Thank you Amy. I come to your blog most evenings to read your take and other solver's perspectives on the puzzle I have just solved and am still excited about (or frustrated by).
At this point I mostly go to the NYT site to marvel at the group dynamics and be at least marginally connected to a community of crossword folks, kinda like hanging out near the cool kids... but the excitement of the puzzle solving is over (for me) by the time the discussion begins.
Phoebe | 10.24.06 - 12:00 pm | #

The light comes on! The reason you solve so fast in Stamford is that you are so eager to rush outside and talk about the puzzle! Imagine if you had to wait for the clock to run out! ;-)
===Dan | 10.24.06 - 12:03 pm | #

Amy:
Said so much better than I ever could. Thanks.

Co
Co | 10.24.06 - 12:14 pm | #

Amen, sister.

I have learned many things over there, so I'm grateful for the forum on the one hand - but on the other, the Forum can be like this little plot of land that old-timers (young and old) police with self-righteous fervency. We could all do with a little less pedantry, a little more generosity (esp toward fellow solvers!).

And the Very first comment I ever got on my blog told me the Very same thing about "spoilers," only he went one further and suggested that since people in other parts of the world didn't get the puzzle til a week or more after its initial publication, I should wait at least that long before "spoiling" the puzzle!! He added that my blog was "just a bad idea." He was quintessential Forum material. His screen name was "grandpamike" - which I now use as a verb meaning "to blindside someone with pointless, baseless derision, usually because one is a congenitally grumpy jackass."
Michael | Homepage | 10.24.06 - 12:40 pm | #

I wholeheartedly agree with your comments -- thank you so much for the posting! (I hope you persevere in your efforts to post them at the NYT forum as well.) I very rarely visit the forum and only do so when I'm in search of a bit of info that I haven't found elsewhere. I don't have a problem with friends chatting online, but the off-topic chatter I repeatedly encountered at the forum was an annoyance and, to this forum outsider, came off as cliquish.

In addition, I think there's a second serious flaw with "Today's Puzzle" -- the interface. The graphic elegance of your blog and the ease with which I can read your daily postings and others' comments (and find in the archives ones that I missed or want to revisit) makes it all that more a joy to get my daily hit of crosswordfiend. The NYT interface is among the most user-unfriendly that I have encountered. "Today's Puzzle" ought to be a place to discuss today's puzzle (imagine that!) without the frustration that results from poorly designed technology that makes it difficult to read and find comments for any particular puzzle.

I would hope that NYT management and Will would take these kinds of issues to heart, given how much income the crossword puzzles currently generate for them both. In my opinion, the forum as it operates now does a disservice to the paper and to Will, reinforcing the charges (whether you agree with them or not) that the NYT is simultaneously elitist and a relic that continues to fail in its efforts to keep up other online media.
kennedyflair | 10.24.06 - 12:42 pm | #

I keep wondering why folks who want the immediate discussion don't just come to this wonderful place (as I do when I don't want to wait) and have that discussion in real time with others who want the same. This IS that other place many forumites long claimed they wanted.

Amy, do you have any notion as to why many folks resist using this blog for all it's worth?
Lee | 10.24.06 - 1:09 pm | #

By the same token, I appreciated it when you shifted to the current format of putting spoilers behind a cut, which is simply not possible with the flat format of the NYT forum software.
Andrew Greene (Rhu/nmHz) | 10.24.06 - 1:12 pm | #

Lee, my hunch is that people who aren't into reading blogs are put off by what they hear in the media about famous blogs, and then when you add the oddness of the word blog, it just all seems like it's not their cup of tea. If they could view a narrowly targeted blog on a subject of interest to them as nothing more than a website about something I like, I think they'd find it a remarkably easy reading habit to adopt.
Orange | Homepage | 10.24.06 - 1:18 pm | #

And thanks for chiming in, Andrew—I'd been wondering if any spoiler-eschewers had actually taken to reading the blog, and I'm glad to hear at least one of you did.
Orange | Homepage | 10.24.06 - 1:19 pm | #

No one's been complaining to me, although my hits are way up lately.
harris | Homepage | 10.24.06 - 1:23 pm | #

Will has weighed in on the debate at the forum:

If there was ever a good reason to have the no-spoiler rule, its time is past. Much of the best discussion of the NY Times crosswords now appears in places other than this forum. That's kind of silly.

If solvers can avoid the blogs that discuss the current day's puzzle until they've finished it, then they can avoid this forum until the appropriate time as well.

Squelching discussion of the puzzle until well after many solvers have done it means many comments are being lost. People have already forgotten the puzzle and moved on with their lives by the time the no-spoiler deadline has passed.

So I say scrap the deadline. It serves little purpose, and it hurts the forum.

He's right, of course. Whether his opinion will actually hold sway is still up in the air—the squelchers have held fast to their position for years.
Orange | Homepage | 10.24.06 - 6:52 pm | #

I have no problem scrapping the spoiler rule - I do the puzzle as soon as I come online in the morning, anyway. But I don't think that's the only - or even the primary - reason that the atmosphere over there has changed. It will be interesting to see if things shift if the spoiler rule is abandoned.

Of course, I can't get in right now anyway and haven't been able to all afternoon, so...

Jenni
Jenni | Homepage | 10.24.06 - 7:23 pm | #

Hey, Amy, where's your post about the Wednesday puzzle? I need to whine about my poor showing. If you really wanted people to be able to post spoilers, you would thoughtfully start a post *before* the puzzle was up.
mnemonica | 10.24.06 - 9:21 pm | #

If the no-spoiler rule is scrapped, what would happen to the diary of a crossword fiend? Would you post on the forum instead?
Will J. | 10.24.06 - 9:35 pm | #

Sorry, Monica—my husband was getting me hooked on Heroes, and then I did the Sun puzzle. I'll get right on that...

Will, I plan to keep my blog going the way it's been. I like the community that's developed over here, and I enjoy writing. For whatever reason, I have umpteen technical problems involving the interface with all things NYT, one of which is that I can't get long posts to transmit. Here, I can write as much or as little as I want; I can maintain a set of links; I don't have to deal with hours of off-topic meanderings; people can compare their solving times to mine; I can access my past posts easily; solvers who are stuck six weeks later (in syndication) can Google up some help here; I can hold the occasional contest; and it's a benevolent dictatorship of one, which suits me fine. That said, I'd probably post at the forum more often if there were no embargo on specifics.
Orange | Homepage | 10.24.06 - 9:50 pm | #