Bills are keeping me from being productive tonight. Still, to be -4 in turnovers and close to the browns speaks both to our team's struggles but especially Cleveland's.

I had all the Simpsons-related crossword messages pegged in my last post (pats self on back). The episode had a lot of fun moments, especially nods to Wordplay, and was a good episode for puzzling in general. Not sure they'll ever tackle Sudoku though (although it does have "D'oh!" as its middle syllable, so the title/usage by one character writes itself).

Some comments about the episode:

The crossword tournament was run like an NCAA basketball bracket. At some point during my Philly/Belarus trip, we were talking about how much different a tournament in sudoku would be if you had 1 v 64 format at the start and shrank the field down by single-elimination.

Lisa at some point seemed to steal my thunder a bit by using two dry-erase markers at the same time while solving a puzzle. Now I'll need an even cooler gimmick.

The plot of the episode eventually involves an underground betting ring where Homer is betting on his daughter until the last puzzle. Today I stumbled on an interesting site. While I haven't found actual online betting for sudoku, there is a "bet on the news" site which had a question where my winning was the point of issue. Sorry for all those who lost virtual dollars on me. I was the 3:1 favorite apparently. Don't bother trying to solve their sudoku symbol - its not a valid standard puzzle.