Remember that there are legions of less talented solvers out there who seek to complete a daily puzzle without tearing out their hair in frustration.
There's nothing wrong with loving challenging puzzles as you do, but don't overlook the fact that "high quality" can be found in the puzzles you're disdaining. People who regard "pig's digs" as a helpful toehold are not to be scorned. And of course you realize it's more difficult to create a puzzle with easy, everyday entries than it is to make an esoteric one.
You're taking an expert solver's point of view, as you've every right to do. But the editors of the simpler puzzles have the expertise to know how to please their particular audiences, and they do it while still maintaining "high quality," so I think it's unfair to deplore them.

--Nancy
nanschus | 12.29.06 - 2:26 pm | #

"Deplore?" You should re-read the entry ... and choose your language more carefully.

Lots and lots of people watch "Two and Half Men," but no one in his right mind is going to argue that it's a higher quality show than, say, "The Office." I'm just sayin'... Not sure how you're defining "high quality," or what's "high quality" about recycling the same, tired clue. Presumably one could clue the answer (STY) in a fresh or funny way while still maintaining a low level of difficulty.

Michael
Michael | Homepage | 12.29.06 - 4:08 pm | #

Next time a compiler gets stymied on STY, let me nominate:

Son of DA's bedroom
DA | Homepage | 12.29.06 - 5:02 pm | #

I'll bet if we put our creative heads together we can come up with 100 fun clues for STY in one week. I'll start.

[House of the rising stench]
Lee | 12.29.06 - 8:54 pm | #

I'll play:

[Babe's abode]
[Pen for Wilbur]
[Spot for some mud slinging, say]
[Frat house, typically]
[Petunia's pen]
[Boaring locale?]

Fwiw, my fave from the database is [Swine cooler?] (RC Young's NYT on 10/19/06)
pauer | 12.29.06 - 9:11 pm | #

Now we're cooking!

[Soapless pad?]
Lee | 12.29.06 - 9:58 pm | #

[Habitat for inhumanity]
[Crass pad]
[Smelling dwelling]
[Porcine palace]
[Pork place]
[Helter skelter shelter]
Lee | 12.29.06 - 10:06 pm | #

There is a difference between Petergordonisms, which I define as overcomplicated or obscure clues for ordinary fill, and new or original fair clues. Shortz only rarely uses Petergordonisms. His ____ Logan for LARA after Friday's 1814 Byron Poem are good examples of new but nonobjectionable clues for old standby LARA.
barrywep | 12.29.06 - 10:32 pm | #

Interesting topic. My impression, like yours, is that the NY Sun has an extremely high percentage of "fresh" clues, while the NYT is not quite so high, and all the others I do somewhat lower -- except for the Chronicle of Higher education, where there's often a new academic slant to the clues, so I guessed its percentage of new clues would also be pretty high. I wondered how measurable the difference is, so I decided to check my puzzle database to see. For the year 2006 as of yesterday (not quite complete, but pretty close), this is how the numbers came out:

NY Sun averaged 80% new clues (6% new entries)
Chronicle of Higher education: 76% new clues (6% new entries)
NY Times: 68% new clues (7% new entries)
United Press Syndicate: 65% new clues (4% new entries)
USA Today: 64% new clues (4% new entries)
Wall Street Journal: 63% new clues (7% new entries)
CrosSynergy: 58% new clues (5% new entries)
LA Times: 54% new clues (5% new entries)

I've done no rigorous analysis, but from scanning the results it seems clear there are spikes of higher percentages of both new entries and clues for the harder puzzles. No surprise there -- it seems much easier to me to come up with new hard clues than new (& non-strained) easy clues. Sure, you can, but is it worth the effort? Most casual solvers, I think, tend to prefer easier puzzles and do like to have several toeholds of sure-fire correct answers they can rely on in a puzzle. They're also exposed to far fewer puzzles and therefore see far less duplication than those of us oddballs who solve several puzzles a day.

[Methodology, disclaimers, and weasel words: I counted a clue as "new" if it had not been used for that entry in any puzzle in the database prior to the puzzle publication date. I've got approx. 5300 puzzles from before Jan 1, 2006, and approx. 2000 from the year 2006. I made no attempt to normalize differences due to stylistic variations, so for example a clue containing the string "co-star" counts as different from one containing "costar" even if the rest of the clue strings are identical. Similarly clues that are essentially the same but differ only in word order or punctuation will count as different even when any reasonable human would say they were "the same". And of course the computer can make no judgment on the quality of the unique clues -- like unique entries I think they may fall in the spectrum anywhere from excellent to abysmal, and the exact same clue may be placed at opposite ends of the spectrum by two reasonable people who simply have different tastes. So the whole exercise may be considered pointless, but I like playing with numbers, so there they are.]
kmtracey | 12.30.06 - 6:29 pm | #