The Times Crossword Masterclass: 13 December 2024: The Hardest Puzzle Of The Year!

*** TODAY'S PUZZLE ***
It's Friday 13th and those elves at @TheTimes have scheduled this absolute monster of a crossword for us!! It's brutally difficult but this is also one of (if not THE) most brilliant crosswords of the year - a tour de force that allows Simon to recall Sid Waddell and even a bit of U2?!!?

(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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Twitter: @Cracking The Cryptic

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[britlion]

How Simon must be hated by other youtubers that get no traction, and here is man doing a crossword, rambling about comedy, Eric Bristow, takes a quick break to play with his guitar, makes a one shot recording video that's an hour and a quarter and has 622k subscribers. We absolutely love what you do, Simon. Keep making us laugh, cry and loving to invite you and Mark into our homes daily. You're both awesome.

[skymotel]

Dear Simon, I can appreciate that not being at the very top of the leader board can be disheartening when you are so very good at solving crosswords, Sudoku, pencil puzzles and logic problems. However I have come to realise that in this world there is ALWAYS someone better, quicker, stronger, brainier, funnier or more skillful. This does not diminish the skills that we each have. You are brilliant at what you do here. Not only can you solve these puzzles 'live' but you teach at the same time. Could others on the leader board do as well under that pressure?
I do not know because I have not see them do so. Be proud of what you achieve each day. You are fantastic! Best Wishes. E x

[grahamnicholls]

One of the things i enjoy the most is your appreciation of the art of the setter. This as a fantastic crossword, and corresponding video. Thanks!

[Sgray-epse]

Wow, what a grat crossword! Pangram, Simon's guitar, THEdonis... Everything in it today!

[gamergirlu]

These cryptic crossword videos make my whole week! I don’t voice my love for this series as often as I should but I’ll always look forward to them :)

[pancentricism]

1) - you were under the weather (2) - you slowly and carefully explained everything you were doing, including breaks to look up abbreviations (3) - you stopped in the middle to play guitar. You started the crossword at about 3 mins into the video and finished it about an hour and three minutes, which means that if you had submitted to the leaderboard you'd still have have been forty-second.

[leeuwevdh]

I’m surprised Simon didn’t mention it, but the reason “china” means pal is because of Cockney rhyming slang! The word “mate” rhymes with “china plate” which was then shortened to just “china”

[colinstuartsmith]

Sid Waddell quote when a player scored 180 .... " you could get those 3 darts in the eye of a Maggot" .... alll in Sid's wonderfully accented way.

[Alex_Meadows]

If I could solve that QC in two and a half minutes it would be the best day of my life! Anyway, thank you for the video, these are always a lovely end to the week.

[jadeEpeace]

Wow! Superb puzzle and wonderful solve, thank you for taking the time to explain it to us and play some guitar and have a laugh along the way!! Loved it! Although I had to look up Not A Sausage! Had never heard that expression before so that one gave me a giggle!! ❤

[avalancherelapse]

It feels absolutely surreal to dive into the world of modified sudokus and then stumble upon a video like this where yet again its a whole new world of constructors and solvers and the way the language is played with in these clues makes my head spin, could not last a second without the brilliant explanations by Simon, this is just ridiculous.

[PhroXenGold]

As someone in that narrow slice of the venn diagram, I'm rather disappointed my specialist knowledge of Iron Mainden song didn't end up being needed

[bruresende]

I have no clue what's gpoing on these videos 99% of te time, but I still don't miss a single one!

[longwaytotipperary]

Always ❤ Simon playing guitar! Always impressed with his extensive knowledge! Great puzzle! Great solving! Hope you feel better soon, Simon!

[AO]

This was just what I needed after a long and exhausting day at work.

For 16D, Energy is VIM, as in "vim and vigor"

The clue tells you to put BURN (consume) + U (Uranium) in VIM (energy), which gets you VIBURNUM (a plant).

Also, 2:31 is a VERY fast time, and to then land in the top 3 is nothing to sneeze at.

[Kleyguerth]

12:16 - An example of cedilla, in portuguese: "coração", means "heart". The "ç" is a c with a cedilla, the cedilla softens its sound by turning it from a /k/ (sound of c in caramel) to a /s/ (sound of s in sound).

[trunkable]

Sid Waddel. The greatest comeback since Lazarus.

[paulwilliamson]

Beautiful puzzle. Wonderfully explained. Thank you. X

[vinylEarthlink]

I really like difficult puzzles; the SNITCH was at 161 when I started this one, so I knew I was in for a struggle. As a Mephisto blogger, I did know narthex, which definitely helped. Like Simon, I was totally baffled by world-beater, but that did fit the anagram letters. My time was around 75 minutes, and I wasn't the slowest solver, either.

[rhj]

T. S. Eliot, 1931: "I am one of those — I suspect fairly numerous — who until a year or so ago would have thought that a Narthex was one of those African antelopes which are so useful to makers of crossword puzzles."