The board meeting had me baffled for a while until the chessboard occurred to me. It was made doubly enjoyable by the clever cluing, like 'Classic brewing ingredients', 'Ends of some board meetings', 'Number one number two', etc. It's very clear that high word-count themelesses that have been polished within an inch of their lives are the puzzles most likely to hit my happy zone. Oohed and aaahed (!) at every long Across as it came into view down there. And somehow the puzzle managed to finish (SE corner) on a high note. Threw KIM JONG-IL across, thought 'damn, that's good,' then allowed myself a moment's reflection on everything I'd solved to that point: all real answers, no crap anywhere, a banks of long Downs ( UNFAZED NEOCONS TWO-TONE) that's amazing in its own right, even though it's masquerading as a mere passageway from one section of the grid to another. I realized mid-solve that the puzzle was something special (which doesn't happen often-usually I'm just on GO!). Picky, yes, but вЂ¦ well, you read this blog, so you can't be surprised. I will say, though, that I'd've changed MENNEN to TENNER (10-pound note), just to get rid of HAND so close to HANDM. If HANDM is the worst a puzzle HANDs you, you're in good shape. Feels like they don't come around much any more. But I've been kind of nostalgic for ampersandwiches lately. Oh, HANDM-that is almost an answer I don't like, but only because it's really H&M (the way BTEN is B-10). It's John ADAMS, the first ('Number one') vice president ('number two') of the U.S. 'I know ADAM was the 'number one' man, but how do you get from there to plural ADAMS?' A: You don't. It was bugging me that I couldn't parse the clue correctly. HA ha, I only just now got the clue at 51A: Number one number two ( ADAMS). SO-SO POPO! Even the tiny stuff is making me smile. I don't think there's a bad answer in the grid.

I got through it in reasonable time, but the whole time I had that exhilarating/nauseating feeling I used to get when I'd break through to a new level of Donkey Kong and stuff would just be coming at you so fast and you feel like you're barely holding it together but you're somehow not dying! Yee haw. Time and again I had that great 'Huh? вЂ¦ what the hell? вЂ¦ damn вЂ¦ OH!' feeling when solving a clue. Frame it and hang it, because you're just not going to see much better than this. Why am I telling you this? I don't know, but I loved this damned puzzle. I mean, I still have that semi-sh***y 'just woke up from a nap' feeling for a while, *right* before I solve the damned puzzle, so it's not all bourbon and chocolate, but I'm pretty in to the overall rhythm of the sleep-solve-write-read-sleep thing. And I remember thinking, 'that sounds cool.' And it is. I remember reading some years ago about 'second sleep'-that pre-modern sleep patterns were likely to feature a middle-of-the-night waking period. I fall asleep early (like 9 or 10pm), then wake up a couple hours later, then solve / blog, then (eventually) sleep some more. I've gotten into this weird habit of late.

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