  We introduce a new smearing transformation, the hypercubic (HYP) fat link.
The hypercubic fat link mixes gauge links within hypercubes attached to the
original link only. Using quenched lattices at beta = 5.7 and 6.0 we show that
HYP fat links improve flavor symmetry by an order of magnitude relative to the
thin link staggered action. The static potential measured on HYP smeared
lattices agrees with the thin link potential at distances r/a >= 2 and has
greatly reduced statistical errors. These quenched results will be used in
forthcoming dynamical simulations of HYP staggered fermions.
