Well said! I was expecting the sort of complete mental collapse that I have when I try my hand at a cryptic. If I did as well as Simon on this puzzle I'd be bragging about it for years!
Besides, "harum-scarum" is kind of a fluff word anyway and there's no reason it shouldn't be spelled with different vowels in those unstressed syllables. Your spelling made better sense of the word-play (though you were right to point out the implication of "dictator," which I didn't quite understand until a bit after you said it). On the other hand, c'mon, the Niobe story isn't all *that* obscure. She bragged that she was better than Leto: "I've got 14 kids, 7 sons and 7 daughters, so I dunno why Leto thinks she's so great when she's only got 2." Leto: "Yeah, but my kids are Apollo and Artemis -- yours are only mortal. Let me prove to you just how mortal they are." Slaughter ensues. Niobe is not best pleased; another god takes pity on her and turns her into a rock, but she's still heartbroken and weeping. I'll leave you to look up the Ganymede story on your own, but serious props for the US geography and the postal abbreviations. Yes, ME is Maine (MA = Massachusetts, MD = Maryland, MI = Michigan, MO = Missouri, MS = Mississippi).
Some people like to work on paper and then have an electronic archive of their solves. People sometimes end up in odd parts of leaderboards when they use sites in non-standard ways. I remember there was someone who was consistently the fastest time on Nikoli because they'd practice by resolving each puzzle several times, and comment with their first few solve times, which were fast but not usually the top.
Thought I'd have a go at the puzzle before watching the video ... and after a few clues I realised I'd written the puzzle, which was a surprise. But it still took me 3:55 to solve-remember the answers.
I just love cryptic crosswords. They hit everything I love about wordplay. As for Euler: the usual pronunciation is like the 'Eu' in German... that is "Oiler". But try to forget this fact when you discuss Euclid, which is just "Yooclid"
I also have always heard the French (or maybe it’s the French-American) pronunciation of Fermat: “fur-maw”, not “fehr-matt” like Simon says it. I teach high school math and I actually had a bonus question recently on a quiz, asking which word rhymes with the mathematician: fueler or boiler.
"But try to forget this fact when you discuss Euclid..." Or just remember that Euclid was Greek....? (And, btw, as with most ancient Greek names, the "standard" English pronunciation ("Yooclid") is not really correct.)
32:45 While the number e had been discussed before Euler, most notably Bernoulli's investigations into compounding interest, it was Euler who was the first one to prove the value of e = 2.71828... That was a brilliant clue, amazed at how quickly you figured it out.
Not sure what, if anything, it could mean to "prove the value" of a constant. If you're referring to calculating it, Euler wasn't the first to do that (tho he did find 10 more digits than the previous calculator). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(mathematical_constant)#Known_digits
Your face when you're still stuck on the first clue and the guy who's about to finish in half an hour calls himself "imbecile". Don't apologize Simon, you're amazing
I so enjoyed this. I confess that I did not watch it like a hawk (which is how I watch most of the sudoku content on CTC), but allowed your dulcet tones to wash over me in a partially foreign language while I did some embroidery. At one point my husband was in the room and heard you read a clue, give a word or two of explanation, and then fill in some obscure word. He laughed - because it is so hard for us American crossword solvers to even begin to grasp how these cryptics work. But I am beginning to understand much better, and I could explain the clues to several answers as I talked with my husband. I can't actually recognize it for myself yet, but I am much better at understanding how you got there. Thanks so much for doing this, Simon. I love seeing this other side of your splendid mind.
I got into this channel through the Sudoku videos. Simon (Mark too) is a much better Sudoku solver than I am, but I can usually follow along with his solves, and sometimes even replicate them. But these cryptic crosswords? Every time I watch a video, I am completely bamboozled. Simon reads a gibberish clue, immediately says, "if you reverse this word, abbreviate this, and take the first two letters of that, you get an obscure 18th century slang word that means this" and I have no idea what he's done or why. So, if occasionally, he is just a fraction as confused as I am, or if he doesn't get one answer completely right, I don't think he's stupid. I think that it's amazing he does it so rarely, since I don't consider myself stupid and I couldn't do it at all.
@@KinkyTurtle Thank you for the link. Beyond knowing how they work, I think, is being cognizant of the possible slang terms, and abbreviations that the setter has at their disposal.
Cryptic Crosswords are the worst, I have to agree. The way you need to "find" the way to parse the clue and come up with some obscure word that I have no idea of and would never expect anyone else to know, either (but apparently Simon does, so....), it's almost magic. Even reading definitions of the clues, like what Kinky posted, are almost gibberish. Even with explanations the answer is almost non-sensical.
For as much number theory and modular arithmetic that Simon and Mark display in their sudoku solving, they have revealed some gaps in basic algebra recently. Haha.
@@stephenbeck7222 As if e and natural logs are basic algebra. If I did not go to university or watch Numberphile I've never would have known about it being called Euler's number.
This was genuinely so fun to watch!! I don't think you're a failure, it's amazing how you get these clues so quickly and how committed you are to understanding them. It's a pleasure to watch!
Simon: posts cryptic crossword solve displaying brilliant command of the English language. All the comments: you pronounced the Swiss mathematician wrong, you nit.
Sometimes, Simon says something like "that's an odd collection of words, it probably means it's an anagram" because usually, getting clever things to work takes manipulation of the words and meanings. I was impressed by the Ganymede clue because...the word Ganymede is just there. It just so happens to be made up of the abbreviations for 4 US states and they happen to be on the east coast.
A difference between sudoku and cryptics on this channel: In Sudoku, when Simon or Mark miss something, I get annoyed because it slows them down and they often never discover what they missed because they find another way. When Simon missed "Automatic Pilot" here, I knew he would find it eventually, so I was just sitting there, "wait for it, wait for it, ...." And then he found it and he was annoyed enough for the both of us. And then he got annoyed over Skinny, which I thought was hard because it was so unintuitive. Reminds me of the old child's joke: "What's brown and sticky? A stick"
@@Alex_Meadows Why stop...? What animal has more lives than a cat? Frogs because they croak every day! ps ... Simon, not a fail! The first priority of all these videos is to entertain! Job done!
[25:07] “So, what's this, then? Butterfat.” I nearly fell out of my chair upon hearing this random remark, as I had just figured this one out. Is Simon psychic or what? This is the first crossword video I've watched. I guess I was drawn in by the title (but no, Simon, you hardly "failed"); anyway, I'm glad I did, cuz I could repeatedly pause the video and work on solving the puzzle myself. I got all but 4 of the answers (elfin, inn, dorsum, and Niobe) on my own*, tho I often didn't get all of the wordplay in the clues. I was also pleased when Simon got 'dorsum', and I immediately understood why that was right-tho I'd never have thought of 'tot' = 'sum' on my own. (Hope I don't sound like I'm bragging. I was just tickled to do this well.) *EDIT: I did need Simon's explanation of 'George' = 'autopilot', but soon realized what the correct answer was w/o further help.
This was great! Fun and informing. 'Smashing' and 'Mess Tin' had me shouting at the computer screen!! Can't wait for the next one, really more fun than Suduko...
Great video, as always, Simon. I got about half, or so. But I knew you'd got the spelling wrong, because of an old limerick There was a young cleric from Salisbury Whose manners were all Halsbury-Scalsbury He walked around Hampshire Without any Pampshire Till the bishop compelled him to Walsbury. Tee hee! I never knew it would help with the Times crossword!
Yes! Love this limerick. For those struggling with it, you need to know that before Salisbury was a major tourist destination for Russian assassins, it was known as Old Sarum.
ECT stands for electroconvulsive therapy. Many years ago I would take patients for their treatment. Under general anaesthetic, the charge was applied to the temples and an epileptic fit was induced.
I knew the spelling, because "Harum Scarum" was the name of a 1965 Elvis Presley movie. And, as a holder of a college math degree, I can tell you Euler's last name is pronounced like "oiler".
I want to comment to support the channel, but all I can think of to say is "omg" and "wtf"... I thought I had a respectable IQ, but this is just beyond... The self-deprication is adorable. 👏
Great solve! Now for info. Euler's number, "e" is the one you learned about in school. It is used to calculate compounding interest. This works because if you take the derivative of e (e. g. To find the rate of change, as you might do when calculating interest), you get back e. That is, e is its own derivative, and is the only number in existence with that property. This property makes it the natural choice to be the base of the natural logarithm (ln) function. Finally, Euler's identity is the following true equation: e^(iπ)+1=0 where i is the imaginary unit (square root of -1). It comes up a lot in higher mathematics.
The proper pronunciation of Euler fooled me for a long time - for many years I thought there were two different mathematicians: The one I read about a lot, and the the people talked abut a lot, until I was put right
Watching your sudoku content makes me think you're quite intelligent. Watching you solve this monstrosity left me utterly flabbergasted. The breadth of your knowledge of trivia is astounding. How quickly you pull meaning out of gibberish clues is bewildering. Failure indeed! I tip my hat to you sir. You are, without a doubt, a genius.
Saying Simon failed after solving the entire puzzle with a single misspelling of an obscure term is a little harsh I think.... Hadid refers to Zaha Hadid, a British architect born in Iraq. I thought it was Gigi Hadid, a model, but apparently she's Palestinian and Jordanian. Maybe Zaha Hadid is better known in Britain.
There's also (from wikipedia): Mohammed Hadid, Iraqi-British politician and father of Foulath Hadid and Zaha Hadid Foulath Hadid, Iraqi writer, accountant and expert on Arab affairs (Heh, I just noticed that they're all related.) Btw, Gigi has a sister named Bella, also a model, tho not nearly as pretty as Gigi.
I always enjoy watching you guys attack The Times, which are beyond my skills, even after 25 years of cryptic crossword solving. I am just not British enough and my education was lighter on "the classics" of Greek mythology and British literature. As a math(s)instructor, of course I know the proper (German-Swiss) pronunciation of Euler's name and the significance of the constant "e" ~ 2.718281828459045235360...
“e” is Euler’s number, approximately 2.718…. One reason it’s special is because it’s a “gradient fixed point” - the slope of the line y=e^x is y’=e^x! Also, Euler was Swiss, so his name is pronounced “Oil-er”, not “You-ler”. Also also, Zaha Hadid was a famous British-Iraqi architect, so perhaps that’s why Hadid implied Iraqi?
Henry B-W: never won the Times championship but IIRC was once in the lead with one puzzle to go, back in the old days when you did one at a time, and there was huge scope for feeling the pressure if you were in the lead with one puzzle left (ask Mark about the 2000 championship ...). In that last puzzle, Henry either made the one mistake that's always enough for someone else to win, or struggled too long to get one answer.
When you're doing the Times, the coloured square like that is like a cursor, so it would have been the last entry that Simon put in. As simple as that. It's not wrong, pink is wrong and green are right.
It dosn’t matter Simon, you are still entertaining as ever. I learn so much from you about how to solve different crosswords. Mind you, I did get Automatic Pilot straight away, 😇
That was a magnificent effort, Simon. Definitely not a fail in my book. Euler's number e is the base of natural logarithms. It is an irrational number like Pi and is approximately equal to 2.718
Whenever i watch these cryptic crossword videos (which i do not do too often), I feel like I don't know English at all, although most of the time i consider myself rather fluent for a non-native speaker, just with a slighty limited vocabulary. On a completely different note, a listening recommendation triggered by "dorsum" - "O fortuna" from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana". One line in the third or fourth verse is "dorum nudum" - I don't know why i know this, my Latin is definitely weaker than my English, but that's in the way how my brain works. I often associate words or short phrases with song lyrics.
[8:02] “So 'saturnine' is the right answer-again, not straightforward.” Like they're supposed to be? I'm gonna guess that Simon already knows that Saturday is named after Saturn...? … I have rarely encountered the word 'saturnine', and couldn't have said what it meant. (Luckily, the clue as a whole was easy enough that that didn't matter.) It always reminds me of the Tears for Fears album *Saturnine Martial & Lunatic.* In common usage, the word 'day' usually refers to the (mean) solar day of 24 hours (± a few milliseconds), which is nearly 4 minutes longer than the earth's actual rotational period of ~23:56:04. This is due to the earth's orbital motion, which changes the earth-to-sun direction by about 1 degree each day, thus requiring about 1.002738 rotations for the sun to return to the same position in the sky.
I've got to say, your spelling of harem-scarem is how I would have spelt it. Considering the placement of the apostrophes, hare'em (hare them) scar'em (scare them) make more sense than hare thum scare thum. Just my 2 penn'orth.
because she was indeed a weeping mother, having lost her husband and sons after having moved out of the country and so was completely bereft. No idea why Niobe was sad.
We are your public (fans) Simon. Please do keep doing these. I'm awful at crosswords, and keep hoping I'll learn how to do them. But I fear not. Never seem to be able to solve them. Someone did this in a minute and a half??
Loved the video! I'm just getting into cryptics so this was very enjoyable and informative. Happy I managed to solve a couple of them on pausing the video! My only question is what is the Chambers dictionary PC app Simon is using? I can't seem to find it anywhere online.
26ac may be referring to Dame Zaha Hadid the famous Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning Iraqi architect. Another excellent video!! Regarding 13ac, in my very humble opinion, having watched many of your videos recently, you seem to frequently ignore the significance of the question mark at the end of some clues (cf Tollbooth). Hence you ignored the significance of "dictator's". Might be worth considering. Keep the [cryptic crossword] videos coming 👍
As George Bernard Shaw said: "England and America are two countries separated by a common language," and he might well have added pronunciation of even the same words with the same meanings. I live in the Commonwealth country of Belize, formerly British Honduras, and frequently hear the British influence as an emphasis placed on a different syllable than I would. It is interesting to hear Simon and Mark speak The Queen's English and compare and contrast it with my Standard American English.
Hardly a fail Simon! You are a blooming genius with these! Can you come to my house and do all my cryptics which I just stare at for hours until I get really fed up with it all?!!
Euler's number is indeed e. For future reference, Euler is pronounced oiler, which may crop up as a homophone clue someday. That was very amusing the way the penny dropped as you asked what cutaneous had to do with skinny.
This had me too. I was going crazy wondering why he didn't mention it lol. It didn't help that having it highlighted also lit up the clue on the right, in the same manner as the one he got wrong.
@@Holmes108 Thisss~~~~ But that's just unfamiliarity with the platform. it'd be nice if selection was blue, post solve, so only the orange/peach is what''s wrong >>;.
There's a Zaha Hadid who was an architect and Iraqi born, which seems a lot more to The Times' taste than the model sisters that came to my mind! But still rather obscure.
Since there was no symbol for the base of natural log, Euler introduced the letter e. By using the initial of his surname, he assured to be remembered as a great mathematician.
I think he would have been remembered as such anyways. I'm always amused by the fact that there are multiple formulas in math called "Euler's Formula," and that theorems have been named after different things just to make sure that "Euler" doesn't appear absolutely everywhere!
oh, and Ganymede is the largest moon of Jupiter, and you're correct on the four abbreviated states: Georgia, New York, Maine, and Delaware are all along the east coast
re HarumScarum I'd actually say that the crossword setter made a mistake with the clue as the answers use 'e' and both e's are not in any other words, so not your fault
That's not IPA! *This* is IPA: Euler (/ˈɔɪlər/, German: [ˈɔʏlɐ]). (I just realized that I never knew the exact pronunciation of that German diphthong. I find it rather challenging.)
How on earth do you consider this a fail????? two letters out of that brutal puzzle? You are just brilliant!!!
Especially when the two incorrect letters were not common with the down clue..
Well said! I was expecting the sort of complete mental collapse that I have when I try my hand at a cryptic. If I did as well as Simon on this puzzle I'd be bragging about it for years!
@@Alex_Meadows Amen! 👍
Besides, "harum-scarum" is kind of a fluff word anyway and there's no reason it shouldn't be spelled with different vowels in those unstressed syllables. Your spelling made better sense of the word-play (though you were right to point out the implication of "dictator," which I didn't quite understand until a bit after you said it).
On the other hand, c'mon, the Niobe story isn't all *that* obscure. She bragged that she was better than Leto: "I've got 14 kids, 7 sons and 7 daughters, so I dunno why Leto thinks she's so great when she's only got 2." Leto: "Yeah, but my kids are Apollo and Artemis -- yours are only mortal. Let me prove to you just how mortal they are." Slaughter ensues. Niobe is not best pleased; another god takes pity on her and turns her into a rock, but she's still heartbroken and weeping.
I'll leave you to look up the Ganymede story on your own, but serious props for the US geography and the postal abbreviations. Yes, ME is Maine (MA = Massachusetts, MD = Maryland, MI = Michigan, MO = Missouri, MS = Mississippi).
@@Anne_Mahoney and GA is Georgia!! 🙂
Simon's restraint to not call the guy with 1:35 a cheater lol
He calls them out in another video. He says, "They solve the puzzle on paper and then input the answers... so they're just slow typists."
Some people like to work on paper and then have an electronic archive of their solves. People sometimes end up in odd parts of leaderboards when they use sites in non-standard ways. I remember there was someone who was consistently the fastest time on Nikoli because they'd practice by resolving each puzzle several times, and comment with their first few solve times, which were fast but not usually the top.
@@iabervon Yup. Simon's point is just that they're not real solve times.
Thought I'd have a go at the puzzle before watching the video ... and after a few clues I realised I'd written the puzzle, which was a surprise. But it still took me 3:55 to solve-remember the answers.
I just love cryptic crosswords. They hit everything I love about wordplay.
As for Euler: the usual pronunciation is like the 'Eu' in German... that is "Oiler".
But try to forget this fact when you discuss Euclid, which is just "Yooclid"
I also have always heard the French (or maybe it’s the French-American) pronunciation of Fermat: “fur-maw”, not “fehr-matt” like Simon says it.
I teach high school math and I actually had a bonus question recently on a quiz, asking which word rhymes with the mathematician: fueler or boiler.
Yes. Hence the title 'well-spoken' for the brutal Euler-themed Listener puzzle a couple of years ago. (Oiler = well). It took me days to get that.
"But try to forget this fact when you discuss Euclid..."
Or just remember that Euclid was Greek....? (And, btw, as with most ancient Greek names, the "standard" English pronunciation ("Yooclid") is not really correct.)
@@stephenbeck7222 The French pronunciation is actually "fehr-mah"-more or less. (You know, it's French, so... )
Easy to remember Euler's number: it's called "e" from his name. Comes up prominently in Euler's identity: e^{i π} + 1 = 0.
32:45 While the number e had been discussed before Euler, most notably Bernoulli's investigations into compounding interest, it was Euler who was the first one to prove the value of e = 2.71828... That was a brilliant clue, amazed at how quickly you figured it out.
Not sure what, if anything, it could mean to "prove the value" of a constant. If you're referring to calculating it, Euler wasn't the first to do that (tho he did find 10 more digits than the previous calculator).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(mathematical_constant)#Known_digits
Your face when you're still stuck on the first clue and the guy who's about to finish in half an hour calls himself "imbecile". Don't apologize Simon, you're amazing
Thanks for uploading more cryptic crossword content! It's really amazing to watch.
I so enjoyed this. I confess that I did not watch it like a hawk (which is how I watch most of the sudoku content on CTC), but allowed your dulcet tones to wash over me in a partially foreign language while I did some embroidery. At one point my husband was in the room and heard you read a clue, give a word or two of explanation, and then fill in some obscure word. He laughed - because it is so hard for us American crossword solvers to even begin to grasp how these cryptics work. But I am beginning to understand much better, and I could explain the clues to several answers as I talked with my husband. I can't actually recognize it for myself yet, but I am much better at understanding how you got there. Thanks so much for doing this, Simon. I love seeing this other side of your splendid mind.
well said!
Just for completeness, ME is indeed the abbreviation for Maine, since MA=Massachusetts, MI=Michigan, and MN=Minnesota
I got into this channel through the Sudoku videos. Simon (Mark too) is a much better Sudoku solver than I am, but I can usually follow along with his solves, and sometimes even replicate them.
But these cryptic crosswords? Every time I watch a video, I am completely bamboozled. Simon reads a gibberish clue, immediately says, "if you reverse this word, abbreviate this, and take the first two letters of that, you get an obscure 18th century slang word that means this" and I have no idea what he's done or why.
So, if occasionally, he is just a fraction as confused as I am, or if he doesn't get one answer completely right, I don't think he's stupid. I think that it's amazing he does it so rarely, since I don't consider myself stupid and I couldn't do it at all.
Exactly!!
You just need to understand how cryptic clues work. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptic_crossword#How_cryptic_clues_work
@@KinkyTurtle Thank you for the link. Beyond knowing how they work, I think, is being cognizant of the possible slang terms, and abbreviations that the setter has at their disposal.
Beautifully stated!
Cryptic Crosswords are the worst, I have to agree. The way you need to "find" the way to parse the clue and come up with some obscure word that I have no idea of and would never expect anyone else to know, either (but apparently Simon does, so....), it's almost magic. Even reading definitions of the clues, like what Kinky posted, are almost gibberish. Even with explanations the answer is almost non-sensical.
e is the base of the natural logarithm (ln), it's 2.7ish, and it is indeed referred to as Euler's number.
And it is pronounced "oiler" not "youler"
For as much number theory and modular arithmetic that Simon and Mark display in their sudoku solving, they have revealed some gaps in basic algebra recently. Haha.
@@stephenbeck7222 As if e and natural logs are basic algebra. If I did not go to university or watch Numberphile I've never would have known about it being called Euler's number.
This was genuinely so fun to watch!! I don't think you're a failure, it's amazing how you get these clues so quickly and how committed you are to understanding them. It's a pleasure to watch!
Simon: posts cryptic crossword solve displaying brilliant command of the English language.
All the comments: you pronounced the Swiss mathematician wrong, you nit.
To be fair, I don't think anyone else called him a nit.
I do believe that because “public” can refer to a community, I have heard someone refer to “their public” meaning their community of supporters.
public can also refer to an audience (which are usually comprised of fans)
I was thinking of the phrase "adoring public" referring to a celebrity's fans.
In Dutch the word for audience is actually publiek (pronounced: publeek)
@@Frietoe in French, it's the same: "public". in German, it's "Publikum", etc. a lot of European languages have an equivalent
I think, specifically, "Open fans?" is referring to a golf or tennis open, where the audience is the public gallery.
Well I wouldn't have gotten any of these ... but Ganymede is the largest moon (and of the Solar System) of Jupiter.
And the cup bearer of Zeus, aka Jupiter.
Sometimes, Simon says something like "that's an odd collection of words, it probably means it's an anagram" because usually, getting clever things to work takes manipulation of the words and meanings. I was impressed by the Ganymede clue because...the word Ganymede is just there. It just so happens to be made up of the abbreviations for 4 US states and they happen to be on the east coast.
A difference between sudoku and cryptics on this channel: In Sudoku, when Simon or Mark miss something, I get annoyed because it slows them down and they often never discover what they missed because they find another way. When Simon missed "Automatic Pilot" here, I knew he would find it eventually, so I was just sitting there, "wait for it, wait for it, ...." And then he found it and he was annoyed enough for the both of us.
And then he got annoyed over Skinny, which I thought was hard because it was so unintuitive. Reminds me of the old child's joke: "What's brown and sticky? A stick"
I love that joke! And I've never heard "skinny" used that way (tho I did figure it out).
What's green and spongy? A green sponge.
What's red and invisible? No tomatoes.
Sorry, I'll stop now.
@@Alex_Meadows Why stop...? What animal has more lives than a cat? Frogs because they croak every day! ps ... Simon, not a fail! The first priority of all these videos is to entertain! Job done!
Please do more of these. So enjoy the logic and word play
If you don't know why he was looking up the word Spelunking, you've got a wonderful Sudoku video to check out, from last night.
number of Euler is e, it is used in logarithm : ln(e)=1 and also
and also e^(i*pi)=-1
Thanks so much for doing a crossword for a change! Lovely self-deprecation as ever. Kudos also to the setter for the brilliant surface at 4ac.
[25:07] “So, what's this, then? Butterfat.” I nearly fell out of my chair upon hearing this random remark, as I had just figured this one out. Is Simon psychic or what?
This is the first crossword video I've watched. I guess I was drawn in by the title (but no, Simon, you hardly "failed"); anyway, I'm glad I did, cuz I could repeatedly pause the video and work on solving the puzzle myself. I got all but 4 of the answers (elfin, inn, dorsum, and Niobe) on my own*, tho I often didn't get all of the wordplay in the clues. I was also pleased when Simon got 'dorsum', and I immediately understood why that was right-tho I'd never have thought of 'tot' = 'sum' on my own. (Hope I don't sound like I'm bragging. I was just tickled to do this well.)
*EDIT: I did need Simon's explanation of 'George' = 'autopilot', but soon realized what the correct answer was w/o further help.
"hot personality turns to carnality" sounds like a line from Eminem's Lose Yourself
Well done!! Thanks for sharing this puzzle, several clues were beautifully constructed.
That was awesome, thank you… the reaction to ‘skinny’ was superb, Simon. Thank you.
Fans = public because some actors refer to their fans as their public, presumably.
Ganymede is indeed a moon of Jupiter. They are all named after Jupiter/Zeus's lovers or descendants.
Plenty amusement, thanks for doing cryptic crossword.
This was great! Fun and informing. 'Smashing' and 'Mess Tin' had me shouting at the computer screen!! Can't wait for the next one, really more fun than Suduko...
Great video, as always, Simon. I got about half, or so. But I knew you'd got the spelling wrong, because of an old limerick
There was a young cleric from Salisbury
Whose manners were all Halsbury-Scalsbury
He walked around Hampshire
Without any Pampshire
Till the bishop compelled him to Walsbury.
Tee hee! I never knew it would help with the Times crossword!
Yes! Love this limerick. For those struggling with it, you need to know that before Salisbury was a major tourist destination for Russian assassins, it was known as Old Sarum.
Wonderful puzzle and solve, especially loved the alternate definition of “skinny” and how quickly you got 9 down!
For the harum-scarum clue, dictator refers to one who is speaking, not a tyrannical leader. So this is a "sounds like" clue.
I knew of Procol Harum , but was sure generally the spellings had an e in them (problems of the English vowel shift ?)
Thank you. I was wondering about that.
"I thought cutaneous was 'of the skin'" hahahahaha
ECT stands for electroconvulsive therapy. Many years ago I would take patients for their treatment. Under general anaesthetic, the charge was applied to the temples and an epileptic fit was induced.
I knew the spelling, because "Harum Scarum" was the name of a 1965 Elvis Presley movie.
And, as a holder of a college math degree, I can tell you Euler's last name is pronounced like "oiler".
I want to comment to support the channel, but all I can think of to say is "omg" and "wtf"... I thought I had a respectable IQ, but this is just beyond... The self-deprication is adorable. 👏
You did great despite the small troubles! Very difficult crossword
Great solve! Now for info.
Euler's number, "e" is the one you learned about in school. It is used to calculate compounding interest. This works because if you take the derivative of e (e. g. To find the rate of change, as you might do when calculating interest), you get back e. That is, e is its own derivative, and is the only number in existence with that property.
This property makes it the natural choice to be the base of the natural logarithm (ln) function.
Finally, Euler's identity is the following true equation: e^(iπ)+1=0 where i is the imaginary unit (square root of -1). It comes up a lot in higher mathematics.
The Skinny revelation was wonderful
Hadid is Zaha Hadid, the architect.
Yes, one of the most famous of recent times. Wasn't there another video recently where Simon or Mark didn't recognize that famous architect either?
That was in a Club Monthly clue for LAH-DI-DAH (also written by me).
PS Euler is pronounced "Oiler" - he was Swiss... apart from that, fun video.
it is pronounced /ˈɔɪlər/ or /ˈɔɪlə/
And Fermat I belive is pronounced "Furmar" fɛʁma
The proper pronunciation of Euler fooled me for a long time - for many years I thought there were two different mathematicians: The one I read about a lot, and the the people talked abut a lot, until I was put right
@@mvivian100 /fɛʁma/ ≈ 'fehr-mah'. (Of course, that's a French 'r', with no close English equivalent.)
Watching your sudoku content makes me think you're quite intelligent. Watching you solve this monstrosity left me utterly flabbergasted. The breadth of your knowledge of trivia is astounding. How quickly you pull meaning out of gibberish clues is bewildering. Failure indeed! I tip my hat to you sir. You are, without a doubt, a genius.
22:15 I haven't finished the video yet, so I could be wrong, but does anyone else hear Nigel Thornberry in their heads right now? SMASHING!
26:00
Is "public" somewhat related to "audience"?
And you're being a "fan" of something you're interested in xD
The only fail in this video is not knowing Euler's number being "e" :D
That was probably because it's known as Napier' Constant in the UK.
For me as a non-English native speaker, this puzzle looks completely mind-blowing. And you, sir, have nailed it
Place where you might find Solo on keyboards? (5, 3)
Saying Simon failed after solving the entire puzzle with a single misspelling of an obscure term is a little harsh I think....
Hadid refers to Zaha Hadid, a British architect born in Iraq. I thought it was Gigi Hadid, a model, but apparently she's Palestinian and Jordanian. Maybe Zaha Hadid is better known in Britain.
There's also (from wikipedia):
Mohammed Hadid, Iraqi-British politician and father of Foulath Hadid and Zaha Hadid
Foulath Hadid, Iraqi writer, accountant and expert on Arab affairs
(Heh, I just noticed that they're all related.)
Btw, Gigi has a sister named Bella, also a model, tho not nearly as pretty as Gigi.
Skinny and cutaneous did make me smile. Thank you :)
I always enjoy watching you guys attack The Times, which are beyond my skills, even after 25 years of cryptic crossword solving. I am just not British enough and my education was lighter on "the classics" of Greek mythology and British literature.
As a math(s)instructor, of course I know the proper (German-Swiss) pronunciation of Euler's name and the significance of the constant "e" ~ 2.718281828459045235360...
“e” is Euler’s number, approximately 2.718…. One reason it’s special is because it’s a “gradient fixed point” - the slope of the line y=e^x is y’=e^x!
Also, Euler was Swiss, so his name is pronounced “Oil-er”, not “You-ler”.
Also also, Zaha Hadid was a famous British-Iraqi architect, so perhaps that’s why Hadid implied Iraqi?
Henry B-W: never won the Times championship but IIRC was once in the lead with one puzzle to go, back in the old days when you did one at a time, and there was huge scope for feeling the pressure if you were in the lead with one puzzle left (ask Mark about the 2000 championship ...). In that last puzzle, Henry either made the one mistake that's always enough for someone else to win, or struggled too long to get one answer.
These are awesome. Hope to see more
Got the meaning of skinny a fraction of a second before Simon and shared in the same chuckle. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
For a newbie: Why is the "S" in flesh coloured?
When you're doing the Times, the coloured square like that is like a cursor, so it would have been the last entry that Simon put in. As simple as that. It's not wrong, pink is wrong and green are right.
@@antliken7757 Thanks
glad someone asked this i was also confused about that
Zaha Hadid - the late iraqi british architect and pritzker prize winner -
It dosn’t matter Simon, you are still entertaining as ever. I learn so much from you about how to solve different crosswords. Mind you, I did get Automatic Pilot straight away, 😇
For 1 down, fans and public are synonyms for (e.g.) the attendants to a concert.
Interesting how different events spring to mind. I was yelling "at a match" at Simon.
That was a magnificent effort, Simon. Definitely not a fail in my book. Euler's number e is the base of natural logarithms. It is an irrational number like Pi and is approximately equal to 2.718
Whenever i watch these cryptic crossword videos (which i do not do too often), I feel like I don't know English at all, although most of the time i consider myself rather fluent for a non-native speaker, just with a slighty limited vocabulary. On a completely different note, a listening recommendation triggered by "dorsum" - "O fortuna" from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana". One line in the third or fourth verse is "dorum nudum" - I don't know why i know this, my Latin is definitely weaker than my English, but that's in the way how my brain works. I often associate words or short phrases with song lyrics.
Any idea what the history of cryptic crosswords is, or where I can learn about it?
[8:02] “So 'saturnine' is the right answer-again, not straightforward.” Like they're supposed to be?
I'm gonna guess that Simon already knows that Saturday is named after Saturn...? … I have rarely encountered the word 'saturnine', and couldn't have said what it meant. (Luckily, the clue as a whole was easy enough that that didn't matter.) It always reminds me of the Tears for Fears album *Saturnine Martial & Lunatic.*
In common usage, the word 'day' usually refers to the (mean) solar day of 24 hours (± a few milliseconds), which is nearly 4 minutes longer than the earth's actual rotational period of ~23:56:04. This is due to the earth's orbital motion, which changes the earth-to-sun direction by about 1 degree each day, thus requiring about 1.002738 rotations for the sun to return to the same position in the sky.
I'm never not amazed by these crosswords. My dream is to one day have a vocabulary half as rich as some of the words that appear in here.
not only did i not know how to spell the final word, but i've never heard it before in my life!
I've got to say, your spelling of harem-scarem is how I would have spelt it. Considering the placement of the apostrophes, hare'em (hare them) scar'em (scare them) make more sense than hare thum scare thum. Just my 2 penn'orth.
Ganymede is a moon of Jupiter, the largest in the solar system and is larger in size than Mercury (although I think Mercury more massive).
I was thinking of the 4 phases of the moon,, no wonder it didnt fit !
I've seen that written down as harem-scarem. In the Beano, I think.
It’s Naomi that’s Biblical. The name means joyous or something like that and she asked to be called Mara because she was bitter.
because she was indeed a weeping mother, having lost her husband and sons after having moved out of the country and so was completely bereft. No idea why Niobe was sad.
I was just waiting for Simon to remember what autopilot is short for.
That was brutal mainly because those two letters are unchecked… I doubt you were the only one
We are your public (fans) Simon.
Please do keep doing these. I'm awful at crosswords, and keep hoping I'll learn how to do them. But I fear not. Never seem to be able to solve them. Someone did this in a minute and a half??
love watching you solve cryptic crosswords!!! thanks for the video :)
Little Fermat's theorem come from euler's phi function
Why was the s red in the solution check?
It was the last letter he filled in, so his cursor was probably still on it.
I don't call that a fail - you got the right answer. Had either E intersected with another word you would have known they were Us
Loved the video! I'm just getting into cryptics so this was very enjoyable and informative. Happy I managed to solve a couple of them on pausing the video!
My only question is what is the Chambers dictionary PC app Simon is using? I can't seem to find it anywhere online.
Must be a subscription one ? Doesnt Simon sometimes set crosswords?
26ac may be referring to Dame Zaha Hadid the famous Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning Iraqi architect.
Another excellent video!! Regarding 13ac, in my very humble opinion, having watched many of your videos recently, you seem to frequently ignore the significance of the question mark at the end of some clues (cf Tollbooth). Hence you ignored the significance of "dictator's". Might be worth considering. Keep the [cryptic crossword] videos coming 👍
If this were a main CtC video, surely you would have played Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol HARUM as the intro. 🙂
As George Bernard Shaw said: "England and America are two countries separated by a common language," and he might well have added pronunciation of even the same words with the same meanings. I live in the Commonwealth country of Belize, formerly British Honduras, and frequently hear the British influence as an emphasis placed on a different syllable than I would. It is interesting to hear Simon and Mark speak The Queen's English and compare and contrast it with my Standard American English.
I'd have thought the Nine in Saturnine would've been a reference to the Beatles "Revolution No. 9" but I guess Simon didn't know of it?
Hardly a fail Simon! You are a blooming genius with these! Can you come to my house and do all my cryptics which I just stare at for hours until I get really fed up with it all?!!
I don't count spelling mistakes as errors (well I do but not as failures, just as a mild annoyance). Well done on a fantastic solve.
Ganymede is a moon of Jupiter, you are correct sir.
Euler's number is indeed e. For future reference, Euler is pronounced oiler, which may crop up as a homophone clue someday.
That was very amusing the way the penny dropped as you asked what cutaneous had to do with skinny.
Why was the s in flesh marked wrong?
It wasn't. Wrong cells are white. The orange cell was the currently selected one.
This had me too. I was going crazy wondering why he didn't mention it lol. It didn't help that having it highlighted also lit up the clue on the right, in the same manner as the one he got wrong.
@@Holmes108 Thisss~~~~ But that's just unfamiliarity with the platform. it'd be nice if selection was blue, post solve, so only the orange/peach is what''s wrong >>;.
Ganymede is a Jupiter moon, so you guessed right! It’s actually the largest moon in our solar system :)
Harum-Scarum was not clued accurately for me as Harem does not sound like Harum?!
Me: "Ah yes, 1 across is [redacted] because of a PFI contract and... er... some other letters jumbled up."
Got it correct, completely wrong reason.
never in a million years, would I have thought Herum-Scarum was spelled with u's.
I learned that when I accidentally had captions on a Bugs Bunny cartoon. For that split second there was the word.
Smashing!
There is Euler number and Euler constant.
There's a Zaha Hadid who was an architect and Iraqi born, which seems a lot more to The Times' taste than the model sisters that came to my mind! But still rather obscure.
honestly i would never be able to complete this so many things that are british that completely went over my head lol
Remove the odd letters in "Misread quiz" and you get the nationality.
Since there was no symbol for the base of natural log, Euler introduced the letter e. By using the initial of his surname, he assured to be remembered as a great mathematician.
I think he would have been remembered as such anyways. I'm always amused by the fact that there are multiple formulas in math called "Euler's Formula," and that theorems have been named after different things just to make sure that "Euler" doesn't appear absolutely everywhere!
Slightly ironic then that, regardless of how you pronounce his name, it never begins with an 'e' sound, short or long.
'That's horrendously horrible'...that was the easiest one! xD
I'm surprised that nobody has picked up on the pronunciation of Euler's name yet! lol
fails, schmails, I wouldn't have understood a single clue and you got it all right with the exception of a spelling error in a very obscure word...
oh, and Ganymede is the largest moon of Jupiter, and you're correct on the four abbreviated states: Georgia, New York, Maine, and Delaware are all along the east coast
re HarumScarum I'd actually say that the crossword setter made a mistake with the clue as the answers use 'e' and both e's are not in any other words, so not your fault
Small pronunciation note: Euler is pronounced like "oiler" (or OY-lər if you do IPA). Swiss names are weird.
Not really, it is the standard German pronunciation for that spelling.
That's not IPA! *This* is IPA: Euler (/ˈɔɪlər/, German: [ˈɔʏlɐ]).
(I just realized that I never knew the exact pronunciation of that German diphthong. I find it rather challenging.)
12:53 Sorry... what? It's pronounced "oiler"! :)
And yes, that's the same e