*Also including whatever other newspapers get their puzzles from the same place–presumably most or all Tribune-owned papers.
First off, I have to point out that I don’t do the puzzle every day, and also the ones I do work on aren’t necessarily in the order of publication, so I can’t say exactly when I noticed the trend. But here are some examples from Thursday, June 12. I’m leaving out the clue numbers to avoid giving away too much of the actual layout of the puzzle in question.
Chardonnay, e.g. (WHITE WINE).
Help out. (ASSIST)
Pride ____ before a fall. (GOETH – like any of you don’t know this.)
Tel-Aviv’s land. (ISR)
Holy Moses! (WOW)
Michigan’s _____ Peninsula. (I’m not going to insult my fellow Dopers by reporting the answer.)
This puzzle also happened to have a famous-golfers theme, but the names were so well known that you didn’t need to be a player or fan to know them. I’d say the change seems to have occurred around the beginning of this month, which leads me to wonder if there’s been a change of staff here, or if the regular crossword writer is on leave. Certain easy answers seem to be cropping up with discouraging frequency; for example this makes twice the answer “EASY A” has come up for “No-brainer course” or a similar clue. AT SEA appeared in another puzzle as well.
Until recently, I’ve usually found that the daily puzzles, although much smaller, seemed to be generally tougher on a per-clue basis than the huge Sunday puzzles. Typically, I would complete about 50% of a daily puzzle before going on to something else, only later revisiting it, if at all; now, however, I’ve been breezing through them at one sitting.
You need to have at least a few easy clues in a puzzle, or you’d never be able to get started. And I have to point out that your last example, assuming it’s 5 letters, has at least two valid answers.
Might I ask how you would have clued those answers?
I don’t know about the LA Times puzzle, but the NY Times puzzle has different degrees of difficulty depending upon the day of the week it is published. Mondays are very easy, Saturdays are hardest. Sundays are supposed to be clued at about a Thursday difficulty, but they are larger.
Certain words do come up a lot in puzzles because they have frequently-used vowels and consonants that make them easy for constructors to put in puzzles. This is called “crosswordese”. That’s the reason why you often see, for example, “Nick and Nora’s dog” as a clue in puzzles (the answer is ASTA.) Crosswordese is often annoying for new solvers because it can be quite obscure. On the other hand, once you find out the name of the dog, for example, it’s quite easy to plug that in when you see the clue again.
There’s a blog for the NY Times puzzle called Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle. Rex will let you know if he thinks the puzzle that day was easy or hard for a Sunday (or whatever). Don’t read it before you’ve attempted the puzzle, or the answers will be spoiled, of course!
(Well, would you look at that? Today, Rex has a guest writer who happens to blog about the LA Times puzzle. Here is the entry from June 12. (WARNING: Spoiler for three-week-old puzzle!) The LA Times puzzle apparently gets harder as the week goes on as well. That puzzle was easy because it was from a Tuesday. Try puzzles from later in the week for a better challenge!)
Maybe “goeth.” But maybe not. The quote is “Pride goeth before destruction, a haughty spirit before the fall.” You decide whether “goeth” is what comes before “the fall.”