> Just search for the headline on google, and click through that way. No registration.

No, that's not guaranteed to work. It's a cookie issue.

I have have never registered at nytimes and have seldom been able to read its articles, no matter how I approach the site. Until a few experiments today, that is.

I reject all cookies by default. NYTimes confronts me with the registration page when I have cookies disabled. I discovered today that if I go ahead and allow cookies from www.nytimes.com, I can read the article without registering. Allowing for session does the trick; don't store the cookie indefinitely. And accepting cookies from wt.o.nytimes.com and up.nytimes.com is not necessary to read the article.