Today's puzzle (answers) is by Peter A. Collins. I'm surprised to see his name after my tepid review of his last effort followed by a scathing tell-all mini-biography. Perhaps I don't wield quite the influence I imagine. My readers will be shocked to hear this. Both of them.
It turns out Mr. Collins bounced so far back today that it can only mean one thing — performance enhancing drugs. For the second time this week, this blog formally calls for a Congressional Hearing. And for the second time this week we get to solve an anagram puzzle after the main crossword is completed.
I have to admit I couldn't finish this one without help. I got stuck in the chewy center, trying to make "gnaws at" fit for far too long. I had forgotten "Embryonic membrane" was AMNION and I thought "Post vacation" would be "at work" or something. Wrong sense. The answer is RESTED. Then not knowing Brian AHERNE or "Political Hostess" Perle Skirvin MESTA really mixed my nuts. Someone will tell me if that's a clever metaphor or not.
While I'm in an admitting mood, here's another confession. That quip about performance enhancing drugs? Not mine. It's from Peter. Turns out he's smart and funny. Only one question, Mr. Smart Guy. Does one really precede an ellipsis with ETC? Sounds like another entry from the Department of Redundancy Department. (That may need a blog category all of its own soon.) Oh, and you can't backup onto CD-ROMS. It's impossible. CD-Rs are recordable CDs. The ROM stands for Read Only Memory and you can't write data onto them.
I'll postpone my discussion of Rex's magazine article so I can talk about a technical matter of interest only to fellow bloggers and people who want to find comments on specific puzzles. Like most active bloggers, I use that wonderful tool Windows Live Writer to create and edit my posts offline, publish them, download them later to re-edit, tweak the photos, and so on. (Yes, it's a Windows-only thing, but it's free.) I use it to keep several posts in the queue at once, waiting for the right moment to add that topic to the blog stream. For example, what percentage of NYT puzzles are pangrams? Any ideas? Coming soon along with more mini-bios of people I don't know anything about. The next subject could be you!
One Live Writer feature I've never used before today, though, is the one that lets me alter the date and time stamp. It hit me that this blog is the perfect use for that feature. I'll postdate this entry to just after midnight on Thursday. That way years from now when archeologists wonder what I thought of Peter's puzzle, they can click on the calendar to the right on the correct day instead of the day before. Duh. Not sure why I never thought of that before. Time warping doesn't require Live Writer. Your web software probably does the same thing. Live Writer just makes it easy for me, and now for my fans. Yes, both of them. I'd go back and fix up the old ones except, you know, lazy, etc...
