!! 😁

The 'into' anagram was so hard to spot. For me , taxation just went in with a shrug. How to remember the other meaning of last though? Seen a few times, but it refuses to stick in my brain. Great solve by Simon, as ever. Always enjoys these.

Looked for this an hour ago. So happy when it showed up! Happy Friday!

To my amazement, as I'm really a bit of a duffer, I managed to solve this until I got to 'taxation' - a stumbling block throughout my commercial career! Ever in awe of Simon's ability!

No standard solve. Well done. Very enjoyable, as ever.

I have some talents, but cryptic crosswords are not one of them, so I always watch these with interest and awe 😅❤️

Didn’t get much before heading to KZfaq! Thanks for giving the explanations before the answers - gives us a chance to take a little bit of the outstanding credit!

After I touted it on previous videos, the New Yorker is no longer running Cryptic crosswords, so watching these videos is the only way I'll be getting my fix for awhile.

57:20 the latest Chambers does split meanings numerically!

Thanks for doing these. I'm learning a lot.

a tough one but good to see it solved in the end.

I _think_ that the reason all the meanings of "standard" are grouped together rather than being separated into 1, 2, 3, etc. is because all of the "standard" meanings have the same etymology, but when things are separated it's because the different numbers correspond to different etymologies. Maybe? I'm not sure.

Quite amusing imagining Simon at a bachelors party and when he sees the pole he thinks of Gandalf.😂

Be full of (abound) anger having lost almost everything (a) for sure (bound(to))

I got a few before Simon, my guess is that Simon always thinks of any answer as the complicated version of it. I went for the easy answer in the ones I got before him. Good solve

When I went to the school in SE London in the late 90s Latin was still compulsory for the first 2 years [years 7 and 8] so you must have done some surely!

Very impressive.

what a puzzle!

How the devil am I meant to start getting into cryptic crosswords?

Over an hour... gonna be one of _these_ grids...

The musical reference to me is the only meaning I know of the word evergreen, though it would also be a plant that always has leaves make total sense 😂

C'mon Simon, you learned about pursers in Return of the Obra Dinn 😅🏴‍☠⛵🐙

Always tickles me when I see Mark on the scoreboard! 7 minutes is a surprising time, looks like I'm settling in for a hard video today.

I *just* thought to check if the weekly video is out - what a lovely surprise :D

When he said "watch person", my first thought was horologist...

Comment for the algorithm. Also ..I got Hunter and taxation 1st. (Obviously, Simon's checking letters were of no help whatsoever). 😀

is 4 down a double definition? Because the wordplay doesn't quite work if you just take path traced back = descent and Peruvian empire = Incan, because the words are the wrong way round. It does work as "path traced back to Peruvian empire" being (of) Incan descent.

"Taxa" does just literally mean "categorized groups"; it's the plural of "taxon" and is used a lot in biology. It is the root of the word "taxonomy" of course, which literally means "the naming of categories": taxon (category) + nom (name) + y ("act of" suffix). I'm more of an astrum (star) + nom + y = astronomy nerd but I know a bit of bios (life) + logos (thinking/knowledge) + y = biology and it always pays to know your Latin and Greek root words when you're doing scira (know/distinguish/cut) + entia (-ing) = science.

4 Down is technically a double definition isn't it? Incandescent and Incan Descent?

You should have remembered Purser from your Obra Din playthrough :)

This is a kind comment (of a kind), mister algorithm.

Jazz standards are sometimes called evergreens... Oh okay, as always, what do I know that the dictionary doesn't.

Evergreen could be a standard in terms of songs...

I think 22 Down was supposed to be an &lit clue. Workers unions often demand raises.

Isn't "standard" a word for "flagpole", especially in military terminology?

I couldn't help wanting to quote your own advice back to you for the abound clue. You accepted "full of anger" as a phrase, when you should have considered just the words and split it after "of". Be full of/anger having lost almost everything=a/for sure=bound. I think your disapproval was just sour grapes. You've seen plenty of examples of similar wordplay and never batted an eyelid. You made the same scanning mistake with the taxation clue - categorised groups = taxa/into different=tion/types of duty. Given that you knew that taxonomy was the process of categorising groups, I'm surprised you didn't know (or could guess) that those groups were called taxa (plural of taxon). Lolita was a fantastic clue, very clever and apposite wordplay. I think "evergreen" refers to standards like "All of Me", or "April in Paris", and a shrub grafted onto a vertical stem is a standard (e.g. a standard rose looks like a rose tree, but the rose is not naturally a tree. The rose shrub is grafted onto a tree stem to make it look like a tree). Tradescantia is a trailing plant, often found in indoor hanging baskets. Capuchin is the origin of cappuccino, because the monks wore dark robes with white hoods. I was surprised it took you as long as it did to get cobble; "work at last" just screamed shoemaking to me. All the clues you struggled with I thought were easy, but you instantly got some line nonpareil that I struggled with. (For me, broadcast is a homophone indicator, it doesn't suggest an anagram at all. Broadcast means to disperse, not jumble, or reassemble, or reorder). If you wanted to moan about any of the clues, rather than "abound", the "core requirement" for me went beyond just making the clue scan. It could just as easily have been "union's core" and still made sense. For "requirement" to be there suggested it was a vital part of the wordplay.

Nonpareils are also known as hundreds and thousands. Sugar sprinkles! That's what the confection definition was pointing to. It also refers to a chocolate disc covered in said sprinkles.

"Works at last" - unlike my brain. That was a b@st@rd of a puzzle and Simon did very well to complete it.