Suggestion list sent to the Times

This is a list of suggestions about the crossword club search facility. It’s the result of some discussion at the Times for the Times blog, and I’ll be posting a copy of this list there to show what I sent to the Times. Related postings can be found at: http://community.livejournal.com/times_xwd_times/tag/timesxwdclub

Benefits of recent changes to the search facilities
(No solution to the current problems should throw away these benefits)
1. Kills off the unsustainable “year buttons” design leading to multiple tiny variations of the same User Interface, and requiring someone looking for a particular puzzle to know the year in which was published.
2. Produces lists of puzzles in a consistent style – previously, there were fixed rather than searchable lists for Listener and Mephisto, and no lists of search results available for other types – just individual puzzles matching the search parameters.

Problems with the current search facilities, and possible changes

Search results area is too narrow The table of results is restricted to about 60% of the width of the web page. This is possibly why puzzle titles for Listener puzzles are not shown – there isn’t room.

Getting a useful list of “active” puzzles is impossible – it should be possible to list puzzles based on criteria somewthing like ‘{published in the last 7 days} or {solution not yet published}’. This would avoid the need for solvers wanting solutions to both cryptic and RTC puzzles for yesterday to use separate searches. Compared to the old home page layout, this seems to be an area where the new home page is s step backwards.

Lists of Listener and Mephisto puzzles are unhelpful The useful “baby” of puzzle title (Listener) and setter (L and M) has been thrown out with the much less useful “bathwater” of requiring specially crafted lists for these puzzles in a different format. Setter and title are much more meaningful for people trying to find a past Listener puzzle than the puzzle number, so a list of puzzles without this information is unhelpful. (As an example, I will probably never forget that Whirligig by Sabre was the puzzle for which I won my only Listener prize, but I can only remember what number it was by finding my old paper copy.)

Meaning of “keyword” is unclear The keyword field can be used to specify setter or title (as applicable) for a Listener or Mephisto search. But this is not obvious and the field is useless for other puzzle types

Unhelpful splitting of categories Puzzle types which have meaning for solvers, such as “cryptic” or “Jumbo” are divided into groups that can make searches inconvenient. If searching for Times cryptic 24123, you have to know whether it was printed on a Saturday to be sure of finding it.

Column Names, field formats The word “Puzzle” In column headers is simply a waste of space, especially in “Puzzle Number” which is about twice as wide as the biggest possible number. Dates formats like “February 1, 2009” also take up unnecessary space. It should be removed from the column headings in seach results, to help make space for other information. For the same reason, the puzzle dates should be shown as (e.g.) “1 Feb 2009” rather than “February 1, 2009”.

Suggested changes to resolve the problems

Possible new layouts for search results It seems possible to revamp the panel on the right so that it uses roughly half the current width. Alternatively, a different (less tall) version of this panel could be used, and the search results listed using full width, underneath the search parameters and right-hand panel. Either option would help, but changes suggested elsewhere anticipate the possibility that these won’t happen.

Getting a useful list of “active” puzzles …. The ideal criterion for selecting puzzles for this list is not yet clear to me, so ideas are welcome. The important thing is to list the puzzles people are most likely to want to look at, without listing lots of other puzzles.
The best suggestion I can come up with is to list all prize puzzles for which a prize can still be won, plus any prize puzzle with a solution added in the last 8 days. For non-prize puzzles (weekday cryptic and T2), list today’s puzzle, yesterdays and the day before’s. I think this kind of list on the Home page would reduce most of the need for using the archive pages. It might require the dropping of the crossword grid image to make more room for buttons.

Lists of Listener and Mephisto puzzles are unhelpful …. There are suggestions elsewhere that will help to make space (width) in the results table, but it seems best if results restricted to one puzzle type do NOT include ‘Puzzle Type’ as a column. This should give enough space to show the setter (Mephisto) or setter and title (Listener) in the search results. Title may need truncating or wrapping, but abbreviated content would be far better than none.

Meaning of “keyword” is unclear This field has been renamed “Setter or Title”, which helps. There should perhaps be some help information to clarify what can be done with this field (such as the “partword” search by which “pie” or “iema” can be used to find puzzles by “Pieman”. It might be made disabled (or invisible) when the puzzle type is not Listener or Mephisto, or if used for other puzzle types, a message might be displayed explaining why no results are listed.

Unhelpful splitting of categories … Extra items should be added to the list of puzzle types, which remove these unnecessary breakdowns. So the current “Times Cryptic” and “Times Saturday” would become “Times Cryptic (weekday)” and “Times Cryptic (Saturday)”, and a “Times Cryptic (any day)” option would be added, which combines puzzles of both types. Similar changes would be made for Saturday and Bank Holiday Jumbos.

Column Names, field formats The word “Puzzle” should be removed from the column headings in search results, to help make space for other information. For the same reason, puzzle dates should be shown as (e.g.) “1/2/2009” or “1 Feb 2009” (unambiguous for US-based customers used to ‘Month, Day, Year’ formatting) rather than “February 1, 2009”.