Margaret Irvine, who has died aged 75 following a fall last year from which she did not recover, set crosswords for the Guardian as Nutmeg.
Despite a lifelong interest in words, Margaret came to setting crosswords relatively late in life, when she sent some puzzles on spec to the Guardian. The paper published her first in 2006 as an online Quiptic puzzle, but she was soon also setting regular cryptics for the paper. Her elegantly constructed clues quickly made her a hit with Guardian solvers. She chose Nutmeg as her Guardian nom de plume, because Meg is a diminutive of Margaret and she was happy to be considered a slightly eccentric “nut”. She went on also to set puzzles for the Times and the Church Times, and (as Mace) for the New Statesman.
She happily joined in November 2016 with two other setters, Arachne and Puck, to produce under the joint nom de plume of Bogus a puzzle to mark the UN’s World Toilet Day. The Bogus trio had two further outings: to mark World Smile Day in October 2017 and World Naked Gardening Day in May 2021. Margaret was equally happy to go on quiz shows and to take part in a BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour discussion of crosswords and gender.
The only child of Malcolm, a tax inspector, and his wife, Kitty, Margaret was born in Crosby, Merseyside, but the family moved when she was 11 to Little Bispham on the coast north of Blackpool. Two years later they moved again, to Fetcham in Surrey, where her father had been posted.
Margaret recalled that, as a child, a favourite family evening pastime was to tackle the cryptic crossword in that day’s paper, where she was entrusted by her parents with the dictionary. After studying mathematics and economics at York University, she worked first in the Home Office and then in Manchester University’s computer science department until her early retirement in 2005.
When her parents died, Margaret knew of no other relatives, close or distant, and her extensive research failed to find any. A private person, she loved living by herself in Chorlton, Manchester. If this suggests in any way that she was unapproachable, nothing could be further than the truth.
She was outgoing, charming and self-deprecating. Having herself won a Queen’s Guide award, for almost 20 years she enjoyed being Brown Owl to a Brownie pack, and she volunteered to help with literacy at a local primary school. She was a life member of Lancashire county cricket club, and a regular churchgoer who loved classical music, especially Bach.
Margaret once remarked that she was glad that she had retired early from her university job, as she was then able to make setting crossword puzzles the central and most rewarding element of the last part of her life.
English (US)