Guardian Cryptic 28354 Nutmeg

96 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28354 Nutmeg”

1. Nothing too taxing this morning and certainly a LOT easier than the maulling by Vlad earlier in the week!

   But a lot of fun with some clear cluing and good surfaces.

   Thanks Nutmeg and scchua!

2. [Me @1: And in honour of 25a please have a portion of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF0VaBxb27w%5D

3. Love Nutmeg but do not like 20d, which I got wrong.

4. One of my favourite setters, this was delightful. A lot of ticks but favourites were BATHSHEBA (I watched the wonderful adaptation recently of FFTMC, with the delectable Julie Christie), INDIAN CLUBS, HAND ON HEART, SHIP OF THE DESERT and the simple but devious LESS. Top class. Ta Nutmeg & scchua

5. Nothing too tricky in retrospect here, but I found this quite tough, which shows how good a setter Nutmeg is.

6. Enjoyed that, although I don’t care for ONCOST or SPADED as words. I did like INDIAN CLUBS, ITALIAN VERMOUTH and SHIP OF THE DESERT.

   Can’t decide whether to listen to CAMEL or Gnat King Cole.

   Thanks to Nutmeg fir the quality puzzle and scchua for the blog and Julie Christie.

7. Finished early today. I did spot the 4 suits but it didn’t seem to go anywhere. I had ONE-MAN TRIP having initially put in ONE-OFF. Both wrong. Now I can go back to Tuesday’s Vlad to see if I can do some more of it

8. Well, I just found out I’ve been spelling UKULELE wrong all my life. On the plus side, however, being fastidious about dress codes I always wear my blazer in the SAUNA, so that one was easy.

   Pure TABASCO, as Bertie Wooster might say. Thanks Nutmeg and scchua.

9. Incidentally RHONE was first in, but has anyone outside crossword circles ever described a river as a banker? One of those crossword tricks that is so familiar that nobody questions it.

10. Much enjoyable stuff here though like George @3 I got 20dn wrong.
    Particular favourites INDIAN CLUBS, ONE WAY TRIP (need the first two words be hyphenated?), CAMEL, HAND ON HEART,SHIP OF THE DESERT, CAULDRON (at which I remembered how irritating find Azed’s repeated references to “Jock”), IN TRUTH, SAUNA.
    Thanks to Nutmeg and to scchua (particularly for pointing out the bally obvious in SPADED!)

11. I liked the two long down clues, though the first was obvious from enumeration once I had CAMEL. Like GC @3 and Penfold @6 I did not like 20d – I had SPACED (bill=AC rather than AD) which IMO is just as valid (or at least, no worse).

    Anyway, it passed another half-hour or so of lockdown.
    Thanks scchua and Nutmeg.

12. Thank you so much, MaidenBartok@2, for the ukulele fest. I laughed ’til I cried. Just what we all need. Stayed with it to get the Ode to Joy as well. Deep joy indeed.

13. Favourites: ITALIAN VERMOUTH, HAND ON HEART, BATHSHEBA, EPICENTRE, AGREED
    New: INDIAN CLUBS, ONCOST

    Thanks, Nutmeg and scchua

14. After a tough hour or so and a DNF due to 19ac and 20dn, it does my self – esteem no good when early posters describe this as not too tricky or taxing!! Still, horses for courses etc. Thanks Nutmeg and scchua.
    (In response to Penfold @6, I think I need some Moonmadness to get over this!)

15. Like Beery @5 I found this quite tough. Had to reverse engineer CAMEL from SHIP OF THE DESERT, and couldn’t parse the former. Much to be enjoyed. Many thanks to Nutmeg and scchua.

16. (Spooky. Just as I posted @14, I received an email from Amazon trying to sell me Camel Live at the RAH. Big Bezos really is watching me.)

17. Thanks from me too, MaidenBartok, love those nutters, and a brilliant version of a classic. Ta S&B as well.

18. Thanks scchua, i did not get the Hardy reference in BATHSHEBA (knowing her only as a desirable Biblical woman and assuming she must therefore also be tough) so that has deepened my admiration for the clue. Also did not understand the definition of Italian Vermouth so maybe I’ll try a “gin and it” this evening (although I have a nice English vermouth on the go at the moment which I am sure will do the job – gin and brit perhaps?). LOI Oncost which was a new word for me, took a while to realise the crossing S was not the sergeant. And I felt very pleased, after SPACED came to mind, that I bothered to check if it could mean some sort of eviction, and when it clearly didn’t it was a very short cycle through the alphabet for the real answer – I didn’t spot the 4 Suits lurking, which would have given it away and well done to those who did! I really enjoyed this, many beautiful surfaces and clever misdirection (and a cheeky focus/epicentre reference), just winning out over Cowherd for my best in class prize is SQUIRMS, thanks Nutmeg.

19. Pretty much in agreement with NeilH @10 – with the addition of top favourite BATHSHEBA – I’m a Hardy fan. ‘Hardy girl’ for TESS used to appear a lot but it seems a long time since I’ve seen it.

    Like others, I wasn’t keen on 20dn SPADED but thanks, Julia @7, for explaining its inclusion – doh!

    Many thanks to Nutmeg and scchua – and to MaidenBartok for the music. 😉

20. A lovely solve this morning with the usual elegant Nutmeg surfaces for the first half hour, but then 20d spoilt it for me. LOI and multiple hits on the check button made it a DNF. Not just me I see…

    Thank to Nutmeg and scchua!

21. [MaidenBartok @2 Thanks for the Ukulele Orchestra. Reminded me of the ukulele band doing Delilah and Enjoy Yourself in the film Marvellous, where Toby Jones plays Nello. That’s a film that I thoroughly recommend to anyone who needs their faith in humanity restored.]

22. beaulieu @11: I’m another SPACED out by 20d, parsed identically to you. I thought it was what a spacer did in his spacecraft and certainly requires forcible removal from the ground. I suspect it may not appear as a verb in that way in the dictionaries but wonder if it’s ever been used thusly in science fiction?

    Nice to see another UKULELE and also to see EPICENTRE defined in a way that should satisfy everyone. I have a feeling I’ve encountered TABASCO recently but can’t find the evidence, other than a stain on my shirt. All my other favourites have been mentioned.

    Thanks, scchua for parsing CAMEL; I’d reverse solved from SHIP OF THE DESERT and had made the animal/colour connection but was undone by the un which I couldunt unnerstand.

    Thanks Nutmeg and scchua

23. Thanks Nutmeg and scchua
    Another SPACED here – I think it works perfectly well, parsed as beaulieu did. I’d never heard of ONCOST either. I didn’t fully parse ITALIAN VERMOUTH – I missed the MOUTH part. The clue for CAMEL was a bit odd – “like fawn” is close enough, but “mammal” is very loose.
    This all sounds negative, but overall it was a delightful puzzle. Kudos for Nutmeg for linking EPICENTRE to seismology. Pity the definition isn’t exactly right – FOCUS in this context has a precise meaning, the actual “centre” of the earthquake, so below the epicentre. It would have been better not to use “focus”.

24. And there was I thinking muffin would be satisfied today!

    [I endorse Penfold’s recommendation of ‘Marvellous’.]

25. Ta for the helpful blog. Generally a fun puzzle but not very keen on SPADED (which I put in), but ONCOST? Revealed that, so a DNF – 65 years old, never encountered the ugly word.

26. Another SPACED here, though I thought of it as a drug reference. With the right spade and good soil, spading need not be forced. Looking forward to an EPIC ENTREE after the obligatory January abstinence. I am another one who couldn’t spell ukulele, (I think its the abbreviation uke that misleads. Thanks to MaidenBartok for posting the orchestra and not George Formby, though he has still got in my head.

27. Great little word, it, from the most primal act to something with gin, isn’t language fun!

28. 1d clue of the month for me – brill.

    The only ruffle for me in this smooth offering was the already mentioned 4th suit.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and to sccuha f the pics

29. I was OK with 20D because it reminded me that I should have SPADED my dahlia tubers two or three weeks ago. But kicking myself for putting in ONE-MAN TRIP without thinking. DNF!
    [PS. After the AFRO controversy, I was quite amused by an article in today’s Guardian about Facebook muting users for posting about Plymouth Hoe.]

30. Thanks to Nutmeg and sccuha, and equally to MaidenBartok @ 2 and TerriBlislow@12 for today’s joy! Laughed and sang along! Magic.

31. [blaise @29: As I’m in musical mood today and apropos your comment, I now offer Bellowhead “Gosport Nancy…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytj_Qn4hICc ]

32. muffin @ 23 EPICENTRE is always controversial. I always thought the “epi” bit meant something like essential, as in epitome, epigraph etc. , but it only means upon or over.

33. muffin @ 23 EPICENTRE is always controversial. I always thought the “epi” bit meant something like essential, as in epitome, epigraph etc. , but it only means upon or over.

34. muffin@23, I took “focus” to refer to the seismologists’ centre of interest/what they were interested in.

35. Quite a chewy one from Nutmeg. Didn’t anyone else biff GNOME for the “continental banker”? — I thought it was a dead cert until I checked the parsing.
    I was a little unhappy with ‘avert’ = ‘frustrate’ in 7d: I am a staunch supporter of the substitutability principle in crossword defs and I’m struggling to find a context in which this one works.
    The ‘it’ clue was excellent.
    Thanks Nutmeg and scchua.

36. Indeed, scchua, but using a word that didn’t have a precise seismological meaning would have been preferable – “target”, perhaps?

37. PostMark @22 – I, too, had a déjà-vu feeling vis-à-vis TABASCO. It was just yesterday in the QAOS puzzle as part of the clue for 11A – we needed to remove the CO from a hot sauce.

    A clever and well-clued puzzle, as ever, from Nutmeg. I always feel content when I see her name appear. Thanks to Nutmeg and scchua.

38. In 19A, what is there to indicate that “unladen” applies to “spaceships” as well as “long-range”?

39. i think despite epicentre and focus having different meanings in seismology, the epicentre is undoubtedly something on which a seismologist may focus. so the clue is fine for me.

    is ‘needing’ for ‘plus’ as in 23d common? i can’t see how it shouldn’t mean ‘minus’.

40. Petert @33: as an EpiPen carrier, the “Epi” refers to epinephrine otherwise known as adrenaline. Epinephrine is “Above the kidneys” (nephros being a kidney) which links to adrenaline which refers to the adrenal glands which are above the kidneys.

    [Largest earthquake I’ve experienced was the 6.0 South Napa quake in 2014 although from a distance of about 40 miles.]

41. Another great crossword from Nutmeg, fast becoming one of my best-loved (can’t have more than one favourite, methinks) setters.

    I particularly liked the clues for UKULELE, ITALIAN VERMOUTH, SHIP OF THE DESERT and ADVERT. I managed to put together ONCOST and had to check if it was a real word. I missed the four suits, of course.

    BH @9; I managed to find this, concerning banker from Oxford dictionaries:
    ‘Australian, New Zealand informal: A river flooded to the top of its banks.

    Thanks Nutmeg for a very enjoyable crossword and to scchua for a good pictorial clue.

42. … well, maybe scchua produced a blog, rather than a clue … I’m becoming clueless.

43. I tossed up whether bill was AC or AD but decided on AD-funny word but made sense- a few CDs today which i was slow on-sometimes they go click and sometimes you dont see it without crossers so I found this tougher than some solvers. But I’m not complaining.
    Continental banker was FOI INDIAN CLUBS came later- a favourite
    I didnt remember BATHSHEBA being a Hardy girl-I just assembled the nuts and bolts. Maybe I’ll read it one day-liked the film but dont think the cast did
    Covered in mud as I remember
    Thanks Nutmeg and scchua

44. 20dn = SPACED for me as well as @11beaulieu @22PostMark @23muffine etc. But when you see the theme, of course SPADED is right. Didn’t parse LESS or AGREED so many thanks scchua. But lots of lovely clues in here, thanks Nutmeg: favourites were SQUIRMS, ITALIANVERMOUTH, COWHERD and UKULELE.

45. ONCOST (along with LESS and SPADED) was one of the three I didn’t get, despite it not being a new word for me. I remember it from work, where financially-minded colleagues bidding for a new post would talk knowingly of the salary “plus oncosts”. The oncosts they had in mind were things like employer’s National Insurance contribution and what seemed like an arbitrary amount for the use of facilities – rooms, library, etc.

46. MaidenBartok @2: Thanks for Ukes – always slightly depressed when I see accomplished musicians so effortlessly having fun. Struggling with a Bach gigue in Dm and using every atom of concentration.

    Really enjoyed this puzzle but had to guess at SPADED – not familiar with the verbal form.

    Many thanks for the colourful blog, scchua.

47. [William @46: BWV 1004? Wow… Struggling with BWV 852 and using every bean of coffee…]

48. beery @9: “banker” for river always used to annoy me, because it didn’t seem to make sense. A river flows, so it is a “flower”, fine, but a river doesn’t bank, it has banks, so I argued.

    But I have on reflection become a bit reconciled to it. Normally when we talk of a banker we mean someone engaged in banking, probably working for a bank. But a banker can also be someone who owns banks, as in “The Rothschilds were famous bankers”. So “banker” meaning “possessor of banks” would seem to work for river.

    (Robi @41: I was aware of the Australian and NZ term, but I don’t think that can mean river generally, as it specifically means a river in flood.)

49. Larry @37: thanks. Rather a lot happened yesterday and Qaos’ puzzle seems a lifetime ago!

50. Enjoyed this, until I just couldn’t get LESS and therefore SPADED. ONCOST was another failure at the last. Never mind, still lots of Nutmeg fun…

51. I was also SPACED and discovered I couldn’t spell UKULELE. Here’s my UOOGB favourite:
    Thanks Nutmeg and scchua

52. or even here’s my UOOGB favourite

53. RichardCV22 @38; if you think of the use of ‘initially’ or ‘primarily’ they can often apply to multiple following words, so I think the same could apply to ‘unladen’.

54. I like INDIAN CLUBS, DIAMOND WEDDING, BATHSHEBA, ONCOST, AUDITOR, COWHERD – the list goes on!
    The beauty of crossword clueing is: the word breakup/play maybe the same but at the hands of an expert setter, the surface will be oh-so-nice as in many instances in this lovely crossword..
    The woman in pic under SAUNA is indeed an adult but she is not wearing blazer! Just joking.
    A general question wrt SHIP OF THE DESERT. In a clue if A follows/chases/ is in pursuit of B, do we get BA or AB? Is there an agreed-upon convention? Or are both in use?
    BTW, the Hindi term for Indian club is mugdar. In Tamil, we call it karla kattai.

55. Have never met either ONCOST, or SPADED in that sense (though it was fairly clear that SPACED didn’t fit). Always pleased to find Nutmeg as the setter, and I enjoyed BATHSHEBA, HAND ON HEART and DIAMOND WEDDING among many.

    I know that’s the correct spelling of UKULELE, but it never looks right to me.

56. Eileen@19
    In college I had The Woodlanders, the lesser known novel of Hardy in the syllabus.
    I went on to read other novels on my own.
    One passage in that prescribed novel made a deep impact on my then impressionable mind. It’s got stuck like a nail that is driven into the tender bark of a tree (as the Tamil saying goes):
    Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and self-forgetful in its nature that the susceptible Fitzpiers wished to annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from his own.

57. [Larry @37: an afterthought on revisiting; just in case you haven’t come up against this. There are some folk out there who don’t do the puzzles in the order they are published. A mistake I have sometimes made is to refer to a solution to the previous day’s puzzle which then spoils it for those who haven’t yet undertaken it. I might have got away with a vague recollection, particularly as the word wasn’t a solution; you would definitely risk censure for identifying clue and device. 😀 ]

    pserve_p2 @35: no answer to your question yet. Might one avert/frustrate a threat? Or avert/frustrate an attack? Just a thought.

58. LOI was IN TRUTH. Finally got it when I realised 20ac wasn’t ONE-MAN TENT, which I’d bunged in without hesitation. Well, I’ve observed many such holidays from the comfort of our caravan.

59. DNF because of LESS. It was one of the possibles as I cycled through *E*S but I could see scant relationship between that and ‘unladen’ so just gave up on it and came here. Hate it when that happens.

60. Sorry, 20ac definitely wasn’t ONE-MAN TENT. I meant 16ac.

61. This setter has never been a favourite of mine, as I usually find her clues impenetrable, and it is then doubly frustrating to come here and read the praise that is universally bestowed. Today the boot is on the other foot, and I skated through most of this puzzle, with the first six lights filled in just a minute. I then almost as quickly solved a few downs to get the crossers for PREDICATED, and suddenly almost half the grid was filled in just two or three minutes. My first guess for ‘Hardy female’ (9) was BATHSHEBA (loved Julie Christie in the role), and CAULDRON and ITALIAN VERMOUTH also fell on a quick perusal. Please forgive all this crowing, as I was expecting to come here and find every poster saying how easy it was, just like those occasions when I struggle with Nutmeg for two hours or more. I didn’t time the whole solve, but probably under a quarter of an hour. I needed a couple of minutes to be sure of the answer to the ‘singles-only holiday’ CD right at the end. If every crossword went like this I would have to find another hobby to fill the vacant hours of lockdown.

62. [Paul the other one @52: You may be interested to know that the Ukes are on tour in 2021/22 although the schedule has gone to custard of-late with most of the German gigs being cancelled. The UK ones are still there but being postponed as the weeks progress. I was hoping to go to the one in Dorking on the 16th June but….]

63. [Thanks MB@62. I’ve never seen them live, only on YouTube]

64. Robi@53 Thanks. I realise that this is the idea, but it is not uncommon for clues where a first (or final) letter is intended to apply to more than one word to contain some sort of indication of the fact. I agree that there are plenty of cases where that doesn’t happen, and, although it may be easy enough in most circumstances for the solver to determine how many letters are in point for the wordplay element, that does not really justify the imprecision. In this particular clue there were only four letters in the answer and the checked letters (an E and an S) left open an enormous number of possibilities, given that the definition was pretty allusive.

65. I meant “first (or final) letter indicator” …

66. I often find Nutmeg more difficult than other setters, and indeed I failed today with oncost. It’s a clumsy word anyway. No problem with spaded though, a!though I can’t think I would ever use it, when dig does a perfectly good job. I had a problem with sauna for bath. To my mind about as close as a sponge to a loofah. Someone recently mentioned the coincidence of the same word reappearing, and here we have it saucily happening again. How likely is that?
    As others have said, much to enjoy. Thanks Nutmeg and scchua.

67. Rishi @54, I shared your raised eyebrow.

    If A follows B, I think we get BA, because we’re using ‘following’ in a different sense from ‘chasing’. It’s more akin to the ‘following in time’ sense – night follows day, George VI followed Edward VIII (but not on Twitter).

    But if A chases/is in pursuit of B, the picture in my mind is of A ‘snapping at the heels of’ B. Since we normally read words from left to right (at least in the Latin alphabet, also in Tamil I believe?) or top to bottom, I instinctively think of words as ‘running’ in the same direction as I read them – so if A is snapping at the heels of B, the order is AB.

    Which of course would give DESERT SHIP OF THE, not SHIP OF THE DESERT.

    However, I think there is a get-out clause. Let’s imagine SHIPOFTHE as a vehicle in Wacky Races, being recklessly pursued by Penelope Pitstop, who has traded in the Compact Pussycat for her new car named DESERT. Which way would SHIPOFTHE go? Is it compelled to go down the page? No! It might well execute a sharp U-turn and race off in the opposite direction, up, down, left, right, every which way. Which means that DESERT, hot on SHIPOFTHE’s heels, may be on top, underneath, preceding or following, as the fancy takes you.

68. RichardCV22 @64/65; I take your point but I don’t think there are many solutions of ?E?S that would mean ‘taking off’. I put ?E?S with taking off in OneAcross and it only returned LESS.

69. and as for the doubly blue, we do know why a 21a is called a 6d, don’t we? I don’t have the courage to post the answer here, you’ll have to come find me …

    Many thanks Nutmeg, brilliant puzzle, and thank you scchua

70. Robi@68 Fair point – thanks for the link to the word search facility. (I confess to having taken a short cut by using the “reveal” button.) Although I didn’t mention it in my original post, there is a further ambiguity in wordplay where an “innards removal” indicator is designed to apply to successive words. It is when the idea is to remove everything in between the initial letter of the first entry and the final letter of the last entry in the sequence of words in question. I have seen examples of this where no indication of the intention was given apart from the innards removal indicator, and it is a possible reading of today’s clue.

71. This was fun, but fairly tough. I liked TABASCO and IN TRUTH, and solved CAMEL and SHIP OF THE DESERT simultaneously, but failed to parse the latter because I thought the junk was the ship.

    [I do hope that no-one is upset by the rather derogatory words “hag” and “crone” involved in 15!]

72. essexboy @67. Love the Wacky Races analogy! I think you have probably come to the correct conclusion with regard to the meaning of the cryptic instructions. The flexibility is easily resolved in this instance because DESERT SHIP OF THE is both nonsensical in itself and conflicts outrageously with the stated ennumeration (4,2,3,6). In other cases (where Penelope Pitstop’s car has a less compact name than DESERT) it might be more controversial.

73. Lots to like here and as someone who has Punt e Mes on monthly delivery I enjoyed ITALIAN VERMOUTH
    essexboy @67 I loved your Wacky Races analogy – I have a nodding Dick Dastardly and Muttley on my office shelf to keep me company
    LESS was definitely more for me – one of those 4 letter clues that has so much wordplay that it must be something simple
    Cheers all

74. I enjoyed this a lot, as always with Nutmeg, but what is the (un) doing in the CAMEL clue? The clue works perfectly well without it and at first I thought I would have to subtract UN from something.

75. JerryG @16. Yes, Big Bezos really is watching you. It’s quite possibly no coincidence that you were offered tickets to see Camel after posting here about this crossword just a few minutes after Penfold had written “can’t decide whether to listen to CAMEL”. After reading a post on yesterday’s Qaos blog where PostMark mentioned having bought an album by Zoogz Rift and his Amazing S***heads I thought I would see if I could find it. Fourth hit on a Google search was PostMark’s comment on this site!

76. postmark 22, tabasco was in yesterday 11 A the ‘hot sauce’ that was eaten which lost its ‘co’

77. Alliacol@78 My reading is that 21A is a double definition clue. “Mammal unlike fawn” (where the fawn and the answer are animals), and “like fawn” (where fawn and the answer are colours).

78. Hello RichardCV22, I think we have corresponded on points of crossword grammar/syntax previously, and while Robi has already responded, as you acknowledged, I wanted to risk further muddying the water by adding that, in this case, the set of combinations of words to be considered for unloading is fairly limited, so trial and error will get you there, especially with crossers – i realise this does not give you the clueing precision that you probably prefer but i don’t think that is always going to be in evidence at the G where, as others have pointed out, the surface may be prioritised over unambiguous wordplay. (I agree that the definition isn’t the most straightforward though!)
    [I didn’t read through all the comments after Vlad’s recent effort as it got quite heated but would be interested if you tried that one and how you found it – I have to get into a very different frame of mind to deal with the often convoluted parsing and the more wordy clues plus occasional link words make it harder for me to see the wood for the trees.]

79. Alliacol @74. I thought scchua explained this adequately in his blog. It is a two-part clue: ‘Mammal unlike fawn’ means that we’re looking for a mammal, but it’s probably not of the deer family; that still leaves a lot of possible mammals. The other part of the clue is ‘like fawn’, which means we are looking for a yellowish-brown colour.

    You suggest that the clue works perfectly well without (un), but it seems to me that ‘Mammal like fawn’ doesn’t get us anywhere near to CAMEL with the degree of certainty and fairness required in a cryptic crossword. (Unless you have two or three crossers!) The clue as written means we are satisfied when CAMEL arrives that it fulfils both creteria of the clue: it’s an animal that is unlike a fawn and it’s name is also the name of a shade of colour that is similar to the shade of colour that is called fawn.

80. Rishi @54/essexboy @67; if someone is in pursuit of someone/something else, I can only think that they are behind. It’s a down clue but in the answer ‘DESERT’ is behind SHIP OF THE. At least, that’s the way I see it.

81. [tony smith @76. You probably haven’t read PostMark’s follow up @57 where he refers to the problems caused for other users of the site who don’t always solve the puzzles in sequence. It is considered courteous to avoid explicit spoilers for this reason.]

82. Gazzh@78 Hello again! It’s good to have someone else here who takes an interest in the structure and precision of clues. For me, a good clue has to have a concise meaningful surface, precise wordplay and be constructed on a sound cryptic grammatical basis: it does bother me to see high praise piled upon setters who produce (what seem to me to be) dodgy clues which rely for their success on tricksy devices. Not that I put Nutmeg in that category – far from it, as, in my view, she is a very fine setter who generally plays entirely fair. That is why I raised my point today about the clue for LESS, because I don’t think it was 100% fair. I rarely comment on this site. I wonder if, like me, you are also a test solver and setter (albeit in a modest way in my case)? I haven’t looked at the Vlad. I have to be in a brave frame of mind to tackle his puzzles, I fear. I always look out for Brendan.

83. hatter @79 (& Alliacol @74): it is surely part of the joy of crosswordland that sometimes we get quite worked up about about the specificity and accuracy we demand of a definition (EPICENTRE for example) and yet other times we can accept ‘animal unlike fawn’ as a definition of a camel! ‘Flower unlike buttercup’ would, of course, be Ouse and ‘Bounder unlike Flashman’ could be gazelle, antelope or even elk.

84. Mark @83. Very amusing! But the very fact that the answers that you give are impossible to verify by referral back to the clue shows why Nutmeg’s clue for CAMEL is so good. And why it needs the (un) that Alliacol had suggested was unnecessary, since ‘animal unlike fawn’ only really works as a clue for camel if the brackets are included.

85. Poor old ONCOST. Median @45 is correct that it is current accounting jargon, but the word has OED citations going back to 1429. It would refer to any amount that is added to the cost of producing an item or providing a service where you can’t (or can’t be bothered to) work out the specific cost of the input. For instance, if you making ukuleles, you would know the cost of the wood and of the time spent by the maker, but you would add on contributions towards the cost of the tools used, transportation costs for materials, etc, using an estimation basis. Lovely word.

86. sh @84: on this occasion we are in violent agreement. Hence my qualifier about crosswordland. It’s only because it is part of a twin/interlinking statement that we can accept animal unlike fawn as a definition. I wasn’t, of course, suggesting that my two would ever stand on their own two (four) feet or that, in themselves, they constitute clues.

87. Mark: You would never get away with cluing ELK with ‘bounder’ anyway.

    On a more serious note, I have just seen in General Discussion that Anna has decided to leave the site and blames me. I have responded, as have you, and hope that she will reconsider. I do feel at fault for getting too heavy about things yesterday.

88. Thanks, Nutmeg and scchua for an entertaining time. I got most of it done last night except for ADVERT (silly me!) and enjoyed it all. I especially enjoyed pursuing the junk shop thief in 6d.

    Did anybody else start with DIAMOND JUBILEE for 8, 9a?

89. Valentine @88
    My first thought for 8,9 too, but I only wrote in the DIAMOND as I didn’t see how “jubilee” could be “match” – though I did wonder if there had been a “Jubilee Test Match”, or similar.

90. I filled in DIAMOND right away, but not WEDDING. This may be in part due to a transatlantic language difference: on my side, we would say “diamond anniversary”, or maybe “diamond wedding anniversary”, but never just “diamond wedding”.

    I didn’t get around to doing yesterday’s Qaos puzzle until today, so TABASCO was fresh in my mind.

    I particularly enjoyed IN TRUTH, but there was a lot to like in this puzzle (as usual with Nutmeg). I failed to parse a few, but they all make perfect sense once explained.

91. [Richard@82, I am only a test solver/setter in the sense that if I see a clue that I really don’t like I will generally try to come up with something better and post it on here. i reckon I see such a clue maybe once every ten puzzles, and can come up with an improvement on perhaps one in ten of those occasions. Hence I am generally in awe of the “professionals”! I think your point about tricksy devices can be broadly generalised to “style vs substance” – I could take a guess at a couple of the setters you might class as favouring the former, and agree that it is very much a taste/wavelength thing. But taste can be acquired! We are definitely in agreement on Brendan though.]
    muffin@89, valentine@88, while it didn’t occur to me to enter Jubilee I have just googled as it is a plausible name for a match manufacturer, but it looks like the only hits are some special edition matches produced for various royal jubilees down the years, so not quite enough. I was sort-of hoping that some uberpedant would complain that strictly speaking it is the diamond anniversary that is celebrated after 60 years!
    Van Winkle @85 – I don’t like the word “Oncost” but it is certainly more efficient than phrase “Unallocated Loss Adjustment Expenses” that is used for similar purposes in my neck of the woods.

92. Ted@90 – we crossed but please don’t think that I consider you an uberpedant as i) I had the same initial thought and ii) we can put this down to a cultural difference – divided by a common language and all that…

93. Valentine @88 muffin@89 and Gazzh@91 There have been a number of Jubilee matches in the sporting sense, but I suppose you lose the double meaning.

94. pserve_p2 @35: Avert disaster = frustrate disaster?

95. 25ac: it’s surely 1st, 3rd and 5th letters to be removed.

96. I had to resort to Wikipedia to check Naomi was mentioned IN RUTH. Read through the article that Ruth is one of five women mentioned in Jesus’s genealogy. One the others was BATHSHEBA. I thought maybe a theme: I totally missed the four suits.

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