gridCOMMENTS

Greetings, Gridders!

That last issue brought in a rather large number of entries for the Gridword.

The Cryptic received some fifteen entries. The majority of them were from various figures in history, including Aline and Jacques Chrétien, The Queen of Sheba and her Consort, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and Josephine, and Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask. I think it is a major archaeological find that all these famous leaders of history have exactly the same handwriting. Someone could write a paper. Eleven papers.

A cute idea, folks. That's not really fair, however. I counted all those submissions as one submission, which means we are down to four. They were from The Icons of History above, Pokey & Taz, Chris Wooff, and Ian Facey. Pokey & Taz had an error in their submission, so we have three perfect submissions. The winner by random draw is The Icons of History. Sorry, folks, only one prize.

For the Unconventional, I got four submissions and they were from Ian Facey, Chris Wooff, Pokey & Taz, and Prince Charles & Princess Diana (who, as amazing as it may sound, are different people from Napoleon and Josephine and Co.). The submissions from those last two entrants were incomplete; the first two were correct. The winner here is Chris Wooff. Congratulations.

The gridQUESTION last issue was incorporated into the grid itself. I put four possible answers into the grid and had you figure out what it was. The answers were ``a DALMATIAN on a FIRE TRUCK,'' ``a SILENT MOVIE in a DARKROOM,'' ``SKUNKS in TOMATO SAUCE,'' and ``a FOOTBALL REFEREE with a NOSEBLEED.'' The Cryptic grid also had the pieces to construct ``a PENGUIN in RASPBERRY JELLY'' and the more traditional ``NEWSPAPER.'' The question was, of course, ``What's black and white and re(a)d all over?'' The answers I got were: A nun in a ditch. Conrad (Black) and Vanna (White) in Communist Russia.

The grid on the back page was a puzzle I was going to use during Math Week for the Game. Since we didn't actually have a Game this term (we hardly had a Math Week), I didn't see any reason to let it go to waste. It is just a regular crossword. However, those helpful little tags like (abbr.) and (2 wds.) are all missing. You'll find the solution in this issue.

And so ends another term for me. I hope you enjoyed the puzzles I presented. I hope to confuse you all winter long. Until then...

Gridby