Nouvelle Cuisine

Published in the July 2018 edition of The Magpie (issue 187) as an 'A' grade (easy) puzzle.

Preamble:

Eight of the ten unclued lights are one possible set of ingredients which could be used to produce a ‘dish’ formed from the other two.  All clues contain an extra word which is either an ingredient or a one-word anagram of an ingredient of the specific creation involved (17 of each).   The name of the creator of this specific concoction should be written beneath the grid.

KENNETH WILLIAMS

Denouement:

This puzzle celebrates the comic song “MA CREPE SUZETTE” by KENNETH WILLIAMS.  The unclued lights of BUTTER, ORANGE, MILK, SUGAR, EGGS, LEMONS, BRANDY and FLOUR could be used to make a Crepe Suzette, while the extra words are all either components of the lyrics of the comic song, or one-word anagrams thereof.

Crêpe Suzette

Honi soit qui mal y pense,
Fait vos jeux, reconnaissance,
Hammersmith Palais de Danse,
Badinage, ma Crêpe Suzette.

Double entendre, restaurant,
Jacques Cousteau, Yves St Laurent
Où est la plume de ma tante?
C'est la vie, ma Crêpe Suzette.

Corsage, massage, Frère Jacques,
Salon, par avion, Petula Clarke …(pause)

Fiancée, Ensemble, Lorgnette,
Lingèrie, eau de toilette,
Mmmm …Gauloise cigarette,
Entourage, ma Crêpe Suzette.

Citron, Mirage, Caravelle,
Hors d'oevres, Brut et Chanelle,
Chaise Longue, Sasha Distelle,
Fuselage, ma Crêpe Suzette.

Pince-néz, bidet, commissionaire,
Mon Répos, Brigitte Bardot, Jeux Sans Frontières,
(Spoken: "It's a Knockout…etc)

Faux pas, Grand Prix, espionage,
Gruyère, Camembert, fromage,
Mayonnaise, all night garage,
RSVP, ma Crêpe Suzette. 

 Here is a link to the performance of the song: Kenneth Williams - YouTube

The puzzle was generally well received as seen below in the feedback.

Solvers' Comments

Nice puzzle. Clever construction. Not my favourite performer!

Fairly straightforward; needed pub Googler to find the creator, but that's par for the course these days. I suspect VERY few people will claim to have been familiar with the theme. Didn't (have to) bother working out all the extra word ingredients, I'm pleased to say.  So nearly a pangram. I wonder if Eclogue could have fitted a J in somewhere.

An easy enough puzzle, but what a delight to be reminded of Kenneth Williams.

Good old Kenneth Williams -- although this particular 'song' was new to me I was happy to be reminded of a comedian from the past.

Although I've filled the grid and identified the dish referred to, I don't understand the second paragraph of the preamble. None of the extra words I found seem to have any resemblance to an ingredient or a jumble of one.

Lovely! Hate the Carry On films but love Kenneth Williams

A theme crying out for a puzzle, neatly delivered.

A wonderful puzzle! Lots of pleasure to be had while solving, and again afterwards when I watched the source material (again). Happy memories.

One of my last to finish, for a foolish reason. Saw all the crepe suzette stuff fairly early, then assumed the entry would be 'LACREPE'. Googling "la crepe suzette' obviously yielded plenty, which I thought meant I was on to a winner... 1 down ending in L meant I couldn't solve it (BOIL? BAIL? etc.). A popular crossword blog likes to use 'numpty' for this sort of thing, and I can fully empathise. Anyway, a great puzzle, and to integrate all those words into the puzzle in all those different ways can't have been easy. Thanks Eclogue.

The lyrics I found on t'Internet - and I defy anyone to solve this without reference to t'Internet ! - differed slightly, giving (for example) CITRON not CITROEN, LAURENTE not LAURENT and DANCE not DANSE. Also, although Kenneth Williams sang it first and I suspect KW is the name below the grid that Eclogue is looking for, strictly speaking t'Internet tells me it was written by a Derek Collyer and so DC is technically the "creator". No matter - this was still eminently solvable (with help from t'Internet) and worthy of its A grade. A very satisfying start (I always start with the A and B grades !!!).

The endgame held me up for days - Googling Crêpe Suzette creators proving no help. Of course when I googled ma crepe Suzette all was immediately obvious. Think this was my stupidity rather than a weakness in the puzzle. Entertaining theme once I’d got it!

I don't know that this could have presented in this form before the arrival of the Internet. As it was I had fairly few hits until I tried a reasonable selection of the obvious Frenchisms. A nice curiosity to be alerted to, but it didn't really feel like solving at the last step.

I enjoyed finding the ingredients to a real crepe suzette and then finding Kenneth Williams concoction of which I had a very distant memory. A fun nostalgic puzzle.