The Times Crossword Masterclass 100: 10 January 2025: A Clever Pangram

*** TODAY'S PUZZLE ***
Today our Masterclass series reaches 100! And it's Mark taking on the Friday crossword from @TheTimes - to see if he can explain all the clues!

(If you do enjoy these crossword videos, please do try and leave a "like" or "subscribe"; we would really appreciate it and hopefully other people who get recommended the video will come to love these puzzles as much as we all do.)

The puzzle is available to play on The Times crossword club website (which is behind their paywall):

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#crossword #puzzle #masterclass #cryptic

[daylightsleeptight]

There's something interesting I've noticed about the way Mark describes his vocabulary. It's not just that he knows a lot of words, it's that he has a really good memory for where and when he learned them. So this allows him to assign quality estimates to all his knowledge and adjust how certain he should feel about any given conclusion. Extremely interesting to have that sort of explicit and accessible knowledge about a process that most people do implicitly.

[soremekun]

I'm glad you had the honor to do the 100th Cryptic Masterclass.

[axavio]

Bravo! “Every day’s a school day when you’re doing cryptics.” Ain’t that the truth!

[billbarraclough]

That really was a Masterclass! Elegantly explained

[emilywilliams]

I love these Cryptic Masterclasses - fascinating, and really and truly, they are making more and more sense to me each week. I loved your reference to Ravel's Bolero as being what Torvill and Dean ice-danced to in the 1984 Winter Olympics. That performance for a gold medal, along with their required dance of the Cape Dance, were mesmerizing to me. I am not sure that, before that year, I had ever been impressed by ice dancing, but they were on another plane compared to the competition.

[smahoney]

Great solve. it is fun to see Mark do one of these in addition to the Monthly Club specials on Patreon.

Good luck to Simon in his golf tournament. We need him back next week to tell us that we can't abbreviate any word unless it is supported by the dictionary. :)

[nsrikand]

Thanks Mark. It was very good learning. Please keep going.

[TokuHer]

Happy 100 Cryptic Crossword Masterclasses. I'm a latecomer to watching the series but I enjoy Mark and Simons solves of these amazing wordplay clues. Cheers

[jodyvanliew]

It is always good to see Mark solving a Friday puzzle .

[VonBlade]

Comfortably my favourite thing of the week. Especially as this has been, without hyperbole, a Dies Horribilus.

[Vet-vx]

Love it when we get a Mark crossword solve on a Friday!

[onion]

Thank you so much for all your excellent content and sharing the joy of cryptics with the world! As a viewer, am hoping for several hundred more! :)

[mjkluck]

Love these solves. The explanations on parsing the clues has helped me greatly.

[arnedierick]

Congratulations on reaching this milestone!

[creaghant]

Great solve Mark - Best video of the week - Cheers

[FedoG]

All this clues go way above my head, honestly I just put this in the background for the calming voice. Thank you Mark.

[Swisswavey]

I love your crossword solves, thanks for doing this!

[bristolrovers]

I love these masterclasses and hope to see Mark do a few more

[drbutler]

Wishing Simon Luck with golfing! YAY!!! Mark does the 100th Crossword!! AND it is a Pangram!
Funny that Road Craft is the only stumbling block in your solve... I knew instantly what a Land Yacht is (it is a large car, like a 1960s or 1970s sedan), but I would still not have gotten the answer. Not that most of these words are strange, I knew most of them, but I would never be able to solve the Cryptic. Even the Hidden...

[SomeRandomGuyOnYouTube]

'Land yacht' is a term for a big car made for comfort rather than sharp handling. What we might also call a 'barge'.