I can do a Saturday crossword in five minutes flat, but winning back the love of my life after she told me she never wanted to speak to me again? Now that’s a puzzle I don’t know if even I can tackle.

If any of you crossword fanatics remember the legendary multi-layer themeless back from May 26, 2006, and what a pain that puzzle was to solve, well, winning Charlene back makes that crossword puzzle look like a god-damned word search on the back of a paper kids menu at the Original Pancake House.

I mean, wow! She is one tough nut to crack. I miss her so much.

I’ve been going over the last 20 years like a broken record, trying to figure out what went wrong, but I can’t just undo the mistakes I’ve made. A puzzle like winning Charlene back isn’t done in pencil. It’s done with a big, fat, permanent pen, and my bottle of white-out is all used up.

I’m looking at the clues and, for the first time, my mind is drawing a blank. “17 Across: What Charlene needs right now, 5 letters.” I’ve got nothing. “4 Down: Charlene’s new phone number, 10 numbers.” Nada. She’s a complicated lady with a lot going on, and I don’t think I have the smarts to wrap my mind around her, even if I can regularly stump cross-word junkies with my puzzles in "The New York Times."

It may take a while, but I’m not giving up on this puzzle anytime soon. And if I can’t win Charlene back, you can bet I’ll do anything it takes to fight for custody of our three children. Winning her back may be a puzzle I can’t solve, but fatherhood? I solved that puzzle years ago when I built my Dad Machine™.