Woke up, turfed the Trollope out of bed, booted up the old 'puter, saw a crypto-type clue (*not* a 'cryptotype', pedantry fans) and solved it.

This time I win a T-shirt, so I now have to decide whether I'm small, medium, or large. I think these choices should be (a) skeletal pipsqueak, (b) we are normal, and (c) amorphous blob.

I'm tall but ectomorphically thin. I'll go for 'large' -- I can always use it as a minidress if I have to escape in drag.

< MostlyAverageJoe: Allright. HOW did you figure that one out? >

So ... 24 suggests the TV show, among other things. We need a 5-4-4 pattern, following the 24. Maybe, hmm, "24 moves till mate"? Fits, but I'm not going to search every 24-mover in the database. I was checking 24-move wins by Short when I remembered Bauer. Click.

Some people might have given up on finding an earlier 24-move Bauer game had been GOTD, as 'Jack Bauer'. But I pressed on. Probably because I'm stupid first thing in the morning, and had only four hours sleep.

Ironic, really. I trust the clue hadn't been there for, like, several hours when I blundered into it?

The moral? If you can find an interesting way to be wrong, the puzzle deities may grant you moments of grace.

Or - as us middle-aged guys usually say - "Sheet, I dunno what the world's coming to these days, chips in every orifice and those teenage girls with ... no, don't even go there. But right is wrong and wrong is right, and foul is fair play, both in international soccer and that Scottish play."

I'm verbose. The excitement. The coffee. The Schadenfreude. The stupidity.

"It was staring me in the face and snarling. I was seeing double from drink, drugs and pain. I lashed out at the face on the left, and got lucky."

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAA

On a more serious note-

Watson!

I was well on the way. Then my phone rang, one of the few people I can't hang up on. Pain.

y'know what else i think is funny? When advertisers act like they have created something so glorious...once upon a time i watched on PBS a history of coca cola advertising and they were so darn proud of themselves for all the devious ways to sell fizzysyrupwater.

and by the way....coke ran Jimmy Carter's "feelgood" presidential campaign which is probably one reason people confuse him with there very own imaginary grampa even though he started deregulation breaking unions funded east timor genocide, let cedras off and banned Aristede from running for president, bought off Egypt with the camp david accords so Israel could pummel Lebanon and Palestinians with impunity, protected the shah and funded central american oppression including the contra war

OOPS THAT GOT HEAVY

have a coke and a smile!!

BASTA NO!

Bauer???

And how does this relate to the clue?

Four or more prizes in 3 years:

Last thing I wrote professionally, last night, was a newspaper magazine feature about photographs of New York. I've also been a movie critic, art writer, and radio columnist. And some short stories - under both the name 'Domdaniel' and the other name recently inserted in my biog.

Chess is one of the few things I haven't written about -- apart from a couple of who-is-Kasparov pieces for the sports pages, back in the 1980s.

Basta?