The new Times Puzzles platform came into effect on Wednesday 3rd September. This thread is for TfTT contributors wishing to discuss the changes rather than having comments on the subject scattered throughout the puzzle blogs.
This does not affect the Crossword Club at the moment, but we have been told that will follow in due course.
The first effect I noticed was that the option to print puzzles appeared to have been removed, but Prof Paul has found the Print option on the Cogwheel icon. It’s item 6 of 7 and not visible on my screen without scrolling down.
“This does not affect the Crossword Club at the moment, but we have been told that will follow in due course.”
>?!<
If I can't print the puzzles via my subscription, guess I'll just drop it.
Will miss y'all, of course.
I’m with you on that one. And I’ll add, EASILY print them, which is not always the case, as we know.
Email it to yourself. Then you can print it perfectly.
Fieric
Thanks jacktt. I think you can still print: top right, thing that looks like a cog wheel: click and at very bottom is print button.
I can’t really see why they had to change the set up, it seemed to work fine before. I will have to get used to the skipping over squares that already have a letter in it (as happens in crossword club). I’m sure I’m just stuck in my ways….
I think you can turn that off. Also in cog wheel.
You can but it’s less convenient.
You only have to do it once. The setting is remembered. As is the setting for Show Word Breaks, which previously wasn’t remembered from one visit to the next, so that is an improvement.
Yes, an improvement.
How do you do that permanently , I have to reset it each time
Many thanks Paul. I had already looked there, but it’s item 6 of 7 listed there and so far down I have to scroll down to see it. This needs to be on the main screen, or at least at the very top of the cogwheel list.
Oh, so a false alarm…?! I was really alarmed!
Well, I’m still glad I spoke out to The Times!
I was cross to. My husband kindly prints my puzzle as it’s his printer! He says it takes longer but it’s doable! Why change things that work?
I agree. It worked well, before this change.
Dare I suggest the following:
1) Click on the cog wheel
2) Select ‘Restart tour’
3) Read carefully
4) /panic
Good tips, thanks Jalna and SportsWx
I for one welcome the changes, not least that solving on my phone, I can now find out who the setter of a QC is. It’s a minor shame you have to go through the cogwheel menu to find it rather than have it on the main view, but it is there.
Still can’t see the setter on the 15×15 on the web app though, that is a shame.
We have never been told the identity of the 15×15 setter – it’s a quirk of the QC that one knows the setter for that puzzle. So the new format hasn’t changed anything on that front.
I hadn’t clocked the setter info! These enhancement (remembering settings, setter name, crisper font) are excellent for me!
Maybe I shall redo the tour…
Very minor ones…on the phone it was handy having the tools, such as list and check word, at same level as thumb for quick access. Also preferred the bright green for correct cells. Overall like the new look.
One step forward, two steps back. Why spoil something just because you can?
I’m not a fan of the change but we get used to it (because we have to). Usually it’s justified by either the old site not being friendly for mobile phones and/or maintenance is difficult and costly. Bear in mind that the internet / operating systems / programming languages, which The Times has no control over are updating around it, so it is forced by its surroundings to update. Or maybe it’s just a vanity project!
Wholeheartedly agree. Change for the sake of change is an unwelcome affliction. I wonder how many readers moaned about the old format, which, particularly in respect of Killer Sudokus, was infinitely preferable and vastly more user-friendly.
Generally it all seems to be as before – maybe a few things moved around but still there.
Which means it’s a shame they didn’t fix the issue where, on a desktop, to get to the bottom clues in a crossword you have to scroll the page down which means half the puzzle disappears off the top of the page. Thus no longer able to see the clock or the beginnings of any longer Down clues.
Had an issue where when cursoring up and down the whole page judders up/down which is very distracting.
I don’t particularly like the font for letters put in the grid – they aren’t centred in the square, just sitting at the bottom of it – which is very unbalanced. By comparison, the Cryptic Quintagram has recently changed to a nice bold Arial which is great for my ageing eyesight.
Just wait ’til you try the new look sudoku!
I had some minor quibbles with the new Xword but the sudoko is dreadful. After trying one I found it so off-putting that I didn’t do any more.
The Killer Sudoku is now pretty unusable too. A real shame.
Horrendous. I use a Windows laptop with a mouse to solve, and these changes are ruinous for that format. Across and down clues scroll independently, so you don’t know where you are, and lining up clues with the grid is an absolute pain; the space bar no longer erases letters, so you have to use the smaller and less accessible backspace key; the letters aren’t centred in the grid; the italics for solved clues are irritating. All of this has, as I understand it, been done to make life easier for users of mobile devices. However, for a laptop solver it’s a world of distraction and annoyance.
It should be simple to have separate style sheets for mobile and full screen surely?
Could be, xwn. The problems seem to be an IOS/Android v. Windows thing, with Windows taking the hit for improvements to the other formats. I don’t think any of the Times techies tried out the new format on a Windows laptop or desktop. Maybe they will at some point.
“Simple” “style sheets” lol
Across and down have always scrolled separately. An annoyance that I was hoping they would fix this go around.
Have looked at sudoku and QC. Using android.
Sudoku:. The pencil/ pen option is available without extra clicks.
However, the grid is now smaller. Being able to enlarge the grid and scroll is of limited use for sudoku where one needs to see the whole grid. I find the dark grey background for given numbers very off-putting.
If the cogwheel and text size icons were moved down to the others, that would allow a larger grid. Options to alter the background grey would be welcomed. 3/10
The QC grid does seem improved. The better spacing of keyboard letters is definitely welcome, as is the availability of the setter’s name. The poor placement of letters in squares looks amateurish. I also preferred the old font. 7/10
For what it’s worth, I just found increasing the size of the text makes it look better.
But the text size slider does not work on my android phone. Killer Sudoku pretty much unusable now on an android phone.
It makes it very much easier if like me you are solving on a smart phone (Android Pixel 8 btw) The sizing is so much better than before. No more making text too small to read so that you can see the bottom of the grid 👍🙏
at first I thought that when the clue was italicized it meant that it was correct. it doesn’t , it just means that one has filled in the blanks right or wrong
What happened to that new Ponder crossword?
It appeared a bit later than they said, but it does exist. It’s not in the crossword club though. https://www.thetimes.com/puzzles/crossword
Yes, it’s under Puzzles on the newspaper site. The button to it is the last on the list of daily crosswords on the right so you may have to use the right-arrow button just above them to expose it.
I don’t know whether it’s supposed to be printable, but if so, it doesn’t work. Following the procedures learnt this morning for the other puzzles (Cogwheel, scroll down, Print) it brings up two pages, blank but for the Times logo and date, and the heading at the top of the web-page is ‘Jumbo Crossword’!
Oh cool, thanks! Might try it a bit later. Looks full of modern references.
Today’s ponder is on https://www.thetimes.com/puzzles/crossword/times-ponder-no-1-pg-tips-8mtbqx3sn
Can anyone tell me what the difference between the Times Puzzles app and the Crossword Club is? I have an app subscription but see references to the Club all the time – thanks
The crossword club is on the Times app. The Times app has the puzzles as usual. The crossword club is an extra section. If you solve crosswords here you can get points and get on leader boards. It also has a crossword archive.
On the newspaper site the Crossword Club button is on the left of the daily crossword buttons.
Thank you both-J
I gave up using the puzzle app three years ago. Submission of prize solutions seems to be unreliable so switched to the crossword club. Empirical evidence suggests the latter is more reliable.
I’m not convinced that the kiddyhackers the Times employs to write those apps know what they are doing.
Since no-one has moaned about the Killer Sudoku yet…
The up and down arrow keys don’t just move the cursor around the grid. They also scroll the page. If I move the cursor from the top of the grid to the bottom by repeatedly pressing the down arrow key, the whole grid scrolls off the top of the screen.
So I used my trackpad to move the cursor instead but this is very laggy. I click, I wait for the cursor to move, I enter a number. If I don’t wait the number goes into the wrong square. Solving the puzzle has become a chore.
Both of these are trivial fixes. (The latter by updating the cursor’s position before the laggy rendering happens.) I get the impression that this new app hasn’t received even cursory testing on a laptop or desktop.
Interesting: I agree about the up and down keys, but I always use the trackpad anyway; and I’m not getting the lag you mention – it’s an immediate cursor move and response to the click. I’m on a macbook (this response is more for the testers’ info than a reply to you, chabudno!)
More info! I tried it again. There is something weird happening. If I tap to select a square there is a lag. If I click to select there isn’t. Yet tapping to move the cursor isn’t laggy in, for example, text boxes. This might be related to the “double-tap to drag” behaviour of the trackpad, but I don’t know why it’s a problem only in some places.
I always navigate with the arrow keys and use the number keys for Sudoku and Killer, while the mouse pointer hovers over the “notes” button for easy toggling… These scrolling issues make both puzzles totally unusable…
The killer shapes are also too faint (and are pretty important…) And the “notes” numbers are too close to those faint shapes…
Hopefully trivial fixes, but it would be nice to have the option to return to the old format for a while…
How did this get past testing? Assuming it was tested… 🙁
I was going to raise the same complaint about the arrow keys, other than that I like it.
There’s a feedback option under the cogwheel, make sure you report the complaint there as well.
Sudoku: is there a key to toggle the pencil/pen? Really annoying to have it to the top right.
Also I hate the way the “backspace” button flashes when you enter text. And also hate the fact that check and reveal are in the same dropdown.
The colours: bad for my neuro brain.
My icon is under the sudoku – I just press it. It turns colour when pencil mode is on.
Another 500 error. x2
Is the tftt site very busy today or is there a gremlin about?
Yes, I have the icon, but a keyboard shortcut would be a lot quicker
The colours are awful – they are very distracting and totally pointless. I find my solve times are now 50% longer than before because of this.
Too many changes going on, pretty much all making things much worse.
Not long before I give up and find another source of puzzle for entertainment 🙁
Looking at the comments today, it seems there are some improvements but more than a few niggles. Haven’t yet tried on windows – but will do so.
Perhaps the Times should consider releasing beta / early release testing versions of app updates in future so these problems can be sorted before the full release? Microsoft, Firefox et al do this.
I would be willing to test apps ( android and windows) as I am sure others would.
Hope the puzzles editor / IT developers drop by later.
Absolutely agree, great idea (beta)
I exchanged brief emails with Mick H (Puzzles Editor) this morning and mentioned that we have this thread for feedback.
On my windows 11/firefox the sudokus are fine. I can also block trackers without problems and can change the styling with ease. I use a trackpad and touch sensitive screen.
It doesn’t save part completed puzzles except (I assume) on the browser – and my cookies get deleted everytime I close this. Any changes I make on the web are not shown if I then log in to the app on the phone.
Now the ability to use multiple devices in that way would be brilliant – especially for tricky all-day crosswords. Start off at home – then if I should get a pdm to then use the phone app.
You can’t skip the first letter of an answer if it is already there, even when the skip feature is enabled.
Seems it sometimes works. Which is worst of both worlds, ofc.
I don’t see anyone else having this problem, so maybe it’s just me, but I can’t see the whole grid – the bottom line is missing – and I already have it on the smallest size it permits. Similarly I can scroll down as far as 18 down, but not any further for the down clues. There was nothing wrong with the setup as it was, certainly for someone using a laptop. Unless this can be remedied, I’ll have to give up my favourite pastime. And what has happened to the ‘show word breaks’ option?
Someone says we have to live it with it. But why? Why can’t we say we’d rather have the old format back or at least the option to have the old format if we wish?
I managed to switch ‘Show Word Breaks’ on for the QC this morning. It was under the Cogwheel settings option.
If it’s like any of the other much hated IT releases I’ve experienced across various websites, we have to live with it because most of the past year has been spent developing it and it’s too late now to do a major redevelopment. It’s not broken enough to back out and there will be a business case providing financial/strategic reasons for it.
Yikes! Can only just about see the text and tiny QC grid on Times iPad app. I will have to get stronger glasses 🤓. Tried making text and grid larger but then you can’t see the whole grid… Also, you can’t tap on the grid to highlight the clue. You can only tap on the clue to highlight the grid. Oh dear
I agree. Far too big a proportion of iPad screen taken up by clues. Old design was fine.
I’m already considering cancelling my Times subscription, and if they screw up the Club site that will be the tipping point.
Shame they didn’t include adding the setter’s name to the QC in the app
Think you can see it in settings?
It can be found via puzzle info button in cogwheel ⚙️
Gave the new Ponder a go and enjoyed it as a change of pace. Not sure if I’ll be a regular but I found it miles better than similar NY Times ones.
Me too. I went in determined not to enjoy it but I actually did. Plus it didn’t take anywhere near the time I expected it to even with realising halfway through that the multiword answers were not indicated.
Not having tried the NYTimes I came to this with fresh eyes. Allowing for textspeak and “popular culture” it’s not too terrifying, but I’m not sure I’ll make it a regular. I already don’t do the concise because the cryptic element is missing. The * featured clues were rather more fun, though I presume the * will mean different things in future puzzles. Not recommended for blogging!
I’ve been having problems with the website since the weekend. On Sunday when I went to access the website I found I needed to log in. On doing so I found that my username (I think they call it ‘Profile Name’) had been changed from the one I’ve been using ever since I first subscribed, to become the first part of my email address (up to the ‘@’ sign), with no way of changing it. So at the moment I’m stuck with a username that I don’t want. Has anyone else been affected by this ? I’m currently in an email exchange with customer service to get them to look into it.
Yes, me – it won’t let me update my username.
Me too
A classic example of improving things worse. The only positives so far are that the problem of the puzzle jumping to a different page when entering a letter did not occur today and the timer actually stopped when I completed the puzzle. Scrolling of the across and down clues separately is awful.
Verschlimmbesserung!
I’ve just tried to do the sudoku on my tablet. It’s a visual mess, the grey squares are incredibly distracting, and the grid is too small. It’s too hard to see where to put numbers and as others have said, if you expand the grid, you lose a lot of the lines. Talk about trying to justify your existence! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
MH – please get rid of the pre-coloured squares. Or at least give us the choice to deselect them.
On edit: I’ve just tried again and have had to abandon it, as it has made me feel very headachy and queasy – it’s almost like being travel sick. A great shame, as I enjoy the sudokos, but until this is cleared up, I won’t physically be able to do them. Mentally is a different issue.
Agree, it has definitely given me a headache. And the smallest font is just too large.
Totally agree PennyB. It was too uncomfortable to look at and would not fit into my Ipad screen.
Happy with the crossword changes but the Sudoku is a disaster. I can’t believe whoever designed it actually does them. The grey shading is so off putting it makes it very hard to “read” the puzzle. If it’s not changed I will give up which is a shame.
I did my last killer Sudoku yesterday. On the Ipad it was too much hassle.
Totally agree. No longer a pleasure – more a chore.
You can’t see a title (or at least I can’t on my iPad). This did result in my wife & I attempting the concise instead of the quick cryptic before going back to the index to check!
Hi there, cruciverbalist friends. I expect it is too much to expect that these days anyone at the Times will take notice of an individual’s plight. However I have been doing Times crosswords daily for years and at times contributing to this site; and I am devastated by what has happened to the crosswords. I simply cannot do them at all because the lower part of the crossword is not visible, and the last down clues cannot be made to appear. This is despite making the grid as small as it allows. True across all types of crosswords. Why this mess? It was absolutely fine as it was. And I can’t get it to stop skipping letters that are already filled in – nor despite a helpful suggestion have I been able to make it show word breaks. It’s really so sad. Like the end of an era. Is there anyone there at The Times that can just put it back the way it was? The crossword is my only reason for subscribing to The Times. Without it, I will obviously have to go.
Just done the 15×15 and felt more comfortable with the new format. Still getting the irritating screen scroll when manually cursoring up&down clues.
Discovered that changing the size of the text makes it look much better. (And also in the same setting that you can change the clues to a Quintagram format – interesting).
(Windows desktop machine)
Very unhappy with it on my iPad. To get the grid at a reasonable font size I can’t see anywhere near the whole grid…as it has now spread the clues more across the page.
Why on earth do they keep feeling they have to fix something that ain’t broke…
To be clearer…there is a setting for ‘grid size’. But it lies. It does not size the grid…it changes the FONT size of the grid…within the same fixed space for the grid…. a space which is too small. Increase the font size you see less of the grid.
There is basically far too much fixed space given to the clues for some reason…as has been said elsewhere.
Confirming that the new PONDER crossword print function gives two blank pages with The Times headers only.
There are comments here suggesting that the changes were done to enhance the experience for mobile users. I hope this isn’t true, because the experience is definitely worse. My major gripe is the poor use of screen real estate: you can see in the screenshots uploaded here https://imgur.com/a/GfZk0Z0 (first image is the new layout on the main website, second one is the crossword club) that the amount of screen space given to the crossword grid is dramatically reduced. Hope they fix this before making any changes to the crossword club.
On an unrelated note, does anyone know if I can get a weekly printout of the listener crossword without a Times subscription?
The images perfectly illustrate how the club version has always been much better than the main page one. Never understood why anyone would not use the club, you can opt out of leaderboard if you prefer.
The only improvement the club version needs is to the keyboard sensitivity which has been promised. Here’s hoping.
For any Desktop solvers experiencing scroll grief with the Up/Down arrow keys, F7 is your friend. This allows Caret browsing which should then fix your page and mean the Up/Down arrow keys only move the grid square, not the page. Should work in most browsers, and certainly does in Firefox and Chrome
Thanks Jalna – that seems to have done the trick for me.
(Using Brave browser on Windows desktop)
as Patrick Hutber, a 1970s financial journalist said ‘improvement means deterioration’.
What a depressing read most of these comments are.
The changes are a big improvement, particularly that the app now remembers my settings so I don’t need to repeat them every day 🙏
So now you see the whole grid on iPhone…but don’t see the whole grid on iPad.
Is that really a good trade-off???
What % of people use iPhone for the crossword..and what % the iPad? I can’t help suspecting that.. like so many things these days …it is being reorganised to suit the minority..and the majority are left to swallow the negative consequences.
I really don’t like the new format Sudoku – the coloured squares are a total distraction and the grid size is not helpful. I’m afraid I shall cancel my subscription to the Times if some kind of compromise is not forthcoming.
Not everyone plays on a mobile phone and there are plenty of other sites offering player friendly games.
Most if not all the gripes above are easily dealt with. Just use pen & the paper version of the newspaper. 🤣
More seriously, I personally have never used the mobile (or any other) app for solving. It just doesn’t feel like “doing the crossword” when I’ve tried it. (Though I do occasionally look at the answer if stuck.)
Hear hear to pen and paper!
I’m seeing no difference in my phone (android) version in the crossword club though I can see the new version in the puzzle page. I used it for the Concise, and didn’t enjoy, plus I need to have to go into the crossword club for comments anyway.
The new sudoku is also quite off-putting, but maybe just need to get used to it. Certainly easier to use the pencil function.
I solve on an Android phone. The third line of a long clue is not visible, requiring me to scroll down to see it, which is not an immediately obvious thing to do.
I like the wider spacing of the input letters, hopefully that will reduce my typo DNFs.
Just tried to do a Sudoku on the iPad app but gave up within a few seconds as I sensed a migraine being triggered by the grey squares – was the new format road-tested I wonder?
Hi Fabian – same here! I do the sudoku on an Android tablet, and I can’t do it any more. Printing it off might help, but basically there are still too many coloured squares which we don’t need to do the puzzle.
It’s interesting, if disturbing, to see so many others here saying the same.
We’re probably a very small selection of Times puzzle solvers overall – I wonder how many more are also struggling?
Hi…can anyone help…new killer Sudoku format ..whenever I leave the page and then come back to it it has randomly dropped out a bunch of numbers I have previously filled..not all just some but happens every time..any clues
Yes this is exactly the problem I’m having. I’ve even deleted the app and downloaded again but it’s no help. This is on iOS. Any luck getting it fixed?
As someone who uses the iPhone Puzzles app exclusively, I am (perhaps unhealthily) delighted that the timer no longer continues counting if you lock the phone or switch apps without closing the crossword first, something that happened with no other puzzle in the app at all. Here’s to never again discovering I’ve taken 8½ hours to finish the QC!
I do miss the green and pink squares, though, and the misaligned text is just horrible.
How do I access the crossword club? I am having a problem
problem solved!
Anyone having a problem with the Killer Sudoku text size slider on an Android S25 phone? This function does not work on my phone, the text size does not change when moving the slider.
But the text size slider does not work on my android phone. Killer Sudoku pretty much unusable now on an android phone.
I only use to download Cryptics at the weekend for printing, as I’m still a pen and paper solver. Downloaded the QC and all worked fine. Draft email structure has changed and it was much easier to select the link to download the puzzle.
Scrolling the clues: I guess we have different ways of using the software, but after I’ve solved one clue, I either read the next A/D one in a box that’s practically guaranteed to show it already, or click in the grid, on the first square of one in the other A/D list for which I now have a new checking letter. That scrolls in one set, leaving the other one where it was, which is fine, just in case the clue to the crossing word clearly leads to an answer with a different checking letter, and I need to reread the clue for the duff answer.
Just to add, Killer Sudoku impossible on I-phone now. As I am seriously disabled and puzzles are a big part of my life, it is not an exaggeration to say this change has altered my life for worse.
I have now returned to other sources of sudoku. There are plenty of free ones available.
I use
https://www.killersudokuonline.com/
This site has a variety of difficulties from easy to very extreme ( harder than the Times)
Hope this is of help
The puzzles over the last two days have become unsolvable and unworkable on line. I try to check if a letter is correct but won’t let me – it won’t tell me. I can move letters but they float about within the grid. . What has gone on?