Times Quick Cryptic No 2786 by Mara

69 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 2786 by Mara”

1. 9:17. TWIG and POTTY were fun. I also enjoyed STRAW and FIREWATER.

2. I biffed DANDY & EDITOR, parsing post-submission. Four hiddens seemed like a bit much. I paused for a moment at 19d, since it could have been BORED (directors evidently/yawning out loud), but saw the checkers would settle it. Didn’t know PORRIDGE was Scottish (ODE marks it as ‘chiefly (Brit.)’. 6:53.

   1. It was Johnson of dictionary fame who wrote
      Oats, a grain fed to horses but eaten by people in Scotland
      or something similar.
      On edit: OOOPS, Templar below has the actual quote.

3. 8.04, including an annoying typo search at the end after getting the error message. FOI SWAP, LO CALENDAR YEAR which I had put aside to await crossers. Took a while to see MANIFEST and struggled with GREMLIN (didn’t know it was also a troll) and FIGHT where I missed the last-letters device. An enjoyable puzzle, thanks to Mara and John.

4. I got off to a fast start, but then mis-parsed several clues. I thought arcade nearly had 13 letters, took a scrap of confetti as a C, was afraid I was looking for an obscure Scottish dish starting with con- or lag-, etc. I did have most of it done, too, most annoying.

   Time: 10 minutes

   1. Yes I was scared of something like cock a leekie

5. A 10 minute finish but with LOI FIGHT biffed and not parsed when the clock stopped. I think the clock could have run on a long time as I totally failed to see how the clue worked. Otherwise no hold-ups though as Kevin says, a surprising number of hiddens and yes I’d agree that porridge is British not exclusively Scottish. It was certainly a staple part of my English childhood – the main Scottish contribution to the art of porridge-making is to serve it with salt not sugar. Not for me!

   Many thanks John for the blog and I look forward to the Sunday Special.
   Cedric

   1. Hah! I’ve always suspected I had Scottish ancestry, now I’m sure. Sugar in porridge oh dear.

6. 11 minutes, with EXACT and FIGHT delaying me a little. I saw both answers immediately as I had most of the checkers, but I was losing time trying to parse them so I decided to stop the clock and revisit them later.

   I’ve no problem with PORRIDGE being defined as a Scottish dish as it’s traditionally associated with that country and something one would expect to find on breakfast menus there far more so than in other parts of GB. One of the two leading brands available in the UK for decades originated in Scotland, ‘Scott’s Porage Oats’, which played on its Scottish connections in its advertising, ‘The True Taste of Scotland’, and featured burley Highland Gamesmen in vests and kilts putting the shot. Sadly it was absorbed by its American rival (Quaker Oats) during the 1980s, but the product is still on sale in the supermarkets looking as traditionally Scottish as ever.

   1. And our box of Scott’s says grown and milled in Scotland!

      1. Yes, I’ve seen that too, and I think that may have come in after Quaker Oats bought the brand as a reassurance that production had not transferred to America. The strapline on the the boxes on my childhood breakfast table was ‘The True Taste of Scotland’. The slogan on their TV commercials was ‘Scott’s Porage beats the cold’ spoken in a broad Scottish accent.

         1. “I’m a fast learner Mrs.Munro…..”

         2. Not as memorable as Readybrek – central heating for kids (and when I was young rather more palatable)

   2. Being born in Scotland of Scottish parents, I was brought up having porridge for breakfast. We were allowed to put a sprinkle of sugar on it. I loved it with the top of the (silver top) milk. We didn’t do it, but my Dad told me that, traditionally, the leftovers would be poured into a drawer and allowed to set to make a sort of oatmeal biscuit to be eaten later.

      1. My dad (now 95) says he used to get sent to school with a slice of porridge or a slice of rice pudding for lunch.

         1. Wow. What a great slice of social history 😉

   3. My Glaswegian grandad, born into a very poor family in 1883, seemed to eat little else (although he derived further calorific intake from alcoholic beverages, which he drank every day without fail in moderation). He called it ‘purritch’ and seasoned it abundantly with salt. It sustained him for 90 years.

   4. And it’s still the best, although the Irish one, whose name escapes me, is very good too.

      1. I’ve added Scott’s spelling, porage, to my Cheating Machine. Wiktionary says that spelling is archaic but it is very much alive in the supermarkets I see. Wouldn’t eat it myself, but my Dad did.

   5. I love a bowl of porridge but hate the washing up involved. I can’t remember whether you should soak the saucepan immediately or that’s the wrong thing to do, but get it wrong and it’s like trying to remove industrial strength glue

      1. Search online for microwave recipes, they will transform your experience of cooking porridge, and washing up afterwards is so simple.

         1. I have porridge every morning and cook overnight in slow cooker, comes out deliciously creamy. My favourite brand is Flahavans so this might be the one Dr Andrew is trying to recall.

7. Much better today, finishing in 16.58 well ahead of target.

   Mrs RH obviously had the anagram hat on today, beating me to most of them.

   We also certainly think of porridge as Scottish, indeed we have a box of “Scotts Porage Oats” in our cupboard right now, hence our slight hesitation re the spelling!

   Liked whatsit, especially for the moment when I said “it’s whatsit” and Mrs RH thought I was searching my head for the answer 😂

   Thanks Mara and John

   1. Who’s on first?

8. Struggled with the 1s and then in lots of other places. Ended up all green in 17.41.

9. I had my worst start on a QC in a very long time, failing to solve NINE Across clues on the first pass….but then I solved all the Down clues, and wiped off all the gaps on the second pass.

   FOI MANIFEST
   LOI PORRIDGE
   COD DANDY
   TIME 4:27

10. I felt that I made heavy weather of this one. Was very slow to get started and missed a lot of fairly common bits of wordplay which made clues harder.

    Like Vinyl, I was looking for some obscure Scottish dish at 23a (words such as kilkady and concanon which I’m not even sure are dishes/words got stuck in my head). With regards PORRIDGE’s Scottishness, the packet in my cupboard has a man in a kilt on the front of it which suggests that whatever its origins the marketing people have had their say.

    Started with ICY and finished with an unparsed FIGHT in 9.54.
    Thanks to John

    1. Maybe you’re thinking of colcannon (which is Irish). Don’t know about kilkady!

       1. That rings a bell

11. PORRIDGE has been regarded as peculiarly Scottish for such a long time that Dr Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) had this entry: “Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”

    Having failed to get 1a off the bat I switched to the downs – and promptly failed to get 1d too. Thus encouraged I continued with the downs and actually got all bar another two (COD POTTY and STRAW), so after that it was straightforward. All done in reggo 08:26 for 1.2K and a Decent Day. I thought LOI ALIGHT was quite tough.

    Many thanks Mara and John.

12. 12:44

    Started slow but then gathered pace, only slowing for calendar year, porridge, and LOI exact.
    Lots to enjoy: c year, paws, dandy, exact, Madeira, tango, and COD potty.

13. 8:35
    A slow start, with ICY my first one in, then speeded up. READAPT was my LOI.
    No problems with PORRIDGE being Scottish, and the late great Ronnie Barker as Norman Stanley Fletcher put the other meaning in mind immediately.

    Thanks Mara and John

14. Middle of the road seems to damn with faint praise, but I completed in an average time, which according to QUITCH is more or less exactly right for the difficulty – reading down the list would suggest that many others had the same experience. Therefore a well pitched QC in the goldilocks zone.

    Missed the parsing for FIGHT at the time, got it afterwards. Delayed by confidently writing in ????APE for 10 across, which gave me P?E?Y at 7 down. I did see POTTY (COD) soon after, and RESHAPE finally left my mind. STRAW was LOI.

    6:18

15. Spent a couple of minutes trying to think of a Scottish dish beginning with con, and couldn’t parse FIGHT, but otherwise no problems. Also happy memories of Ronnie Barker. Thanks Mara and John.

16. I took 9:01, I had all but 17dn at 7:30 or so but then spent well over a minute wondering if there was a word like FAGOT for a scrap of confetti before I finally realised, doh!!!
    I think I should have a coffee before doing the big crossword today😉

17. 10:03
    Steady solve.
    Thanks, John. Nice to see another solver with a porridge-fuelled heritage on here 🙂

18. 14/26. Best result this week, I think.

19. Glad to have something in common with the esteemed John: DANDY my LOI too, failing to see …. Also failed to see how FIGHT worked, the sort of thing you kick yourself for …..

20. Couldn’t see either of the 1s, so started in the NE corner with Swap and Whatsit. I didn’t return to the NW until much later, which was a mistake, as Fly on the Wall was a gift, and would surely have prompted a much earlier New Jersey. That’s my excuse anyway for just missing out on a sub-20. Of course, not spotting Fight and Gremlin until late on didn’t exactly help either. CoD to 7d, Potty, for the smooth surface. Invariant

21. 8:19

    I eat PORRIDGE most mornings, usually flavoured with half a dozen soft prunes and a drop (or two!) of golden syrup, but I still needed three of the four checkers to think of the answer. Felt a little off the pace perhaps, answers not coming too readily to mind, but worked through until left with the BOARD/BORED possibility, EXACT which decided it, and finally ALIGHT.

    Thanks John and Mara

22. Well I made rather heavy weather of this and only have the cold dregs of my coffee left. Spent far too long trying to parse DANDY (never did), FIGHT (never did) and EXACT (eventually saw the light). Everything else went in fairly smoothly. COD to POTTY (of course!). Many thanks for the blog John. Thanks Mara.

23. A puzzle of average difficulty I thought, which resulted in an (for me) average time of 18 minutes, all parsed. I started slowly and thought I was going to struggle as I have for most of this week but gradually gathered pace on the down clues which enabled me to fill in the original gaps in short order.

    FOI – 11ac ICY
    LOI – 9ac DANDY
    CODS – lots today, especially NEW JERSEY, FLY ON THE WALL and POTTY

    Thanks to Mara and John

24. I made heavy weather of this one and missed my target for the second day in a row. From ICY to EDITOR in 11:01. No problem with PORRIDGE. In fact I shall shortly be off to have my breakfast, which will consist of porridge with sliced banana, blueberries, grapes and walnuts mixed in. Thanks Mara and John.

25. Stuck for ages on LOI PORRIDGE and when the penny dropped I felt a bit of an idiot. And the old TV series is one of my favourites.
    A slow start as had to begin in the SW, unable to solve 1a and 1d at first.
    Luckily FLY ON THE WALL then sprang to mind.
    Liked MADEIRA, SWAP, GREMLIN, BUS, TANGO.
    Thanks vm, John.

26. All correct in 25 minutes or so. Had to get a pen and paper to solve CALENDAR YEAR clue, but otherwise done on the phone.
    Nice puzzle and interesting blog

27. What a difference a day makes! Yesterday’s Joker was no joke as I spent just short of an hour achieving a DNF, whereas I sprinted through today’s puzzle in a barely believable (for me) 13 minutes. Not quite a PB, but mighty close.

    Solving MANIFEST and SWAP right at the start provided lots of starting letters and I only occasionally had to move on and come back to a clue from then on. WHATSIT was my favourite clue, TWIG was very apt and READAPT (my LOI) was the only clue I really struggled with.

    Many thanks to Mara and John.

    1. Cue “Is the QC getting easier?” debate …

    2. 🔥

       But did you get the family point? 🤣

    3. Rather the reverse for us today! A slower than average 14:43 which was not far off five minutes slower than yesterday. Slow to see the hidden ROSETTE and it was not until coming to the blog that we learned that DANDY was also a hidden. I’d managed to convince myself that the ‘not entirely’ referred to (fine and) dandy, even though that didn’t seem to work especially well. Heigh ho! Thanks to all.

28. An excellent QC I thought, completed after I had coincidentally had a rare treat of some porridge (the oats may be healthy, but the liberal quantity of syrup is definitely not). Didn’t help me get PORRIDGE before I had all the checkers though. FOI was READAPT. It was the SW that caused the most problems with TWIG taking ages to and GREMLIN not being made easier by me imagining an S and so looking for a synonym for walk (an ORELLEN perhaps). LOI was FIGHT, which I never managed to parse. COD to SWAP, Time 16:54. Thanks John and Mara.

29. I was on form today, the reverse of yesterday, finishing this one in 6.28. It’s been a funny old week for me finishing two in pretty quick times, but three poor efforts as well.
    My total time for the week was 62.01 giving me a daily average of 12.24. I think that’s my worst weekly average since I started to record matters.

30. 4d Straw; I never noticed the reversal of warts, so thought the clue a bit weak. Thank you Johninterred.
    I misread 7d Potty as “ridiculous place to sit when S-training” which made the answer pop up instantly. Oddly Crispian above had a similar S for the S-troll/gremlin

31. 5.44

    Thought CALENDAR YEAR was very good

    STRAW for tube caused me to hesitate but it had to be

    Thanks John and Mara

32. Hiddens are my bête noir. The problem is if you miss them you spend ages working on wordplay that has no relation to the answer, e.g. maestro and setter, which is what happened with my LONI (last one not in) ROSETTE.

    So a DNF but no complaints as enjoyed the puzzle and the blog.

    Porridge oatmeal for breakfast with salt, yogurt, milk and fruit.

33. 11.11 That was an entertaining puzzle. TWIG appeared the other day, possibly in the biggie, which helped. I spent a while thinking New Mexico was the only New state. Then I remembered New Hampshire and then POTTY made LOI NEW JERSEY obvious. I just consulted a list and I’d forgotten New York too. Thanks John and Mara.

34. From SWAP to FIGHT in a sluggish 8:50. I was particularly slow to see POTTY and PORRIDGE and failed to parse FIGHT.

35. Another day of reasonably smooth solving taking 15:58 which is a goodish time for me. TWIG was so pleasing! I was so intimidated by my ignorance of the varieties of whiskey that I needed all the crossers to see FIREWATER. Not sure my taxonomy of mythical beings accords with our setter’s classification of GREMLINs with trolls, but it’s an amusing clue. Now adding “porridge” as prison slang to my lexicon. Ditto “potty” for ridiculous.

    Does anyone else have stretches of solves where you look back and wonder what took you so long? Of course it’s the nature of cryptics that the solutions are “obvious” in hindsight, but that’s not what I mean. It’s an experience that felt quicker and easier than it turned out to be by the clock. Hmmmm. Old age maybe.

    Thanks Mara and John!

36. Took me 35 minutes of enjoyable pondering and then seeing quite a few answers were hidden words – DOH!

37. Really enjoyable puzzle today. Thanks setter and blogger.

38. 17:23. Struggled today.

39. 18 mins…

    Not often I find Mara straightforward, but this was a rare exception. Hesitated slightly on 21ac “Exact” and 4dn “Straw”, but other than that an enjoyable solve.

    FOI – 1ac “Manifest”
    LOI – 4dn “Straw”
    COD – 7dn “Potty”

    Thanks as usual!

    1. I too thought STRAW for tube was a bit of a stretch. Overall hard work for this member of the SCC. And a big groan for 12a (NEW JERSEY) 😀

40. Made heavy weather of this, finishing in 18:47. I may have had an easier time of it if I wasn’t solving at the wrong end of a couple of hours in the pub.

    Thank you for the blog!

41. 16 minutes.

    Then spent not far short of 2 hours on the big crossword. Got 20/28. Pathetic.

    I’m not getting anywhere. Some recent beginners are already doing as well as me on the QC and I do not have the brain for the proper crossword.

    It’s been a bad week (as usual). 2 DNFs and only one SCC escape.

    All this effort isn’t producing results. After 4 years this should be fairly straightforward. In fact, I’m going backwards. The only thing going for me is my persistence, but that is no substitute for talent!

    1. I couldn’t even do half of today’s one Gary! I thought it was so hard 🙁

42. Let’s hope for better luck next week 🤞🤞

43. Don’t get the relevance of settle in 13A.
    Thought the answer was match though

    1. Settle is the definition, as in to land, come to rest, or – defn 1 in Chambers for settle as an intranstive verb, ALIGHT. Match, A LIGHT, would be enumerated as (1,5) rather than (6) if it was the definition.

44. 11:27 – just adding to get it to register on Quitch

Comments are closed.