1.  Call it the riddle, the sprawling state in which new electoral rules and a speeded-up calendar make the usual dubious predictions doubly dangerous.

2.  Each sprawling state is barely manageable.

3.  In California, it wants to expand sales of a profitable service that supplies long distance within the sprawling state.

4.  In a sprawling state like California with immense media markets, a candidate cannot compete without millions of dollars.

5.  The sprawling state had an ambitious, sophisticated aristocracy, a religion with shamanistic overtones and an innovative art that is only beginning to be understood.

6.  Iowans were attending caucuses across the sprawling state.

7.  Meteorologists reported meanwhile that the annual monsoon has advanced from the southern state of Kerala to Goa and was heading for the sprawling western state of Maharashtra.

8.  Public transport was off the roads in many towns and cities in the sprawling state and trains were left stranded on the tracks, state officials said.

9.  Shiv Sena rules the sprawling western state of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital.

10.  Tens of thousands of police and paramilitary troops will be deployed all over the sprawling state to keep peace during the staggered ballot.