After talking with my dad this evening, I felt inspired to pull the Daily Universe out of the trash an give the New York Times crossword puzzle a go.

I usually don’t do crosswords. I’ve come to realize that the word that comes to mind for each clue is often incorrect, and the correct word ends up being one that makes sense only with the broadest interpretation of the clue. Knowing my odds of getting duped, I usually don’t even bother.

The crossword I chose this evening happened to be littered with a series of clues reading “38-Across, in a sense”, meaning that you would have to answer 38-across in order to have a chance with the rest of the puzzle. After discovering that 38-across was the Shangri-Las‘ 1964 #1 hit “Leader of the Pack” (thanks to Amanda Kirk, Jamie Duke, and Google) we were in strong position to tackle the rest of the puzzle.

“38-Across, in a sense” turned out to be various types of group leaders, from the literal “Den Mother” – leader of the Pack – to “Ace of Spades” – the highest card in a deck of cards.

As the white squares filled up we were faced with one more “leader of the pack” to discover. With only two letters missing from the 11-letter answer, we felt comfortable giving Carl Boreman a try – but a Google search yielded no definitive support.

After discovering information about the Oto Indian tribe, native to Oklahoma, we decided to give Carl Boroman a shot. Google had no love for Mr. Boroman.

It was getting late, and we were getting ready to assume that “Aces” was a city in Iowa on the Skunk river and Carl Boroman must be the name of the New York Times’ Crossword/Funny Pages section editor, when my phone’s internet connection came back to life and revealed the city of “Ames”.

That changed “Carl” to “Marl” and the puzzle was done

But I just could help but wonder who this “Marl Boroman” was, so I decided to Google him.

“Did you mean: MarlBoro Man” came the reply.

Marlboro Man – leader of the pack.

I’ve been in Utah too long.

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