Herculis Alternative Spellings

[bookend]

There's been some debate on Q&P in recent weeks on whether The Daily Telegraph will accept alternative spellings to words in the Saturday GK and Monday Herculis crosswords.

Last week, there was the question of 1 down in the Herculis: Was it Appetiser or Appetizer? The majority opinion on AB was that it was Appetiser as it was likely the crossword setter (KM?) had the English spelling in mind.

According to the answers printed today, the correct answer was Appetizer. The answers do not state "1d Appetiser/Appetizer", so clearly those of us that used the british spelling got it wrong. More importantly, it shows that a degree of flexibility on this matter is not shown by the Daily Telegraph and that alternative spellings are NOT acceptable.

I find it quite annoying to think that the people who pick the submitted crossword out of the bag or whatever can discard an otherwise correct crossword in this way.

I wonder if this issue has been taken up with the DT crossword editor.