Guardian Prize 27,274 / Philistine

58 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,274 / Philistine”

1. Thanks Eileen. I didn’t need to spend a lot of time on this but still enjoyed it. My LOI was 18d and I confused myself trying to accommodate an anagram of ‘seats’ . I didn’t question the 4/20 combination at the time but can now see your point.

2. Thanks to Philistine and Eileen. A very tasty puzzle. VICTORIA SPONGE was new to me as was the spelling of DIKTAT, though I did know IPECAC. Much fun.

3. I liked this very much. Not too challenging but with a good variety of clues, some wit and a minor theme of puddings with girls names. At 4 I thought making 20 plural made ‘ups’ and ‘elevates’ work as synonyms. Thanks to Eileen and Philistine

4. Thanks Philistine and Eileen
   Disappointingly easy (again!) for a Prize (though thanks for the parse of DISTORTED). I actually went for SATIRIC, but no matter, as I never send it in.

5. A good crossword overall, but did anybody get “ipecac” without looking it up, even with all the crossers in place? I thought that one was rather below the belt.
   It’s an obscure word and having identified it as an anagram, apecic, apicec, epicac, epacic, and ipacec all look just as plausible as ipecac. (Arguably the ic endings look more plausible). It feels like the barrel was being scraped to shoehorn a word in here.

6. Howard @ 5

   Did your mother not have among her armoury of medicines for childhood ailments the dreaded ipecacuanha? I am remembering back 70+ years so perhaps it is not still used, but the name lingered on and was almost my foi.

7. Sorry Howard, IPECAC was sadly familiar to me too!

8. Caesario @ 6: I failed on ipecac but now I recall my mother called the dreaded emetic hecky-pecky wine. ?

9. A 20 minute joke of a prize puzzle. The easiest Philistine I’ve ever seen and almost certainly written as a Monday contender.

   Who chooses these puzzles? Unfortunately it appears to be first out of the hat and directly into the paper at the moment.

   Appalling.

10. Thanks all
    Although not as offended as BNTO, I did find this very straightforward for Philistine.
    Howard’s comments re ipecac can be interpreted to suggest it was a very easy solution to find. Words ending in CAC are much rarer than IC!

11. Thanks all
    Although not as offended as BNTO, I did find this very straightforward for Philistine.
    Howard’s comments re ipecac can be interpreted to suggest it was a very easy solution to find. Words ending in CAC are much rarer than IC.

12. A neat crossword good clean fun. Howard March @5 it was bit hazy but I definitely knew IPECAC, I think from a previous crossword rather than through direct therapeutic encounter!

    Like muffin @4 also plumped for satiric not satyric. But it doesn’t matter as I just found the completed grid with my name and address filled in in the pile of recycling.

13. A very enjoyable puzzle – mostly straightforward though IPECAC was unfamiliar.

    Thanks to Philistine and Eileen

14. BNTO – sometimes I wonder why you do these crosswords since you so rarely sound as if you have enjoyed anything…

15. Thanks to both – a great puzzle with a fine bit of theming from Philistine – albeit I’m not allowed any of the goodies mentioned here (too fat! 🙁 ) We do indulge in savoury pancakes now and again, though. 🙂 But crêpes suzette is definitely a no-no!

    Maybe it’s worth pointing out that DRILL (on its own) is also a species of monkey: Mandrillus leucophaeus. So the clue sort of works two ways.

    I too wasn’t quite sure about SAT[I/Y]RIC (isn’t it “satirical” anyway? Perhaps the shorter form a bit archaic?). But I also took the Y option – presumably that’s right!

16. Thanks Philistine and Eileen. I took “20s” in 4 as two separate elements giving UP + S.

17. I was rather surprised at how easy this was. In fact, I thought I must be missing something and spent some time trying to work out what it was. There was,of course, nothing and I admit to feeling a bit miffed. There’s nothing wrong with the puzzle as such but it was a bit Mondayish.

18. Thanks, Eileen.

    I took 6a as a triple definition with both ‘but’ and ‘deliver’ also meaning SAVE.

19. Hi newmarketsausage @18

    You’re absolutely right, of course! And there was I thinking it was a rather weak and strangely-worded clue.

20. I enjoyed this and am grateful that not many Guardian crosswords meet with BNTO’s approval or they would be way over my head and no fun. And since carping (about crosswords or anything else in life) rarely results in the change we want what’s the point?
    There does seem to be less distinction between some of the weekday puzzles and the prize, and this was certainly an easier one, but not what I’d expect on a Monday. Maybe the difficulty level is always subjective.
    No doubt experienced solvers saw the alternative meaning of “axes” straightaway but it took me a while with the lovely juxtaposition of elm tree so this was a favourite of mine. I don’t have any ipecac family lore so this was a new word for me. Thanks for the fun Philistine and for the illuminating blog Eileen.

21. nms @Eileen
    The three definitions for SAVE redeem the clue a bit, but it was still so easy to solve without seeing them that I was casting around for something else. In a Quick crossword it would have been clued as “Put money away; vase (anagram)”

22. Howard @5: Yep, I knew IPECAC. Easiest Prize crozzie of the year, I thought.

23. Not difficult but very enjoyable with some beautifully deceptive clues. Hard to believe with hindsight that the surface of 15a was so compelling that, after getting SUTURING from the wordplay (via Turin), I spent some time wondering why that was the answer: I actually looked up sewer in the BRB moments before reaching for a teatray.

    In 2d, I think the position of “that’s” shows it’s SATYRIC.

    I didn’t notice deliver as a defn for SAVE, just took it SAVE “delivers” fancy vase. Don’t really see what’s so weak about the clue: someone needed to save hard, yet still managed a fancy vase for their friend’s birthday, perhaps?

    I really liked 1d DRILL, though it probably took a lot longer to think of the clue than to solve it.

    Pedants’ Corner:
    Isn’t the plural CREPES SUZETTES? That’s what my (1988) Chambers has, but maybe that’s old hat now?

24. (Oh, yes, I had heard of IPECAC before, but didn’t remember it, so still had to look up various permutations of *icecap. Never had to suffer the stuff, though).

25. BH @14

    Thank you for your concern.

    Be reassured that I am not about to plunge into the Slough of Despond due the the current heinous state of the Guardian cryptic.

    I do however worry that the current level of editorial control is severely affecting the quaility of the puzzles we are receiving. So naturally I comment when this is so apparent in the daily puzzle. Sadly this is all too often nowadays.

    You will find, admittedly with some searching, that I do pour fulsome praise on puzzles when they deserve it. Sadly this is not so often nowadays.

    The current problems are not limited to the Guardian however. The Times have recently “closed” their “Crossword Club” and insist that people take out a “subscription” the the electronic paper which is extortionate if one only intends to do the crossword.

    If this situation continues as I fear it might I plan to cherry pick from the Guardian (good setters, Genius etc) and purchase some old Times Crossword Books are there will be many puzzles in there I haven’t attempted. (The puzzles there are far superior to the current offerings from the G though a little Ximenean for my taste.)

    In my defence may I add that I only express my dissatisfaction about the current Guardian puzzles in the hope that everybody willl benefit from the improvemnets that may ensue when normal service is resumed. There does however seem little hope of this at the moment.

26. Tony @23:
    >>Isn’t the plural CREPES SUZETTES?<<

    Only if the plural of Baba au rhum is Babas au rhums.

27. I’m no expert on French, but every mention I’ve seen of the dish Crêpes Suzette spells it that way. Most references have both words capitalised, but a few do not. As it is named after Suzette I’m sure that must be right, and you don’t pluralise it as you would ‘blanc’, for example, in ‘vins blancs’.
    Tony @23, my Collins Dictionary 11th edition also has Crêpes Suzettes – I’m sure that must be wrong.

28. Me @27
    Just a correction to a point of fact. The dictionary I should have referred to is Collins 6th edition, not the 11th. I also have Chambers Dictionary 11th edition at home, and that too has Crêpes Suzettes.

29. El Inglés @ 26

    Babas aux rhums, surely???

30. Tony @23, like Alan B @27, I cannot believe those references to Chambers and Collins, always bear in mind “courts martial” is the correct plural.

31. Good heavens, just checked in my Collins Compact Dictionary and it gives “court martials” first as the plural for “court martial”, my COED gives “courts martial”.

32. Is it perhaps because in the French language, when one pluralises a noun, the adjective changes too?
    I am not very good at French and Cookie is surely the one to ask.
    BTW, the Oxford Dictionary of English does give ‘crepes suzette’, indeed unlike Chambers (13th) and Collins (12th).
    Seems right to me as pluralised English (that’s what usually happens despite what’s really correct in the original language).

33. @El Inglés

    We called them rum babas in our house. (My mum worked in a cake shop so we used it often — wouldn’t touch them now, though). I think Simon has it with babas aux rhums, really.

    @AlanB
    I think Sil is right snd that Suzette(s) is treated as an adjective in French. Cookie will surely know.

    On the other hand, perhaps it should be CREPES SUZETTE’S? Sure I saw a sign with that on once.

34. The English edition of Larousse Gastronomique (could you ask for a better authority?) gives crêpes Suzette.

35. Tony @33
    Sorry this is so late. This is just to say that Cookie has in fact commented – see above (@30). I think Philistine’s ‘Crêpes Suzette’ is correct, and Collins and Chambers have got it wrong.
    It’s probably best not to think of Suzette as an adjective. It is a name, like ‘Melba’ is in ‘Peach Melba’.

36. Thanks, PeterO @34. I tried to look in Larousse, but the website I found was temporarily unavailable. I didn’t think of the Gastronomique: as you imply, there could hardly be a better authority.

37. Re the pancake

    The OED has both forms for the plural

    3. A small, thin pancake. (Cf. crisp n. 3) So crêpe Suzette n. (usually in pl.) a pancake served in a hot sauce, often containing a liqueur.

    [1877 E. S. Dallas Kettner’s Bk. of Table 143 Crêpe.—The French for pancake.
    1907 G. A. Escoffier Guide Mod. Cookery ii. xx. 723 Suzette Pancakes. Make these from preparation A [i.e. basic recipe], flavoured with curaçoa and tangerine juice. Coat them..with softened butter, flavoured with curaçao and tangerine juice.]
    1922 C. H. Senn Luncheon & Dinner Sweets 63 Pancakes à la Suzette. (Crêpes Suzette.)
    1924 A. E. M. Foster London Restaurants 87 Crêpe Suzette is another special dish.
    1928 Vanity Fair Sept. 31/1 Crêpes Suzettes are pancakes raised by Cunard to a remarkable point of perfection.
    1951 Good Housek. Cookery Bk. (1957) 304/2 Add the liqueur and brandy to the sauce, and replace the folded crêpes in the pan.
    1961 Guardian 27 Dec. 2/4 Henri Charpentier, creator of Crêpes Suzette.., died at Redondo Beach, California, on Sunday, aged 81.

    I suspect one form is the English plural and the other (2 s’s) the French

    This seems to be backed up by “Oxford Dictionaries” at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/spelling/plurals-of-nouns

    Words of French origin

    Certain words which have come into English from French have two possible plural forms: the original French plural and an English one. These words end in the letters -eau, for example:

    Word French plural English plural
    bureau bureaux bureaus
    chateau chateaux chateaus
    gateau gateaux gateaus
    trousseau trousseaux trousseaus

    which may also apply to French words which don’t end in -eau?

38. BNTO @37

    Wow! Thanks for that contribution including those references from what is probably the most authoritative English language source.

    The only point I would now make is that ‘crêpes Suzette’, the name of the dish [‘pancakes’, as Philistine had it], is already plural. If that has a plural, what is it? I understood from the sources I looked up that ‘crêpes Suzette’ would be the French plural and ‘crêpes suzettes’ the English (ignoring the fact that Suzette is a name).

    I don’t suppose the plural-plural (!) form would be used very often – perhaps if a waiter was taking an order for ‘two crêpes suzettes’, for example.

    Coincidentally, I had just posted a comment on the General Discussion thread on this topic when I came back here to see if this mini-debate had been added to this morning.

39. I don’t think there can be any doubt that crepes Suzette is at least a correct form, given how often it has been used (see, eg Wikipedia, with many references using this form). It may be that Suzettes is a hyper-correction on the misunderstanding that Suzette is adjectival. Or it could be that it is indeed adjectival in French. (Cookie, you have avoided this question in favour of a remark about courts martial, a different issue).

    I don’t think the ref to Oxford Dictionaries is helpful, btw, BNTO, as that is only talking about nouns. Perhaps phrases like Alan’s vins blancs which haven’t been fully anglicised (and so are pronounced with a semblance of a French accent still) retain the French grammar as French words spoken or written in English sentences? That, though, would also apply to crepes, or they would be “creeps”, presumably?

40. AlanB @2 above

    Our posts crossed. Although “crepes Suzette(s)” (can’t do the circumflex on phone) is a dish, I think you would still say “I had some crepes Suzette(s)” (ie some pancakes, not “a crepes Suzette(s)”. In either case, the final S, if any, wouldn’t be sounded.

    Btw, BNTO’s Oxford Dictionaries ref also has something to say about the lasagna/lasagne question discussed here a while back.

41. Tony @38, I did not mean to avoid the issue, just gave an important indicator easy to remember, the COED gives crepes Suzette, I cannot type the circumflex accent, apologies.

    Incidentally, NormanLinFrance is the expert, an official translator with the UN, he often looks in here.

42. My post @30 was also to show up Collins and Chambers, see here the rules for postpositive-adjectives. Suzette is a proper name, you cannot make it plural except perhaps in such phrases as “some would-be crêpes Suzettes” – “a few would-be Napoleans” is a common example.

43. PS, I think that should be “some would be crêpe Suzettes”…

44. Thanks Cookie and Tony @various.
    This forum can be educational indeed, and not only from ‘new’ words that setters give us to learn!

45. Thanks, Cookie. Examples galores at the link — but none using a name. I am now persuaded that “Suzettes” is not really correct as a French derivation, but would certainly be interested to hear from Norman, or anyone else with the expertise to comment on proper French usage. Eggs Mornay doesn’t take S, and I assume (perhaps wrongly) that Mornay is a proper name.

46. I’m sorry, I didn’t research this when I wrote the blog, since I assumed that the dish was named after the person who inspired it – it never occurred to me that this would / could be pluralised. [I’ve never heard of ‘Omelettes Arnold Bennetts’. 😉 ]

    I don’t usually contribute to long-running themes but, since it’s my blog, I finally felt obliged to respond, since almost half the comments now refer to this point and my email inbox is getting rather full. I’m sure there are several suggestions as to who Suzette might have been but this one satisfies me: https://bonjourparis.com/archives/french-cooking-crepes-suzette/

47. Like Howard March I, too, was disappointed with the “ipecac” clue. Not because I didn’t know the word but having sussed (correctly) that it was an anagram of “ice cap” and having got the three crossers it was purely a matter of trial and error – six times. There can’t be many words that end in AC

48. Eileen @46
    I endorse the point you made, and I really think that spin-off themes like the one here that are of genuine and ongoing interest to a group of people should be relegated to the General Discussion Page. Perhaps this can be a reminder to myself (being one of the ‘guilty’ ones) and others.

49. Eileen @46

    Apologies if I lit a fire in your inbox. I’m glad that any implication that Philistine’s light was erroneous has been clearly quashed.

    As for the story, Wikpedia (link above) gives a first-person account by Charpentier of that from his autobiography, but it was called into question later, apparently. Still …

    http://smbc-comics.com/comic/gif

50. re: babas au rhum – it’ is the babas that are plural, not the rum. If you put an ‘s’ on ‘rhum’, you would have to put an ‘x’ on ‘au’ as well. So, maybe babas soaked in Bacardi, navy rum , etc etc

51. ISLE is now on 49 appearances, and this was the 15th of those mention MAN. Only EXTRA on 51 has more appearances…

52. beery hiker @51

    I think that is because ISLE is just about the only four-letter word of the form “_S_E”. S and E are both very common letters for words to end in, so with a 4-light in a position like Philistine’s ISLE it’s likely to occur often. Maybe you can refine your stats with this in mind? (I suggest the General Discussion page for that, bearing in mind Eileen’s remarks, above.)

    As for the use of “man”, of course it’s very deceptive — until you’ve seen it 15 times (and even then, a little, no?). Funnily enough, I got stuck with ISLE in a puzzle that (ahem!) I was compiling recently (which is how I’m aware it can be the only choice) and I deliberately avoided the strong temptation to start my clue with “Man, perhaps …” precisely because I’d seen it rather a lot. Very clever, the person who first came up with it (and possibly others, independently), don’t you think?

53. Re the great IPECAC debate! Yes I count myself amongst those who knew the word – but that’s partly down to having read H G Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau, in which the protagonist, shipwrecked at the beginning of the story, is rescued by a ship named the Ipecacuanha. One of the characters remarks “of all silly infernal names, though when there’s much of a sea without any wind she certainly acts according”. No doubt referring to ipecac’s best-known property!

    I also recall having noticed, years ago, that ipecac used to be an ingredient of several popular cough remedies including Benylin. It is no longer recommended for this use though – so don’t try it, however bad your cough may be!

54. Tony @52 – I’m sure Eileen won’t mind me giving you a quick reply. Your point is of course a valid one, but your argument about why setters are forced to use such words applies equally well to all of the other words that gravitate towards the top of the list, they all have common crossing letters in unusual combinations (so ERATO is the setters’ favourite muse). We have discussed this list in general discussion before…

55. beery hiker @54

    I don’t mind at all. My remark at 46 referred exclusively to the protracted discussion of the plural of crêpe Suzette, which I thought had been settled [not least by my own reference to Omelettes Arnold Bennett[s]. 😉

56. Re ipecac. My father was a pharmacist whose Kew shop had fine Edwardian fittings. Mahogany drawers had glass labels with black & gold lettering. One of the first I remember was that marked IPECAC(uanha) so that clue was no problem. Cascara Sagrada has also stuck- medicines had to be nasty and have weird Latin names in earlier times.

57. beery hiker @54

    Interesting. I’d like to see your list. Can you supply a link to the first comment on that, or an approximate date, please?

58. Tony – sorry – must have imagined that. It is there now!

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