Guardian 28,415 – Nutmeg

98 comments on “Guardian 28,415 – Nutmeg”

1. I love Nutmeg’s puzzles but I cant have a London suburb being outside the M25.
   Its in Essex. How about Banlieue?
   I had E SWAPPING but it didnt fit with crossers

2. I was held up by having KEEP ONES WORD at 11d. It isn’t clear to me that the clue requires the past tense. PARTHENON, MYOPIC, BENIGN and COMPOS MENTIS were good. I suppose I could be convinced that DEMOB-HAPPY is a known phrase, but it ain’t known to me, and I spent quite some time trying to get something out of BDMEO (funny how you need to pronounce the possible letter combinations in the right way to see it). Thanks, Nutmeg and Andrew.

3. Like Andrew, I am slightly concerned at not spotting a theme given Nutmeg’s propensity for slipping a crafty connection into the puzzle. And, yes, 10a sounds a little like a hint. I shall await enlightenment.

   I loved this. I was completely on the setter’s wavelength so a smooth, quick (for Nutmeg), pleasurable solve and few bones of contention – though I saw from the comments on the G site that copmus had an issue. Much though I want to support our setter, I do have to concede the point; perhaps it is because Epping is on the Tube that it is perceived as a suburb. Shame as the clue is, otherwise, excellent.

   DEMOB HAPPY is a splendid anagram to get us started and PRIEST’S HOLE is another, both with nice surfaces. PARTHENON is so simple, COMPOS MENTIS (generally pronounced compost mentis in our house) raised a smile as did the inclusion of POLO PONIES as less obvious game participants. Even the short solutions – ACUTE, THOSE, FACT, PLAN, for example, were neatly and tightly clued.

   Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

4. TassieTim @2: I noticed someone else observing that they hadn’t encountered DEMOB HAPPY in 70 years. And yet, born well after the war, National Service etc, the phrase is one I’ve seen regularly – these days more often associated with holidays. Both school classes and workforces. But also with resignations/notice serving. A demob suit, however: that would be a real rarity.

   I’ve just discovered it’s also the name of an alternative rock band underlining the point made by Dr WhatsOn and others over recent days.

5. And Drancy’s on the Metro.
   I think Epping is an excellent location. I used to live in Waltham Abbey(also just outside).
   Without a car it was very much in deepest Essex but with one it was a short hop to the big smoke

   And I loved the rest of the puzzle
   Thanks Nutmeg

6. Another one here who got held up expecting EALING to be the suburb. As always the clueing is very precise. I have been looking at a theme based on writers and writing, given NOVELIST, BADEN-POWELL and ACTON with BELL also present, but unless TYPESETTER, WORD, DISPATCH, CRIB and FACT fit, I’m not sure. Thanks to blogger and setter as ever.

7. I spent a while trying to fit EALING into 16d, and as I was once a Brownie, BROWN OWL into 12a.

   Nutmeg used to be one of the setters I couldn’t do. Lately I haven’t had so much trouble, and deluded myself that my solving skills had improved, but today’s reminded me of the bad old days. Lots of lovely clues though: I liked PRIESTS HOLE and COMPOS MENTIS, MEANTIME, PARTHENON, POLO PONIES and (eventually) BADEN POWELL. Never did get RELAID, and not sure how ACT ON=follow.

   I hope 10ac is misdirection… can’t see one.

8. gladys @7: ACT ON/follow instructions?

9. I was another thinking that it must be Ealing. Common mistake.

   PostMark @3 listed my favourites.

   Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

10. PostMark@8: Thanks. Sometimes you can’t see what’s in front of your nose.

11. Seeing Nutmeg’s byline is like waking up to a sunny morning after days of rain. As Eileen often says, too many ticks against the super clues to list them all.

12. Like TT@2, didn’t know demob-happy was a thing, tho it no doubt powered the baby boom [my lot held off a couple of years and were quietly snobby about those who couldn’t/didn’t]. Chuckled at Parthenon, neat. Also thought esWapping first, but refrained. And “All there is..” had me going ‘Er, cosmic something?’ but then thought ‘Nah’. And, TT, it’d need “Don’t part with…” to get ‘keep’ wouldn’t it? All good fun, ta AnN.

13. Like others I relished this; particularly DEMOB-HAPPY, POLO PONIES and the brilliant COMPOS MENTIS. Didn’t get round to parsing CRY OFF or PARTHENON – many thanks to Andrew and Nutmeg.

14. Penfold@9. Probably due to proximity of Act On.

15. @coptus

    E-SHO-PPING – it’s sho(w) in Epping – though I think it would have been more challenging looking for a parsing for ES-HOPPING!!

    Two lovely clues for COMPOS MENTIS (All There.. well hidden) and POLO PONIES another well disguised clue for “game participants”.

16. @TT Demob Happy survives despite its current meaning being somewhat anachronistic. The original term related to World War 2 service personnel awaiting release from the army etc. The term went hand-in-hand with the demob suit issued with the release from service. It now refers to – usually – an imminent holiday (from school or work) and the lack of work that is usually associated with the run up to the break, basically “downing tools” or POETS Day Syndrome (P**s off early Tomorrow’s Saturday)

17. Another tough puzzle today. I usually find Nutmeg’s puzzles easier than this.

    Favourite: COMPOS MENTIS, TYPESETTER, NOVELIST (loi).
    Did not parse: E-SHOPPING.
    New: DEMOB-HAPPY.

    Thanks, Nutmeg and Andrew.

18. I have to agree with Copmus @1, and I was another stuck on Ealing, ‘Queen of the suburbs’, especially after getting ACTON which is next door for those solvers unfamiliar with the A-Z.
    The only link I could find was my use of BENIGN, OOPS and VLAD in yesterday’s blog. I had the same experience as PM @3 ‘quick, pleasurable solve’ with a smattering of very generous anagrams. The only one I dithered over was REDIAL.

    Ta Nutmeg & Andrew

19. Wiggers @14: we crossed on the Uxbridge Road 🙂

20. Oops RELAID doh.

21. I grappled with a more Paulish POO “to go” + S – the “back” of “wards” until the blindingly obvious became apparent
    COMPOS MENTIS was my first guess from the C & M crossers but I’m trying to avoid guess and parse so left it until later
    I also biffed in KEEP ONES WORD but a frisson of doubt over the tense and knowing Nutmeg’s precision put me right
    Overall I found this tougher than Vlad yesterday – cheers all

22. [copmus, Penfold, Wiggers, AlanC et al: Mornington Crescent!]

23. A fabulous puzzle – what a delight! I wasn’t the only one who particularly enjoyed 4, 10, 14 & 20, it seems:
    COMPOS MENTIS, MYOPIC, TYPESETTER & PRIEST’S-HOLE. I always recommend Nutmeg’s clueing as the ‘gold standard’ that new setters should aspire to and today’s contains some classic examples. Thanks Nutmeg, and Andrew.

24. In my view compost is not the same as fertiliser but it is a common mistake to confuse the two.

25. Sorry to ooze plaudits all over you, but I thought this was a beauty!

    Too many ticks to list but COMPOS MENTIS taking Best In Show for me.

    Never realised we spelled dialler like that. I’m sure I would have got that wrong if I’d written it.

    Loved POLO PONIES as “game participants”…I wonder if they’re willing ones?

    Many thanks, both, nice weekend, all.

26. Another lovely puzzle from Nutmeg.

    Despite my custom of going through the clues in order, somehow 4dn leapt out at me immediately – a great way to start to start: it really tickled me, as did DEMOB-HAPPY (I can still picture my father’s truly awful demob suit) and TYPESETTER.

    You’re quite right, George, @11 – I do often say that – but yesterday I listed ten of Vlad’s, because it would have been invidious to leave any out. The same goes for today, so I’ll highlight BADEN-POWELL, MATRIMONY, PRIEST’S HOLE, ROYAL MINT (loved the ‘new normality’) and POLO PONIES.

    The brilliant surface of 10ac is rather perturbing – I can’t see a theme either. (When I entered ACTON, I immediately thought of the Brontës but it didn’t seem to lead anywhere.) Could it be a double bluff? 😉

    Many thanks, as ever, to Nutmeg and to Andrew.

27. Tom Hutton @24 I dig what you’re saying.
    Heaps of people make that mistake.

28. This was excellent. Lots of very clever misdirection. “Kind person like Vlad” in 14d really raised a smile.

    grantinfreo @12: talking of DEMOB-HAPPY and the baby boom, Bill, a friend of ours, was going through some old family papers recently and discovered that his father was demobbed nine months to the day before Bill was born.

    Many thanks Nutmeg and Andrew.

29. Penfold @27: what rot!

30. There were so many clues which were obvious when you got them, but not before then. I was held up by putting SUPPER for RELAID. REP US backwards (almost). I was convinced that the suburb was going to be E13 or E10.

31. Thanks for the blog, super crossword , such variety and originality. NOVELIST is sensational and BENIGN is just lovely, plus many more.

32. Punfold 🙂

33. Great puzzle, thanks Nutmeg, and also thanks to Andrew for parsing oops, relaid, and meantime. Royal Mail was. My FOI and the Stand part of 2d my last, because of a long pause over demob – which is a phrase I have used myself, e.g. on my voluntary redundancy ( a new-ish car!) and later, my retirement (no more horrible people!) – yet it took me ages to think up.
    Love all the crack about suburbs etc from contributors!

34. Beautiful crossword from Nutmeg, with too many good clues to list, though for me COMPOS MENTIS captures the custard cream (I can almost imagine Vlad saying ‘I wish I’d set that!’)

    DEMOB HAPPY is a familiar expression to us Brit boomers because we remember our parents using it and extending it to civilian contexts. I suspect it may mystify Generation Z. Nobody has commented on the genuine archaism: when did a caller last have to dial? (RELAID was my LOI, but not for this reason!)

    Nice blog, Andrew.

35. [PM and PENFOLD, You’re both (not) out of ordure]

36. With Nutmeg more than any other setter at the moment I get a huge sense of satisfaction when I finally complete one of her puzzles. Always worth the extra effort. The last ones to slip in this morning were the interlocking THOSE POLO PONIES and finally the NOVELIST

37. PostMark and Penfold. A moanier person would object to these puns.

38. [AlanC @35: thanks man. You’re everywhere today.]

39. Gervase @ 34. I still have to dial, we have a 1950’s green bakelite phone that still actually rings with a bell.

40. Very nice puzzle and a medium-speed solve for me today; Nutmeg’s cluing is super-accurate so even the not-so-obvious dropped in pretty well.

    Despite being mid-50s, DEMOB HAPPY is expression I use regularly even with younger colleagues who seem to fully understand it which is quite surprising – I wonder how many other WWII expressions have that kind of longevity?

    Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew!

41. I was just wondering to myself too – whether the number or sheer volume of crossword puzzles individual setters create actually has an effect on their continuing quality. Whether ideas begin to dry up or become repeated after a while, or perhaps setters realise they have to become ever more creative and up to the minute. Nutmeg is relatively new on the scene, isn’t she, compared to someone like Paul. Who is in fact the longest serving setter with the Guardian at present…?

42. Found this easier and much more fun than yesterday’s. Although I still used the dictionaries and crossers to get some clues was able to parse (most of) them when I did. Lots of aha moments and smiles.

    Never heard of polonies but I still use the phrase DEMOB HAPPY which I like

    Most I liked have been mentioned especially COMPOS MENTIS (and I will shortly be out spreading compost round my fruit bushes).
    But I also liked MEANTIME, MATRIMONY and KEPT ONES WORD

    Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

43. I’m another who got stuck on EALING, and I live thousands of miles away! (I know Ealing because, taking the tube in from Heathrow on one trip to Britain, I got stuck in Ealing for a bit that time too. Luckily I know EPPING too, from The Battle of Epping Forest–I’m a Genesis fan.)

    I like Nutmeg because her clues may sometimes be difficult, but there’s never anything I still can’t explain after I’ve solved them, plus or minus an odd Britishism here or there. Today there weren’t even any of those (sure, a few Britishisms, but none that were new to me).

44. [Roz @39: Brava! I thought such devices were consigned to museums. However the ring tone on my iPhone is set to the traditional telephone bell sound]

45. I do enjoy a Nutmeg. I think Nutmeg’s surfaces are consistently elegant and pleasing.

46. Ronald@41, I think Enigmatist was before Paul and maybe Pasquale before both. This is only from memory so not totally sure. Along with Shed they are the only long term Guardian setters still going I think.

47. I’m another who thought that COMPOS MENTIS was brilliant, and there were a lot of other first-rate clues as well.
    Epping as a suburb of London? Personally, I don’t struggle with that. But then that is possibly because I grew up in Birmingham, and became well aware that if you suggested to the inhabitants of Sutton Coldfield to the north or Solihull to the south that they lived in suburbs of Birmingham, they used to get quite delightfully annoyed.
    They are parts of the same conurbation, though, in the same way that Epping is part of London’s sprawl.

48. Loved topical 6d anagram of (new) normality.

49. Daniel Miller @ 15-as I said I am quite aware of how the clue works but it would seem that noone gives a toss about the fact the Epping is not a London suburb although anything coud happen in England these daysl

50. Thanks, everyone who has pointed out the Pommy ubiquity of DEMOB HAPPY. I usually think I am reasonably up on Pommy stuff, having lived there a number of times, being married to a Brummie and visiting often (though not lately). But I can’t recall ever having heard it. I know ‘demob’, of course – just not that particular phrase. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never looked forward to retirement there (though I have looked forward to holidays). On another clue, “I would not part with it’ = “I keep it”.

51. NeilH @ 47. I mentioned being married to a Brummie. She’s actually form Solihull, so I know all about that annoyance!

52. It’s been a cracking fortnight or so of puzzles in the Guardian, including Maskarade’s Easter double. I usually enjoy Nutmeg, but I must add my voice to those others who objected to the suggestion that Epping is a London suburb. The trouble is that I am often in a bad mood when I come to the crossword after reading the Ipswich-based East Anglian Daily Times, with its frequent disregard for grammatical and geographical accuracy. Recently it included Chelmsford in an article about Suffolk attractions. Hands off our Essex towns and cities!

53. copmus@1 I wonder if the Latin tag for being of the same mind as the first poster is copmus mentis??

54. Thanks for that Roz@46…for some reason – bizarre lateral thinking – I always associate the setters Brummie and Boatman. Something to do with Birmingham, The Grand Union Canal and Peaky Blinders…

55. Tassie Tim @2 and 50 – I think your query about the tense in 11dn arises from the different uses of ‘would’. As well as being a conditional, ‘If you offered me a hundred pounds I wouldn’t part with it’, it’s the past tense of ‘will’ (to be willing) – ‘He offered me a hundred pounds but I wouldn’t part with it’.

56. Ego etiam copmi mentis sum.

    (But I did like everything else!)

    Thanks N & A

57. Spent ages trying to an heiress out of the potting shed.

58. Indeed so, Eileen @55. You preempted me on that. My own example was, shall we say, rather more topical and, alas, improbable: “I owned a semi-automatic, military-grade assault rifle but wouldn’t part with it when required to do so by the US authorities” …

59. Another Nutmeg fan here. Lots of fun and lots of ticks. And was happy with Epping, in that I knew of it, but being unfamiliar with the suburbs of London, I didn’t realise it may not be a suburb thereof. Favs were ROYAL MINT and MATRIMONY. Ta to Nutmeg and Andrew

60. Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew. A high-class end to another good week.

    TassieTim@2: “funny how you need to pronounce the possible letter combinations in the right way to see it” – I pondered me-anti-me for quite a while (I think I even said it aloud) before the the currency plummeted.
    My bourbon cream goes to NOVELIST – one of those I should have aced, but no – not even with all the crossers. I didn’t like RELAID – inscrutable wordplay with an obscure definition.

    How bad. Until Monday all.

61. I assumed that the clue for MYOPIC was aimed at me, with my constant cry of “there was a theme?” 🙂

    I used to struggle to separate the cryptic meanings from Nutmeg’s so smooth surfaces, but I was on her wavelength today and everything went swimmingly until RELAID, which took me ages to identify the definition (doh!), and even then the parsing (partly) eluded me, because I assumed DIALER was an American word rather than an American spelling (doh! again).

    I can imagine Nutmeg’s delight in discovering that ROYAL MINT was an anagram of ‘normality’, and I expect she would have grinned wickedly at the thought of Vlad’s inclusion in the clue for 14d sending us off in the direction of vampires rather than printers’ devils.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

62. Eileen @55 – thank you for putting my query in proper grammatical terms. You have backed up my point that the clue, as written, does not uniquely specifiy KEPT rather than KEEP. Obviously, when Nutmeg wrote the clue, this may well not have come to mind.

63. Not only did I try Ealing before Epping like many others, but before I had any crossers I tried hard to make e-commerce work (a more common term I think than e-shopping), but of course that went nowhere.

    I didn’t think the COMPOS MENTIS clue as a whole was so great, but the “All there is” misdirection was the best of the puzzle.

64. NeilH @47, Epping part of London’s sprawl? Oh very much no. There’s a forest in between.

    Just a touch easier than yesterday, with intelligible parsings – I couldn’t get OOPS.

    [As one of the Essex contributors to this blog, may I set out the distinction between that misunderstood county and London. Before 1965, the county’s western boundary was just four miles from the City, along the River Lea – currently the subject of many cross letters to the Guardian on account of its uncritical coverage of wild swimming. Then the Greater London Council came about, carving five ‘new’ east London boroughs out of formerly Essex territory. These became known as ‘metropolitan Essex’. They include towns such as Romford and Barking and a host of well-known suburbs like West Ham and Walthamstow. But not, ever, Epping.]

65. Trailman@64: Essex got off lightly. I was born in Middlesex, now entirely obliterated by London boroughs.

66. [Trailman@64 and other men of Essex
    Calling Epping a London suburb? What have They don Bois?]

67. Beautifully constructed puzzle! Thanks Nutmeg, COMPOS MENTIS my favourite too

68. TT@62 isn’t it the definition “proved trustworthy” that indicates the past tense for the answer? You’re right that keep/kept work equally well for the wordplay but lots of words/phrases have multiple synonyms so our job as solvers is to pick the right one
    [Dr WhatsOn – did your band counting methodology extend to partial bands like Judas PRIEST’s Hole, The DEMOB HAPPY Mondays, Billy IDOLiser etc.? I’m guesstimating that with six degrees of separation virtually all clues could be linked to Half Man Half Biscuit]

69. [Trailman @64: Having spent many of my formative years in Essex (well, Leigh-on-Sea which is to Essex what Hove Actually is to Brighton) I’m always amazed at how diverse it is ranging from the Romfords, Ilfords, Dagenhams and Barkings to the quaint towns of Maldon, Saffron Walden and Constable Country.

    However, I still retain the right to drool at a Mk 1 XR2i with furry dice, a soft-top Carpri in shocking pink and white socks with drainpipe trousers. Alwight?]

70. in 26a LIST does not “substitute” MBER, it replaces it. MBER substitutes for LIST. The use of “substitute” for “replace” is becoming widespread, but I’m disappointed to see it here. (Andrew corrects it in his blog.)

    Tassie Tim@2 I had KEEP ONE’S WORD too, but on looking back the clues says’ “Wouldn’t part with,” and if it were KEEP it would be “won’t.” I googled “Demob-happy” and it really is a word, as well as a band.

    My lack of geographic precision stood me in good stead — I’d heard of EPPING, like mrpenney, so I bunged it in.

    Like everybody else, I loved COMPOS MENTIS — especially, as DrWhatson says, the misdirection of “all there is.” Thanks from the Nutmeg State to Nutmeg and Andrew.

71. Thanks Andrew, I had a very similar experience to you in solving this I think.
    I don’t quite see BENIGN and propitious as the same but certainly not a million miles away and I’ll take the lack of complaint elsewhere as a sign that it’s my knowledge/usage (I see the former as a neutral term) at fault.
    I was pleased not to be fooled into trying something involving a Jester for 2D having had faith in Nutmeg’s fairness, but with the A in place couldn’t help fixating on AL for “Health Centre” which didn’t help with 1A at all.
    Enjoyed lots which brought back unexpected memories of past lives eg RELAID, POLO PONIES and BADEN-POWELL but i think PRIEST’S HOLE is my favourite even though I thought they were just PRIEST HOLEs, thanks Nutmeg.

72. PS as far as Epping and London are concerned, I agree with the raised eyebrows, but would people accept a rugby link? I once played rugby against Upper Clapton (definitely a London suburb), and was surprised that I had to travel outside the city limits to Epping to do so. The club is now renamed “Epping Upper Clapton” so there is still a connection to the big smoke, however tenuous.

73. [ Ronald @54 I still think of Brummie, Boatman and Brendan as new setters but they must have been here a while now. All three are very welcome additions. ]

74. [… and vale Phil. Hope someone takes over the non-pc joke dept…]

75. Despite obscurities like DEMOB-HAPPY, BADEN-POWELL, and CRY OFF I enjoyed this quite a bit. There were many favourites including ACUTE, NOVELIST, BENIGN, and TYPESETTER. Loved the surface for MYOPIC as well as the fact that there was no apparent theme that I would miss once again. Thanks to both.

76. Superb puzzle! I needed to use the check function sometimes (and to brute force with a couple of these) but they turned out fair, and lots of excellent wordplay like SHELL, COMPOS MENTIS (particularly raised a smile when I realized how she’d tricked me with the definition), DISPATCH, BENIGN, PARTHENON, STAND GUARD too. The wordplay for MEANTIME is excellent but I was thrown by thinking the note was MI.

    Needed help with parsing OOPS and BADEN-POWELL (I saw POW but not ADEN), thanks Andrew.

    Count me as another who’d never heard of DEMOB-HAPPY but once I had the B it couldn’t be anything else; there seems to be a band by that name so it must be a common enough term! Fortunately I’m not familiar enough with the geography to realize that Epping’s suburban status is so controversial.

77. [MaidenBartok @69, sure is alwight wiv me (careful not to sound too much like Michael Barrymore). And Gazzh @72, you’re right about Upper Clapton – it’s just above the western bank of the Lea. What a strange hybrid!]

78. [I saw the debate about whether Epping is a suburb of London, and noted that you could get there on the Underground–not even commuter rail–which I think makes it qualify, despite what our Essex contingent thinks. This observation then led me down a few rabbit holes. In the U.S., you can take commuter rail–not inter-city Amtrak trains, actual trains designed to take commuters from outlying areas to central cities–all the way from Springfield, Massachusetts to Newark, Delaware. You have to change trains in New Haven, New York, Trenton, and Philadelphia. (In New York, you also have to get from Grand Central to Penn Station–to make this an all-rail trip, you can do that on a subway.) Why would you? But you could. The commuter-rail network very nearly gets you from southern New Hampshire to northern Virginia, but there are two surprisingly small gaps (one between Kingston RI and New London, CT, and another between Newark, DE and Perryville, MD) where you have to take Amtrak. And if you’re going to do that, why not just take Amtrak all the way–you wouldn’t even have to change trains except in Boston–again with the need to cross town to change train stations, in typical New England fashion named North Station and South Station.)]

    [The point, for our purposes, being that in the northeastern megalopolis, what is a suburb of where is pretty vague. I went to college in Princeton. No one would call Princeton a New York suburb, and yet there were commuters–and yet Princeton is slightly closer to Philly than it is to New York. I saw this story in the New York Times early in the pandemic–emblematic of everything there is to hate about the Times–about professional-class people who moved to Hoboken for the lower rent, but never actually did much there except sleep, and what with lockdowns and working from home all of a sudden discovered that there are things to do in New Jersey. Hoboken is a NY suburb, probably. Is Newark, NJ? No, it’s kind of it’s own city. But what about, say, Montclair, further out? Absolutely, since practically everyone who lives there is there because of New York in some sense. I assume London has the same weird vagueness–“can you commute from there? Is there continuous urbanization? Is it truly a bedroom community, or is it its own economic centre (switching to British spelling)?” And different places at different distances can answer different ones of those questions “yes.”]

79. Sorry I’m a bit late with this observation, but I can’t see how the clue for 14 down can lead to KEEP…. That is either an infinitive or an imperative construction. The alternative interpretation of ‘Wouldn’t’ gives KEEPS, surely?

80. DEMOB suits were a thing too this one’s actually quite natty

81. He wouldn’t part with it = he kept it.

    Seems fair to me.

    What a lovely puzzle!

82. If you take London as meaning Greater London then the Epping area adjoins it (ish) so could qualify as a suburb – at least according to Chambers
    Don’t get me started on “London” Stansted airport!

83. @Gazzh @71 – Upper Clapton Rugby Club may be saying they are in Epping, but that ground is in Thornwood, a small village a couple of miles north of Epping.

    I’m another Essex person who tried e-commerce and tried to fit Ealing into the grid rather than Epping, only getting that Epping was meant when I parsed the solution.

    Epping Forest District Council may neighbour the London Borough of Redbridge in Buckhurst Hill, but there are a lot of disparate settlements between Buckhurst Hill and Epping, with fields separating them and all (Loughton, Debden and Theydon Bois). That tube line was originally the Great Eastern Line bringing in milk from the farms to London, later adopted by London Transport. It also ran out to Ongar until 1996. The Epping to Ongar section is now a heritage railway.

84. Gazzh @71 I had AL in 1a too for the longest time. Fat lot of good it did me.

    oofyprosser@81 For a moment with my head full of the demob suit link, photo and writeup still in my head I thought you were saying that the owner of the suit wouldn’t part with it after all, couldn’t bear to see it go.

85. As always I loved several of these but surely Nutmeg missed an opportunity with 14D. It should’ve read Grauniad, shouldn’t it?,

86. [Shanne @83: Buckhurst Hill?! That even makes Leigh-on-Sea look posh!

    Talk of the Lea Valley brings back memories of my very short time working as an engineering student at Thames Water’s Deephams Sewage Treatment Works. We were extracting biogas from th anaerobic digestion chambers which need occassional cleaning out by wading in, waist deep. Having done that, we all used to toddle off to a fabulous chippy in York Road, Walthamstow in full wading gear for lunch…]

87. Another great puzzle in what has been an excellent week in the G, FT and Indy. Like Alphalpha@60 I had me-anti-me long before I had MEANTIME and like other non-Essex people the suburb status or otherwise of Epping didn’t cross my mind. RELAID was my loi and took prompting from MrsW who had looked up the answer. Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew – let’s see how I fare with Redshank now.

88. Thanks both,
    As already mentioned, there were many superb clues. My problem with 16d is that e-shopping is done by the customer but trade is done by the vendor.
    [Anyone remember Round the Horn’s ‘Booklack in Ongar’?]

89. I think I’ve misunderstood the term “suburb” my whole life, having just checked the definition in Collins, as I thought it was a place outside a major city, not a constituent part of it. I’m another Ealing trier, even going so far as to Google “e-shoaling” to see if it was a thing. Perhaps the role of ACTON in 3d was to misdirect us to the wrong part of London. I’d say it worked pretty well. Fave was the rather nice normality anagram for ROYAL MINT.
    Thanks, Nutters and Andrew.

90. Deegee@85: HOw treu, how very through.

91. From our Irish viewpoint, Essex Hertfordshire and Hampshire are all suburban London, we were however trying to find the town of Hopping, without success, hence the visit to 225.
    Lovely crossword, straightforward and fair, thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew

92. Tyngewick @88 – The only association that comes up in my mind with the name Ongar is the renowned football team Ongar Academicals as featured in Private Eye. It seems that life has imitated art: since 2014 there has been a real-life Ongar Academy.

93. Lovely puzzle. Thanks Nutmeg.
    [And thanks to others for the trip down memory lane. Epping certainly wasn’t a London suburb when I was cutting my teenage teeth at Upper Clapton Rugby Club of a Saturday night. We reckoned we were country folk living out at Fyfield and the Rodings.]

94. [Growing up in Croydon, definitely not a London suburb as it wasn’t on the Underground, Epping was so is a London suburb. 1 April 1960 was a bad day for those towns in Surrey, Kent, Essex, Hertfrdshire and Middlesex around London.]

95. Great crossword, thanks Nutmeg. Witty and clever with brilliantly-concealed meanings. “All there” was my favourite.

96. I lived near Amersham for a number of years. Though it is on the Metropolitan Line it is not a suburb..

97. Was worried for a while with 26ac when I had a different African country in my head

98. [Daniel Miller@16 POETS Day: you’re almost right. It must be before your time; originally/correctly its SUNDAY not SATURDAY since, for most, the working week included Saturday morning. The “early” makes more sense too.]
    I wonder if I’d be correct in thinking that most of the words written in this thread have nothing to do with the puzzle ?….?!

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