Is this a cryptic crossword or regular crossword? How many letters?

I would say minutes

A good performance in the theatre? Applause

I think I did that same crossword puzzle a few days ago. I was really confused by the puzzle's answer and had to think it through for a minute (no pun intended) before realizing the error.

The one words that big hands indicated to me as a child growing up indicated

SAFETY, REASSURANCE, LOVE, GUIDENCE. I know these are not the answer.

Bravo.

It would help if you told us how many letters...

I'm thinking bravo as well.

If it's a clock, it indicates the hour.

^^ Ahhh, no it is just the opposite :-) Big hand indicates the minutes; the little hand indicates the hours.

I would need to know number of letters as well.

If it's a clock big hand is minutes, little hand is the hour.

I am guessing it's not that however. And I see it says hand, singular. Not hands. As in give me a hand up.

https://latimescrosswordanswers.com/1002902/what-the-big-hand-indicates/

It has to be "applause" or in that area. Is it the NYT crossword?

revencajun -- I checked the link "hour" doesn't make sense.

When I saw this, I wondered about the smarts of the person who created this crossword! D-U-M-B!!!

If raven's link is the answer, then there is some logic to it. When it is pointing straight up, it does indicate the hour. Pointing anywhere else, it's minutes past or before the hour.

The answer is 4 letters. Ravencajun’s link is to the answer given by the LATimes. I think that this is a mistake by the puzzle creator. They either don’t wear a watch or it’s a digital one.

Yeah, that is the dumbest clue ever!! And I am an avid crossworder :-) I would have been really cheesed off with that one!

Stop?

My first thought was a hand on a clock, minutes as suggested above.

OK -- you're right -- the big hand IS on the hour, once an hour. How fair that is as an answer. I do NYT puzzle and I'm used to very tricky questions but the answer has to be incontrovertible. I guess this one is arguable but fair.

It does take an hour for the big hand to go around the clock once, but I think "Stop" is a better solution.

Maybe it has to do with where you learned to read a clock. For me the "big hand" was the short FAT one not the long SKINNY one. What constitutes "big" in other words.

The big or long hand indicates the MINUTES, not the HOUR. Only when it is on the 12 does it indicate the hour. For instance, when it's on the 6, it indicates the half-hour.

When it's on the 12, it's still the minute hand. If it's on the 12 and the little hand is on the 5, the big hand on the 12 doesn't indicate the hour. the 5 is indicating the hour.

Maybe HALT or WAIT?

There may be a way to look at it by thinking that the big hand indicates minutes and also when one hour ends and another begins. It just doesn't indicate which.

The small hand indicates which hour it is (in a 12 hour cycle sense) but not when it starts or stops.

If it's four letters, maybe TIME.

Yeah, what skibby said maybe. I was thinking about it philosophically and forgot the relevance was for a crossword clue.

Since some people are still guessing, the newspaper puzzle’s answer is “hour”. But as you can tell, I (and several others) are shaking their heads over this.

I thought it might be that a lady's performance has ended as in the old expression, "Give the little lady a big hand". ( Not so politically correct. )

That's a poorly chosen clue.

If you argue that the big hand is the hour, what does the little hand indicate? The LA Times puzzle doesn't make many errors, but this time (pun intended) they did.

It looks like it was designed by Craig Stowe. The only Craig Stowe connected with crossword puzzles is one who is Canadian and living in Toronto.

And before you ask - yes, in Canada the Big Hand shows the minutes and not the Hour.

But maybe I have the wrong person. Maybe he's a millennial who has never seen an analog clock.