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.
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?
I’m a Long-time-Lurker from Australia, who has been avidly following this site and attempting the TftT every morning, first thing. I believe I’m just getting better (and faster) at it now, and then…! I’m suddenly locked out with the message “Error 400: can’t find the site” or somesuch. HELP! This is practically my life-blood since being incarcerated in a Retirement village and being physically handicapped; what can I do now??
Hey, wait, I’ve got a new complaint: the “tab” key on the keyboard no longer moves you to the next clue. And shift+tab doesn’t go back to the previous clue. In fact, using the tab key makes the crossword grid lose keyboard focus entirely, meaning that when you press the enter key, unexpected things are going to happen – in my case, it opened the “submit feedback form”.
It’s little things like this that make a huge difference to usability.
I’ve given it a few days to settle down and I’m glad some are enjoying the changes. I didn’t think there was much wrong with the old version but heh! Personally I’m irritated by the way that the cursor skips over spaces that are already filled in, so I find that unless I’m extra careful I keep having to undo and re-enter.
The Sunday Times prize Sudoku cannot be reset if you go completely wrong. On the Classic app you can only undo the latest entry. In the online version you can at least repeatedly press the undo button to effectively reset the grid.
I am frustrated as none if the puzzles retain characters, making the puzzles unplayable , this is my way to staying sane, please fix.
I’ve had problems with the Suko for ages now on my Android. All of a sudden, in ‘notes’ mode, it stopped showing the numbers 1 -5, though it will show 6-9. I complained weeks ago via a review in Google Play, had a response from The Times asking every question under the sun about the app version, Android version, download speed of phone etc. but it has not changed a jot. It happens in both the app and website version on the phone. I can only use Suko now on my laptop which is very annoying.
Following the changes to the puzzles, I can now only see a tiny version of the crossword grids on my phone. They all worked perfectly before the changes. It makes no difference if I alter the size of the text or the grid, it still appears as a tiny square at the top of the screen with the lettering so small it can barely be read. What on earth is happening? They are normal on my laptop screen but no use if I want to use the phone for them.
I agree totally CazT, why on earth reduce the size of the grid? I normally complete the Concise puzzle on my phone but the letters are now so small they are hardly discernable.
The Times Puzzle app has completely stopped working on my Android tablet. I didn’t like the new version that came out in September: the grid was too small and the onscreen keyboard was obscured at the bottom. but now even that’s not working.