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Thank you both for the information. Live and learn. Strictly "guyser" over here.

The OED gives four pronunciations for British English but only one for American.

GEE-zuh, GUY-zuh, GAY-suh, GUY-suh.
American: GUY-zur.

Apparently the word comes from Icelandic, a former proper name. These days they call it a goshver, pronounced goss-kvair. Gos means an eruption and also a soft fizzy drink. Hver means a hot spring.

Malone

I was delighted you featured in the Times crossword yesterday.

22D Artistic performer given her head? (6) - A - O - E

It was my last entry, but the answer was obvious.

Well done on getting your recognition.

Grunger, I'm delighted that I was responsible for you finishing off the crossword...I'd have been even more delighted if I had actually been the correct answer to 22 D. I did feature as a solution in a crossword once, but I can't remember which one.

I enjoyed the recent chatter about ships... sorry, about -ships.

Malone

It was one of my last in, and I did think of you!

The ship stuff was fun - grunger has a great imagination.

I have been told that my spelling of "governessship" is wrong as it is claimed that no word in English has the same 3 letters in succession. Yet I see that The Times final had:

25D It's fresh book with basic school skills? (4)

There is a priestship ... but no priestessship?

Thanks Grunger, I like the clue, makes me want to put the heating on :-)

I was reading today of this chap who struck me as something of a pedant (in a good way of course)…

…it was the story of Sahib ibn Abbad, a first century Grand Vizier of Persia, a scholar, poet and polymath. During his work he accumulated a substantial library of over 117,000 books (some accounts say 200,000).

When the Samanid Emperor invited Abbad to travel to Khorasan to serve as his Vizier, Abbad replied that he would require 400 camels to carry all his books, including sixty for his dictionaries alone. The catalogue of the library itself comprised ten volumes.

Accounts suggest that during the journey the camels were trained to walk in alphabetical order so as to preserve the structure of the library. Very sensible, I thought.

However, I was concerned that there was no mention of a system for the ordering of books on each individual camel, though Abbad strikes me as the sort of chap who would have had one :-) 🐪

Regarding triple letters, apparently the OED lists:

brrr, countessship, duchessship, frillless, governessship, grrr, grrrl, hostessship, postmistressship

as valid (unhyphenated) words. I could check this but am far too lazy.

Hmmm... could there be others?