Simon FAILS But What Does He Do Wrong?!

Simon's restraint to not call the guy with 1:35 a cheater lol

How on earth do you consider this a fail????? two letters out of that brutal puzzle? You are just brilliant!!!

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"

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.

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.

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 do believe that because “public” can refer to a community, I have heard someone refer to “their public” meaning their community of supporters.

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.

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 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.

Just for completeness, ME is indeed the abbreviation for Maine, since MA=Massachusetts, MI=Michigan, and MN=Minnesota

Simon: posts cryptic crossword solve displaying brilliant command of the English language. All the comments: you pronounced the Swiss mathematician wrong, you nit.

Thanks for uploading more cryptic crossword content! It's really amazing to watch.

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.

Well I wouldn't have gotten any of these ... but Ganymede is the largest moon (and of the Solar System) of Jupiter.

e is the base of the natural logarithm (ln), it's 2.7ish, and it is indeed referred to as 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!

Fans = public because some actors refer to their fans as their public, presumably.

[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.

Ganymede is indeed a moon of Jupiter. They are all named after Jupiter/Zeus's lovers or descendants.