How crossword puzzles celebrated the Bicentennial

My research into the comics of the Bicentennial has taken a few odd turns lately. You can expect to read more about them soon. Until then, though, here's something else that popped up while I was looking for something else: an amazing full-page Bicentennial-themed crossword from the Lakeland Ledger that ran on July 4, 1976:

 

Can't quite make out the detail in that? Well, neither can I (and I haven't been able to get a great scan of the entire page), but here's a slice that shows off some of the clues:

This may not be comics exactly, but I like how the puzzle took the theme of the day, really ran with it, and turned it into something visual.

This probably appeared in a lot of papers around the time of the Bicentennial, and I'm sure there were other puzzles that used 1776 as its theme throughout the year. I may try to dig more of those up. For now, though, this is a nice piece of history that I imagine few have seen since it first appeared nearly 30 years ago.