The Most OUTRAGEOUS Crossword Clue

'...a source of sexual attraction'. Simon: 'hmmm, maybe it's not Liz Truss'. 😂😂

If there's an award for "best clue of the year" 28 across would win it hands down. Utterly brilliant and funny.

As a US-based person who’s fallen in love with cryptic xwords and has gotten better (cut my times in half over the past year), I still struggle with the insane amount of acceptable abbreviations per chambers across the pond. Perhaps you can do a video for patrons listing out the most frequent ones? I absolutely loved watching your solve of this one, and thought it was witty as all get out on Dave’s part (esp 28A obv), but never would have been able to solve it myself without the aforementioned abbreviation knowledge.

I saw Dave Gorman's show recently and was delighted that he did a segment about his crossword setting and his Nemesis!

For anyone wondering about Coryza; -A catarrhal inflammation of the mucous membrane in the nose, caused especially by a cold or by hay fever.

Good timing, I'm off to see Dave's stand-up this evening Edited to add: Incredibly funny, and a whole section about him becoming a crossword setter over lockdown too, which may have had something to do with 28 across. No spoilers

looking it up: coryza - catarrhal inflammation of the mucous membrane in the nose, caused especially by a cold or by hay fever

"That clue almost breaks all the taboos of cracking the cryptic" We have taboos?? With all our naked singles? And touching snakes?? 😉

Well I thought the Independent had fixed the confusion over the Continue/Hide buttons on their 'solved' screen but I think that's just because this was the newest puzzle available at the time it was solved. Nice that it didn't erase all the answers like usual 😂

Although I do love the sudoku videos, these cryptic ones will always be my favorite! I'm glad you guys still do them from time to time

So much to love about this - Simon’s intuitive brain, quick wit and especially Simon’s hilarious reaction to clue 28! 😂 What a happy start to the day!

One thing that I can't quite believe about this puzzle is that word, "coryza". Although I'm not familiar with the definition off the top of my head, I am familiar with the word, as it features in the Broadway musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I had wanted, at one point, to make a cryptic crossword featuring all the obscure words that they use in that musical, e.g. chimerical, elanguescence, astrobleme, and ilspile, but after realizing that I had no good way of even setting all the words together, I abandoned the idea. And so, when I saw that coryza was set in this puzzle, I couldn't help but pause the video and marvel at the coincidence.

This should've been on the "Cracking the Cryptic: After Dark" channel.

Love it when you solve Dave's puzzles, they are always clever enough to engage with, but also often very amusing! Nice work all round!

Absolutely lovely! Always love the cryptic crossword content!

Yayyyy i love when you do cryptic crosswords! I’ve started getting into them too :)

I'm trawling back through your cryptic crossword videos at the moment and this is definitely my favourite so far. Nice to see a setter with a sense of humour, and Independent ones I find are more accessible in terms of not needing to have a lot of obscure cultural knowledge. Would love more of this kind of content in the future! :D

I can't imagine how many hours it took to get the skill to do these without any help.

A strange mixture, with more write-ins than expected alongside some really convoluted clues. As for 28ac, comments expressing performative outrage about that sort of thing were one factor in ending my career as a crossword blogger, along with contributions from the nanoquibblers and homophone obsessives. And there was me thinking that it's just a bit of fun. Anyway, thanks for the video, Simon. 🙂

I've been watching this channel for a while. I can almost keep up with your sudoku videos and sometimes definitely find myself yelling at the screen on those 😂 but this was my first time watching your crossword puzzle content, and that was crazy. I didn't know puzzles like that existed. I maybe could have gotten 3 of those without help even after I started to understand what was happening 😂