EW YORK - So it comes down to that familiar question: What did Hillary Rodham Clinton know and when did she know it?
The mystery this time isn't about Whitewater, Travelgate, or cattle futures. It's about the quiz she took Wednesday night on ''The Late Show with David Letterman.''
In the course of a wildly successful appearance - she laughed, cracked jokes, seemed relaxed, and in short did everything a politician needs to do on a late-night television talk show - Clinton aced a quiz from Letterman to gauge her knowledge of New York arcana.
A major point working against Clinton in her campaign to become New York's junior senator is that she is viewed by some as a carpetbagger because she has never lived here before. As Letterman, perhaps only half-jokingly, put it before administering the quiz, her score ''could make or break the entire campaign.''
Clinton scored a perfect five out of five. But now, it turns out, she was given - as her campaign spokesman, Howard Wolfson, acknowledged - ''a peek'' at the questions ahead of time.
Wolfson insists she was not given the answers. But, in this age of cellular phones and the Internet, is this distinction much more than a semantic one?
The issue hardly amounts to Watergate. It's not even close to Charles Van Doren and the ''$64,000 Question'' fraud. Still, the question remains: Did Hillary cheat?
Rob Burnett, Letterman's executive producer, laughed when the subject came up in a phone interview yesterday. ''Asking me this question,'' he said, ''is like asking the World Wrestling Federation, `Do you fake blood?'
''You know, we are not `Meet the Press' over here,'' he continued. ''All we're trying to do is get a few laughs.''
Still, Burnett dutifully retraced the chronology. ''The idea of the quiz was Dave's idea. It came up very late in the day.''
Clinton did not know there would be a quiz, Burnett and Wolfson said, until she entered the Ed Sullivan Theater.
''About 15 minutes before air, we let her know that we would give her a quiz about New York,'' Burnett said.
Neither he nor Wolfson would delve into how close a ''peek'' Clinton was given. However, they both insisted she knew the answers on her own.
''My understanding is that, because of the obvious circumstances - accused of being an `outsider' and all that - she's extremely well-briefed,'' said Burnett.
Or, as one of Clinton's aides, who asked not to be identified, put it, ''We've long assumed, at some point, someone would ask her what the state bird is.''
Letterman tested Clinton on New York's state bird (the bluebird), state tree (sugar maple), highest mountain range (Adirondacks), Great Lakes borders (Ontario and Erie), number of counties (62), and, finally, the New Yorker known with equal measures of fear and reverence as ''The Big Guy'' (why, Letterman, of course).
Spokesmen for New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Clinton's likely Republican opponent in the Senate race, did not return phone calls seeking comments on Clinton's performance.
Her appearance certainly had good results for everyone else involved. Overnight reports indicate the program earned a 9.0 rating and a 20 share in the New York City area - three times the audience Letterman lures on average.
Nationwide, figures were only slightly lower - an 8.6 rating, about 21/2 times more than its usual rating and nearly double Jay Leno's draw on NBC's ''Tonight Show.''
Burnett said Clinton agreed, after the show, to come back for another appearance. Giuliani, who has been on the program 16 times since 1994, will no doubt come on again, too, Burnett added, though no dates have been set.
