WASHINGTON INSIGHT

TOP JUDGE (9 SPACES): The writer of a letter to the editor of the Washington Post clearly knew his stuff: “I have derived much enjoyment from working your quote-acrostic puzzles in the Saturday paper for a number of years and have been impressed with the accuracy of your definitions.” But, he wrote, “the clue was ‘Imperial Valley city’; when worked out the answer was ‘El Cerrito.’ El Cerrito, however, is a city in the East Bay area of Northern California, north of Berkeley. I suspect you have confused it with El Centro, which is a city in the Imperial Valley--but has only eight letters in its name as opposed to nine.” . . . The writer? “William H. Rehnquist.” On weekdays, he is known as the chief justice of the United States.