Here, have some intellectual and political cotton candy.

Published: February 2, 2004

WASHINGTON

It will be a field day for conspiracy theorists: President Bush and Senator John Kerry are not only graduates of Yale but also fellow members of the university's most elitist secret society, Skull and Bones. So if Mr. Kerry becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, the 2004 campaign will represent the first skull-to-skull match-up of Bonesmen in history.

Does this mean anything at all?

Well, aside from an opportunity to revisit all the weird, unsubstantiated but widely told stories about Skull and Bones initiation rites — like nude wrestling or having to recite one's sexual history while lying in a coffin — it suggests that the old East Coast blue-blood establishment may not be as washed up as people imagine.

Second, it raises tantalizing questions: Did Mr. Kerry, class of '66, and Mr. Bush, class of '68, know each other at Yale? More to the point, did they ever participate together in a Skull and Bones rite in the club's windowless crypt?

The answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second question is no, at least not as far as anyone knows or admits.

"Rest assured, there are no pictures of them dancing together naked," said David Wade, Mr. Kerry's spokesman.

The two crossed paths at Yale, where Mr. Kerry was the ambitious president of the Yale Political Union and Mr. Bush was the somewhat less ambitious president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, otherwise known as the Animal House.