“THE SPIRAL PUZZLE IS ONLINE,” the note helpfully says at the bottom of the Sunday NYT crossword.

Yeah, but you have to pay for it.

I realize that the NYT Sunday Magazine editors would argue that you’re still getting two puzzles in the magazine each week: the crossword and KenKen. But for word puzzlers like myself, KenKen is no substitution for the acrostic, cryptic crossword, diagramless and other letter-based games I looked forward to each week.

By putting the second puzzle in the paid premium package, the NYT is insulting all the loyal puzzlers who have already paid up to $6 for the Sunday paper. So it’s not like I’m bemoaning once-free content that is now paid; this was content that I did pay for, and now I’m being asked to pay for it twice.

This may not have been Will Shortz’s idea, but he’s going to be getting the heat for it. The ad execs at the magazine have to see the second puzzle as a revenue generator, not a space sucker; people BUY the magazine for it, and they SEE the ads that run with it.

And why was the acrostic free last week? Is the Spiral puzzle a paid enigma because Shortz himself designed it? Or is it just a test to see how many people will download a free puzzle vs. a paid one? I think I know the answer to that question.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @crosswordkathy

New York Times, June 28

The NYT puzzle today was a veritable spice rack: dill, ginger, jasmine, oregano, pepper, fennel, rosemary and thyme. Although I guess some of those might qualify as herbs.

Nonetheless, these “secret ingredients” were hidden in the circled letters of each theme answer: PRINCETON SEMINARY (101 Across, “New Jersey ecumenical institution”) and JAMES A. MICHENER (17 down, “‘The World Is My Home,” memoirist, 1991″). I wonder how much extra constructor Barry C. Silk got for including MANAGING EDITOR (52 down, “Deadline maker”).

I liked how Silk got TIMOTHY Q MOUSE (124 Across, “Tiny friend of Dumbo”) to cross with SQ MI (119 Down, “640 acres: Abbr.”); getting a Q without a U going both ways is quite a feat, I’d imagine.

A question for William Safire would be whether EMAILS (57 Across, “Computer letters”) is the correct plural of e-mail, since “mails” is not a word. But I liked OVERAWE at 22 Across; the clue, “Cow,” had me in a bovine state of mind until the very last letters were filled in.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @crosswordkathy.

New York Times, June 21

I hate to say it, but this is almost my least favorite kind of puzzle. There are no plays on words and no clever theme to uncover, really, because the cleverness is kind of self-contained in the smug clues.

“Famous Last Words” gives you some amusing (purported) final thoughts — “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” (1- and 13 Across) — but no deeper connection between any of the answers. (The wallpaper guy was OSCAR WILDE.)

Of course GROUCHO MARX is always funny (27 Across, “Die, my dear? Why, that’s the last thing I’ll do!”) and emperors like CALIGULA are always imperious (46 Down, “I live!”). And live he does, incidentally, through at least one movie and a song by Macy Gray that bear his name.

I’ll admit to be temporarily tricked by “Eva is leaving” (48 Down), which I initially filled in as EVA GABOR before I realized it was EVA PERON. Somehow, I think my first answer might have been appropriate as well.

I’m also going to take issue with 34 Down, “It has 10 branches: Abbr.” Having grown up in California, I’ve never heard the University of California system referred to as UCAL, as the answer would have you believe. Cal is UC Berkeley; the rest of the system is referred to as the UC system. And branches? It’s not a bank. Campuses would be more accurate.

For the record, my least favorite type of puzzle is the long quote that goes across four or five rows of the grid. You are stuck with clues like, “Quote, part 4,” which are not only completely useless but fail to provide the layered challenge of the best puzzles. Oh well. Now watch — that’s going to be the theme next week, just to spite me.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @crosswordkathy

Merl Reagle, June 21

I thought at first that this would be a typical doubled-letter kind of theme, with answers like BOOKKEEPER and the like.

But it turned out to be much more clever than that — although why Merl ran this AFTER basketball season ended is a little curious. Maybe he thought the Lakers would need more than five games to beat the Magic.

The theme answers are names of NBA teams: MAGIC WIZARD (17 Across, “Merlin”) is a little redundant, but it incorporates the names of the Orlando team (the Magic) and the Washington team (the Wizards). Same with SUN KING (20 Across, “Louis XIV’s nickname”), for the Phoenix and Sacramento teams; CELTIC WARRIOR (102 Across, “Fifth century tough guy), for Boston and Golden State; and, in an impressive long one, SUPERSONIC TRAILBLAZER (60 Across, “Chuck Yeager?”), for Seattle and Portland.

However, the Seattle Supersonics don’t actually exist anymore; they moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder.

Another quirk that got me curious was that, at least in my version of the puzzle in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the theme clues were all bolded. Usually just a question mark at the end of the clue, or the fact that the answer is long, is enough to indicate the answer is part of the theme. Maybe since some of them were so short (SUN KING, for example), Merl felt like he needed to emphasize they were part of the theme.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @crosswordkathy

New York Times, June 14

After looking at the “D-Plus” title, it wasn’t hard to figure out what the trick to this puzzle would be — add a “D” to a common phrase or name and get a clever, funny answer. But we’ll get back to that in a moment.

More importantly, what did everyone think of the NYT Magazine’s new slimmer, trimmer design? Apparently the KenKen puzzle is going to be a staple from now on, and it’s easy to see why — it’s compact and fits nicely below the crossword, which now takes up the majority of a page. (I just feel like I mastered Sudoku … suppose I will have to give KenKen a shot.)

So what will that mean for the acrostic? I noticed the cryptic crossword a couple of pages back … are they going to alternate puzzle types on a different page each week? Guess we’ll have to see.

Anyway, back to today’s puzzle. The “D-Plus” theme meant that the longer clues were common phrases tweaked by the addition of a “D.” So “Amityville Horror,” the classic horror film from the 1970s, becomes AMITYVILLE HOARDER in 66 Across, “Greediest person in a Long Island locality?” “Snow White” becomes SNOW DWIGHT to answer 116 Across, “Bamboozle Eisenhower?” And “bowler hat” becomes BOULDER HAT for 114 Across, “Certain Colorado headgear.”

One little pet peeve from 49 Across, “Stat for Gooden or Maddux.” Seriously, Will, can’t you use any more recent MLB pitchers? It’s 2009. Really.

Comments or questions? Twitter me @crosswordkathy