Yes, it was absent in the sscce. That would account for the mojibake. Now that I have it spliced into what used to be my usual html template, it has the necessary mark-up.

I didn't respond to others in the thread whilst using some aspect of what each wrote. It was so clear when poj pointed out that I was dereferencing a string and thinking I still had a string, I wondered how I was so stuck on it. Anyways, I adiosed the dollar sign and voila. So thanks all for comments.

I'm a bit mystified that the td.fill style is not working. Here is the current relevant .css:

table {
  border:0;
  border-collapse:collapse;
}
td {
  font-weight:700;
  text-align:center;
  line-height:200%;
  font-size: 150%;
  border:2px solid black;
  width:2em;
  height:2em
}
td.fill {
  background-color:black;
}
[download]

, which is what Your Mother posted less the style tags. And also this:

.outer {

margin-left : auto;
margin-right : auto;
clear: left;
margin-top: .7em;
margin-bottom: .7em;
max-width:25%;
display:block;

}
[download]

, which encompasses the table. When the spaces would not render as black, I went back and made all the spaces dark at the input stage. While I think it's cute, I'm still fishing for a way to turn the squares completely dark.