Independent 8654 / Hieroglyph

14 comments on “Independent 8654 / Hieroglyph”

1. Not difficult at all after the first president was spotted, indeed it became largely a write-in.

   Not the beastly Thursday we expected after Monday & Tuesday 🙂

   Thanks Hieroglyph for the commute-worthy puzzle and Duncan for the blog

2. Thanks for the blog, Duncan, and Hieroglyph for an enjoyable puzzle.

   After Brendan’s Guardian puzzle on Monday, the first P that came into my head was ‘President’ – and so it turned out. I was impressed to see that Hieroglyph, taking a completely different line from Brendan’s ghost theme, had managed to include so many presidents – and, surprisingly, out of fourteen, only five appeared in Brendan’s puzzle. In both puzzles, there was one I hadn’t heard of: here, it was VAN BUREN but the wordplay was very straightforward…

   … as it was with FOGASH, but I agree with Duncan that this choice was rather perverse. Like me, my Collins and SOED don’t seem to have heard of it but it’s in the BRB. I’d always thought that CARDAMON was incorrect – and Collins is the only one of my three to have it as an alternative – but it’s what a lot of people say [and it was a very nice clue, I thought]. I knew SLATER from my Scottish husband – and I really liked the ‘locally caught’. 😉

   Another favourite was MESSAGE – I’m a sucker for ‘lift and separate’ clues.

3. Thank you for blogging, Duncan.

   The theme became clear with my first answer in, COOLIDGE, and while I wouldn’t say it was a write-in, at least you knew what you were looking for and there were only 44 to choose from.

   Down clues, as Duncan says, were pretty friendly and it was only SLATER and FOGASH that I didn’t know. The comment about CARDAMON had me scurrying to my spice cupboard where I found that it is indeed CARDAMOM on the label. Didn’t give it a thought when I solved it.

   Enjoyed this one in the end. Thank you to Hieroglyph.

4. WILSON was my first themed answer so I knew I was looking for Presidents or Prime Ministers, and TAFT put me straight. Mostly a straightforward solve but FOGASH went in with fingers crossed, and when I checked it post-solve only one of the online dictionaries that OneLook searches had it. However, I stupidly entered CARDAMOM from the checkers and definition without bothering to parse it.

5. Thanks to Crossword Solver I did this puzzle before Brendan’s, so I had my déjà vu moment already a few days ago.
   As Eileen said, not much overlap in the two puzzles (although WILSON and CARTER had exactly the same construction).

   Many thanks, Duncan, for your great blog but I think you made a small mistake in 14ac (NIXON): ON = O (over) + N(Norway).
   Neglectable mistake compared with the mistakes the solution made … 🙂

   I parsed 18ac (REAGAN) in a slightly different way.
   I saw “covering acres on” as “covering acres, on” i.e. RE (on) comes before A (acres), and then + GAN.

   Thanks to Hieroglyph for a – despite Gateshead 🙂 – enjoyable but not too difficult puzzle. 🙂

6. Thanks Heiroglyph for a nicely set puzzle.

   Thanks duncanshiell; luckily, I got COOLIDGE at the beginning, so I was straight on to the presidents’ theme.

   I didn’t know VAN BUREN, but as I was using a list of presidents it was fairly easy to parse.

   I agree that potash would have been much preferable to FOGASH, which surely few people would know.
   I liked the conciseness/concision of the clue for HOME TOWN.

7. We normally like themed puzzles, but we do prefer hidden themes. Once we had realised what the P stood for (when we had MONROE and BUSH and had dismissed Marilyn and Kate), several answers went in from the checking letters without needing the wordplay, which always seems a bit of a shame.

   However, we have to admire how Hieroglyph has managed to fit 14 presidents’ names into the grid, even if he did so using a rather unusual word (1d) – somewhat unnecessarily as noted by others – and an unusual definition at 2d.

   Thanks to Hieroglyph for the challenge and Duncan for the blog

8. Not really the challenge I was looking for this afternoon but like others, unreserved admiration for fitting it all together so well. A few of my disliked non-standard abbreviations, perhaps, but let’s not mention them!

   Thanks to both.

9. As others have said, not a fiendishly difficult puzzle, possibly the easiest of the week for me. Got MADISON early on and as I’m interested in American history the others quickly followed. I managed to avoid going over to my reference books listing all the presidents. 8ac was my LPI partly as I’d forgotten how to spell his name and thought it wouldn’t fit, and the only other president I could think of that ended in an ‘e’ was Millard Fillmore (the president behind the opening up of Japan).

   Surprised at how long it took me to get 21ac as Grant is a character I’m fascinated by.

   1 and 2dn were my actual last ones in, deduced from word play. In both cases I was convinced the answers I’d come up with couldn’t be the real answers but Chambers proved me wrong.

10. Didn’t mind this in the way that the Quixote Derby winners did, but I’m no American presidents expert they just fell. Brendan’s clues with alternative definitions and a ghost theme was much more enjoyable.
    shame as this could have been so much better. Ho hum.

11. I have to admit I’m with B and J and flashling in preferring something more subtle. It’s perhaps just a pity that this and the Brendan appeared in the same week – especially as both just missed 4th July!

12. Good crossword and thanks Duncan for the answers.

    Have to point out though that you have got 24 down wrong!

    Increasingly inquisitive as regards to (re) one (i) boy (son) climbing = nosier

13. Another i waste of time, egg heads and experts only, the daily telegraph is becoming more of a reality each day 2018

14. Does the tortoise VM know about idothei.wordpress.com ?

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