FYI all of you nail polish remover users: nail polish remover is usually acetone. See Brickeye's list. It is highly flammable. So unplug and douse the pilot lights with it, too. The other thing to remember is that all of these highly volatile organic compounds are not good for you to breathe. They can be irritants, or worse. From Wikipedia: "Acetone is believed to exhibit only slight toxicity in normal use, and there is no strong evidence of chronic health effects if basic precautions are followed.[20] At very high vapor concentrations, acetone is irritating and, like many other solvents, may depress the central nervous system. It is also a severe irritant on contact with eyes, and a potential pulmonary aspiration risk." So pull your head out of the dryer for a breath of fresh air, every so often! I agree with Jeremy! Norten's use of a vacuum - even a shop vac, which I assume he used, though he did not specify - was very dangerous. I did a search on his name of his "method" to see if this was a prank that he had perpetuated elsewhere on the web. No hits. He is just dangerously incompetent, not truly evil.

Pen is an ink so consider it to be a stain that will bleed through latex paints and primers. You can either try to remove the pen marks or use a stain killing primer like Kilz or Bin and then touch up. Either way, you will likely need to touch up. I would probably use lacquer thinner to get the pen marks off and then touch up (easier than actually using the stain killing primer). I'm sure you don't have lacquer thinner on hand, so try some rubbing alcohol, Goo Gone, Soft Scrub with Bleach, hairspray, toothpaste, magic eraser, etc...so many things here that people have claimed to have worked. And then touch up.

No jasdip, it erases the ink -- it disappears -- exactly like using an eraser on a pencil. You don't heat it. Just rubbing the end of the pen over the ink creates friction which is enough heat to make the ink disappear. Once erased it stays that way. It behaves just like a pencil and eraser. But the technology is different. Unlike a pencil eraser which rubs off the lead, the ink is still there, but invisible. Cooling the ink will make it come back -- but why would I put the puzzle in the freezer? The benefit for crosswords is that the ink is much darker and easier to see. I always used special soft leaded pencils to do puzzles, but they were still not very dark. If too dark, they became hard to erase. This pen provides the benefit of both dark clarity and erasability.

I'd try more alcohol, although I think the finish is some form of varnish/poly. Even if the alcohol causes the ink to bleed through the finish and into the wood, either scraping or sanding the spot is going to be necessary. Using a card scraper (or spokeshave) will remove the stain/wood without pushing it further into the grain like sanding could. However, mastering the technique for using either the card scraper or spokeshave take a bit of practice---and an investment in card/burnisher(how an edge is created on the card scraper) or the spokesshave. Either will be north of $25+. Sanding can be done with a piece of 100 or 120 grit sandpaper helr in your fingers---making sure to not make a hole/groove) then finish sand with 180 grit. Sandpaper can be found at any hardware/home improvement store or Walmart.