The Changes at the Crossword Club

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Announcement
The forthcoming changes at the Crossword Club have now been officially announced:

https://www.crosswordclub.co.uk/forum/forum_thread.php?forum_id=5&thread_id=250659&pnum=1

As far as the brain trust here at TftT can see, these changes will have little impact on us, except for the discontinuance of the Times Literary Supplement puzzle.   We will no longer be able to blog this puzzle, and the final TLS blog will be appearing in a few weeks.   I would like to thank our four TLS bloggers for their loyal service in blogging this rather difficult puzzle.

I am asking that anyone who wishes to discuss these changes post here, rather than to the individual puzzle threads.   Our friend and founder of this blog, Peter Biddlecombe, is very confident that the site will work well, and that the remaining technical glitches will soon be fixed.

August 10, 8 PM – This entry will be unpinned from the top of the blog tomorrow.   Last call for complaints!   Thanks to all those who provided detailed explanations of their difficulties and why they matter.

211 comments on “The Changes at the Crossword Club”

  1. 00:47 Sunday. The newspaper site has rolled over and the Sunday crosswords are available there but the Club site is still displaying Saturday’s.
    1. It’s okay this morning. At least this proves that the Club and on-line newspaper are not inexorably tied to each other when it comes rolling over to the next day. So with any luck at some point we’ll get rollover at midnight for puzzles in the Club regardless of whether the newspaper rollover is delayed by a late news story.
  2. … it’s still a minefield.

    1. Almost impossible to get grid & clues together on an A4 page such that both are useable/readable.

    2. The Times crest and related decorations could be deleted. We know what it is!

    3. A “Print Grey” option would be a most welcome return for those of us who actually have to pay for printer cartridges.

    4. The clue font is a ridiculously small size & in a print-unfriendly font. Basic typographer’s rule: serif for print, sans serif for screen. It’s The Times, so why not a Times font?

    5. As many solvers have no intention of entering comps., the silly right-hand box (Name, Address, etc.) could be an option, or else only available at on-line completion. Both methods are very easy with a tweak of the HTML/CSS code.

    Conclusion: we’re being more-or-less forced to complete on-line, with a disregard for print solving. The former would be OK if The Times was as on-line-friendly as the Guardian is. The people at the Guardian took several months of testing, feedback and corrections before they were confident enough to publish their puzzles in a new format.

    It would seem that, in our case, everything is being rushed. I just hope the wrinkles will be ironed out at some point.

    For us print folks, the old Club site was just fine … thank you.

    Edited at 2017-08-06 06:23 am (UTC)

    1. Regarding point 1, using copy-and-paste and Word I don’t have any difficulty getting a readable and usable puzzle to print in A4. I just resent having to do it that way.

      If it’s of any interest, I display the pdf print screen, copy the grid (using snipping tool and ignoring the Times logo) and paste the grid into Word, then shrink it a little by dragging the RH corner diagonally upwards. I then repeat this for the clues, pasting them below the grid, enlarging them by dragging the RH corner diagonally downwards. I use print preview to check it all fits and hey presto!

      I’ve had a few years of practice at this on the QC which originally didn’t have any printing at all and then added the dog’s breakfast of a process that has now been inflicted on the Club. It’s a reasonable workaround, but of course it shouldn’t be necessary.

      Edited at 2017-08-06 06:48 am (UTC)

      1. Indeed! And for my part, neither should the use of Word or any other M$ products. They’re all so yesterday!
    2. After reading the complaints here, I accessed the new site (finally, this morning) with some trepidation. I was surprised to find that the PDFs for printing are quite usable for my purposes. In fact, I reduced the size, which was defaulting to 93%, to 73%. I no longer have to copy from the page source, run two scripts (one for the special characters) and paste into my own template. That was getting old anyway.
      What bugs me now is that the new puzzle isn’t available yet, at 7:12 NYC time.
      Also, everything was crazily out of order in the cryptic forum, last time I looked.

      Edited at 2017-08-07 11:15 pm (UTC)

  3. I’ll admit I spent a testy day or two with the new site. However, having learned to drive on the right; to get up early to solve on-line (avoiding the need to print the crossword for the daily commute); and having found a way round the lack of a reverse gear (by ‘Returning’ through all the clues until I reach the previous one), I’m pleased to say I can now give the site a cautious thumbs up.

    My remaining, not particularly sour, gripes are:
    The letter-skipping feature I mentioned above
    The, hopefully temporary, lack of a TLS. I’ve been speed-reading classics for a couple of years to give myself a chance with that. Now I find I might have to learn Latin. Still, how hard can that be?

    And finally, why have all the crosswords been made tougher since the new site was launched?

  4. Does anyone know how the crosswords can be printed in a larger font? On the old website the standard size was fine and could be made smaller or larger as necessary. This functionality now seems to be lost. What a retrograde step!
    1. The size at which the PDF prints can be set in the app you are using to print it.
  5. As a poorly sighted oldie I find the new stuff quite awful. I have loved the previous sysem where I could print in large form in grey to save ink. These ptions are gone and I am frankly devastated. Bak most reluctantly to the good old Te;egraph!
    Tony Beauvoisin
    [email protected]
  6. If anyone is interested in doing the crosswords on an iPad or when not connected to the Internet, I have a script for downloading them into Across Lite (.puz) format and could make them available for others if there were a demand.

    Across Lite on the iPad is particularly good as it has the look and feel of paper-based crosswords.

    Reply to this comment if you’re interested.

    1. If anyone is interested in doing the crosswords on iPad then you’ll be glad to know that the Club site is now configured to work on tablets (and smartphones). With regard to downloading puzzles for mass resupply elsewhere, we would respectfully ask you to refrain from resupplying puzzles to other solvers as all Times and Sunday Times puzzles are under copyright.

      David Parfitt
      Puzzles Editor, The Times & The Sunday Times

      1. Thank you to everyone who has posted about the new Crossword Club here. We are logging all your feedback, and you comments will prove extremely helpful in guiding the future direction of the site.

        David Parfitt
        Puzzles Editor, The Times & The Sunday Times

        1. Could I also apologise to anyone who has experienced technical difficulties over the first few days of the site? There do seem to be some issues on certain combinations of browsers and devices, and we will be doing our best to rectify these as soon as possible.

          David, Puzzles Editor

          1. David
            I do prefer to print out a puzzle. I am a slow solver, and I liked the option of printing in grey, and adjusting the size to fit in one sheet of A4.
            Hope you can sort it. Would gladly pay a contract for crossword only. Not interested in the rest of the paper!
            BW
            Andrew K
  7. Just a comment that I still cannot get the crossword to appear on the site while I’m at work (i’ve tried IE and Chrome), just an endless circling thought-spiral. Nor can I access it on my iphone via Safari – it says PLAY PUZZLE FULL SCREEN, so I do that and get a blank screen. However I can get it at home on Windows 10, so it may be a Windows 7 problem. Fortunately it is available on the main Times site, but it would be nice to have this fixed.
  8. I tried to start a thread on the Club Forum but kept getting an “oops” message so I tacked my question on to an older thread. But just in case no one’s looking there I’ll also ask it here.

    Re prize puzzles: Sometime in the last few years a restriction appeared (unannounced so far as I can tell) limiting the draw to residents of the UK and Ireland. After submitting this weekend’s puzzles I read the fine print and the FAQs and it seems that the restriction has been lifted. Does anyone know?

    I had actually won a couple of times (not the gold pen I’m sorry to say) much to my surprise so it can happen and it seemed worth asking.

  9. So I still don’t understand what I managed to do last night – I somehow did the puzzles on the Puzzles Club, but not on the Crossword Club, and that seems to mean that I don’t get on the leaderboards etc? Is there an easy way I can avoid doing this in future? I don’t want to hate the new format, but it’s really confusing so far.

    Edited at 2017-08-07 12:42 pm (UTC)

    1. Don’t know, but if you completed the puzzle in the Puzzles section of the on-line newspaper rather than at the Puzzles Club site, that might account for what you experienced.

      Edited at 2017-08-07 01:08 pm (UTC)

  10. Just to echo what others are saying (since it seems that people from The Times are reading) – my only requirement of the Crossword Club is the ability to print a crossword on a single A4 sheet, ideally with a grey grid. Until last week I could achieve that in two mouse clicks. I’m not going to pay for a subscription until this functionality is reintroduced. It would be great to see some specific responses from The Times to all the feedback provided to date.
  11. Hello all …

    I don’t know if it’s just me, but I can’t get into the Crossword Club at all this morning (Monday August 7).
    I just get a blank white page, or a rather ominous message telling me that I am: “403: Forbidden – Looks
    like you’re not meant to be here! Please use the back button in your browser.”

    Help? What’s going on – anybody?

    Thank you …

    June (JuneNJ1 at the Club)

    1. Same thing happened to me. Set my profile to “Private,” hit “Continue,” and suddenly, 403: Forbidden.
      I am paying for this privilege.
      1. re: “I am paying for this privilege.”

        Moi aussi. Everything just seems so … labyrinthine.

        Edited at 2017-08-07 03:27 pm (UTC)

    2. Okay – was finally able to get in and do today’s Concise.
      But everything seemed very, very slow.
    3. I have the same problem when I click on the print button. IF I click on the picture it says rotate to portrait to view. Can anyone advise on how to rotate?
      Tej Sinha
      1. When I get that “Rotate To View” thingie, I hit the F11
        key and the puzzle appears. However, the page then goes
        to full screen. Then hit F11 again, to exit full screen.

        Hope this helps!

        June 🙂

        Edited at 2017-08-07 03:22 pm (UTC)

  12. I think so, but I was trying very hard to get to the Club site, and it was only when I was persistently redirected elsewhere that I gave up and assumed this was where I was meant to be solving the puzzles. I wouldn’t have, if I’d known I wasn’t on the Club.

    Do the puzzles go live in the other section before they are available on the Club, perhaps?

    1. V, on your last point, the puzzles in the old Club have always rolled over on the dot of midnight with the newspaper puzzles following anytime later, but I happened to notice this Sunday that the newspaper rollover was ahead of the revamped Club so this may well have been the case today too.
  13. I keep getting these in my email:
    (five of them so far, since I joined this morning)

    from: LiveJournal [email protected]

    “Dear junenj1.
    Duration of the slot: 13:00 – 14:00
    the LJ Token cost of the slot: 12
    unsubscribe”

    EDIT: Never mind – I found it in my Notifications.
    (I still don’t know what it is, though)

    Still finding my way around here …

    June 🙂

    Edited at 2017-08-08 12:22 am (UTC)

    1. I think it’s been established (Jonathan – Vinyl1 – was the first to mention it that I saw) that the newspaper site and the Crossword Club are not linked so far as rollover times are concerned. In one way this is a good thing because the newspaper rollover sometimes has to be delayed because of late news stories developing. However as I discovered over the weekend and posted either here or in the Club general forum (or possibly both) the two rollovers are currently the wrong way round, in that the Club is rolling over after the newspaper instead of occurring at midnight.

      I hope the powers-that-be have taken this on board and are doing something about it but sadly your observations today confirm that it still hasn’t been put right.

      Edited at 2017-08-08 04:30 am (UTC)

  15. How do you get to the old Club site? I’ve tried all sorts of device, browser, app combinations but I’ve never got to it. Plus the only way I can print from all these combinations is from a Windows PC logged into the Times desktop web site via the Puzzles section clicking the settings wheel and printing a downloaded version of a PDF file. What a palaver!
    TTom
    Ps the emailed PDF option doesn’t work on an Android smartphone. “.. Format corrupt..”
  16. Unlike many, I seem to be having no trouble with the new site and think it a substantial improvement on the old one. But then, I gave up solving on paper years ago, can’t solve fast enough to be handicapped by the absence of a tab key and am always overly impressed by the sight of an average printed to two (or more) decimal places.

    The new functionality of the pause button may need some tweaking, however. It appears, and FAQ 2.8 seems to confirm this, that it now equates the concepts of proper time and clock time; so that time spent in the paused state no longer appears either on the displayed elapsed time clock or on your recorded submitted time. This innovation can only be applauded, even though it means I can no longer legitimately use the excuse that I can’t possibly stop doing the crossword and make a pot of tea because it will do serious damage to my long term solving average.

    This move into a non-Einsteinian universe took me by surprise when I took so long to complete Friday’s beast (26795) that I was logged out of the site, a fact which I only discovered when I hit the submit button and entered a worm hole. On logging back in, my crossword was discovered to be in the half completed state it was in when internet connectivity ceased, with an elapsed time to match. I quickly retyped all the outstanding solutions back in (I use the term quickly in a loose sense, even looser than the term legitimately in the previous paragraph) and resubmitted, thinking my proper time would be recorded. Imagine my horror when I discovered I had been transformed into a neutrino, my recorded time corresponding to the displayed clock time. I can only apologise, particularly to Verlaine, who I bumped one spot down the leaderboard; a never before or since seen occurrence.

    I don’t know if it’s possible for the site controllers to distinguish between “legitimate” and ISP (or other) induced pausing, but something’s not right here, on several levels.

  17. Thank you for the new site, whoever you are, which I think is great. It works on my iPad and so I can do the crossword while sat in a comfy chair. It’s a bit slower than my PC, but who cares? And now there’s the Quick Cryptic to warm up on.

    I hope you all get your printing issues sorted out so that we can go back to being one big happy family.

  18. I’ve been on the road for the past few days, so only had one look at the new site until today. To me, the worst thing about the new format — and what I disliked most about the Quickies — is that you can’t see all the clues at once. I can’t imagine why this format was chosen. I’m curious, too, about the Forum: Just now I tried to see the thread relating to Jumbo 1277, only to find what seems like a random list of cryptic, none of which has any comments. One used to be able to search the archives by simply typing in the puzzle number; that doesn’t seem to work. What does?
    1. I think 1277 is still “live”, and one of the changes in the new Crossword Club is that comments won’t be enabled for competition puzzles until the closing date has passed.
    2. Also, to quote Mr Parfitt from an exceedingly long thread on the new Crossword Club:

      “The Forum pages are in something of a tangle at the moment. New threads being started automatically when archive puzzles are opened for the first time are superseding threads for live puzzles in the list. This situation will improve as the number of unopened archive puzzles decreases, but it has been logged and we will do our best to address it. For the time being, the easiest way of finding a puzzle’s thread is to go to the puzzle page itself and scroll down to the comments at the bottom of the page.”

      1. Thanks. I went to the forum thread on the new setup after sending my comment, and found Mr. Parfitt’s comments. ‘Something of a tangle’ is something of an understatement. And given the random sequence of puzzles listed in the forum, I don’t see what’s easy about going to the puzzle page of an archived puzzle. I notice, by the way, that each time I’ve gone to an archived puzzle, I’m informed that I’m on their records as a private player, even after I’ve corrected that.
  19. Higgledy Piggledy

    Our Meph has gone missin’

    Whole net is wonderin’

    “Gone ’round the bend?”

    Or clever as he is

    Perhaps doing somefink

    Mephistophelian

    In the East End.

  20. On the bright side, I did the Independent puzzle online today and all of this has sure made the interface there seem a lot more acceptable! They have reverse tabbing through clues, oh yes they do…
  21. Hi Peter, just to let you know something odd. I solved last Saturday’s crossword when it came out, and was just browsing stats today prior to putting up the blog. I discovered my solution still had a submit button, so I pressed it and seem to have stolen a score of 843! Apologies to anyone to whom it matters!!
  22. Just to get in before this topic is ‘unstuck’ it has occurred to me that in all the complaints about printing, nobody has mentioned the e-paper option. If your subscription covers access to this it could be a solution to your problems as it can produce a large grid and clear set of clues in Landscape format and the font size is BIG! Two possible drawbacks, depending on your sensitivities, are that the e-paper generally appears around dawn UK time, so a bit late for those out east and insomniacs elsewhere, and I can’t see an option to print in grey-scale to save ink. I’ve added further details to the web page I posted earlier with other examples of printing, which can be viewed here: http://www.chaseside.org.uk/temp_uploads/temp_uploads_to_here_5.html

    Edited at 2017-08-11 05:55 am (UTC)

    1. Jack
      Looks good but…
      when you say epaper version which one is it? The PC browser address thetimes.co.uk or some other? Plus which is the crossword page you refer to.
      TTom
  23. Just a comment that I am still solving on the main Times site as all I get on the Club site is a little thinking circle when I try to open a crossword.
  24. Goodbye Crossword Club site. I will continue to solve from The Times site and to post useless comments to TfTT.
  25. The only thing I don’t like about this new format is the fact that I used to be able to check my entry by clicking on play which would bring up my solution with any mistakes marked in a different colour. Don’t seem able to do that any more. Also you have to wait until solution is published before you find out whether or not you have the puzzle correct.
  26. Two more observations from further down the line :

    If I solve and submit on one PC (my home one) and then try to ‘Review’ my solution on another PC (my office one when I get in there) the Grid is blank. But when I get home and try to ‘Review’ again my solution is there. Is the data held in a way that it is particular to the equipment one enters it on and is it then unavailable elsewhere?

    Secondly, today I got two clues wrong with a typo (POTTERT & HTDRANT since you ask) but I have only one clue wrong according to my profile and the leaderboard. I fear therefore that that bit of the site doesn’t seem to be working properly.

    Finally, when posting a couple of entries on the Club Forum today, I find that one is attributed to my Profile Name and one to my Real Name. Hopefully this can be made consistent, and hopefully showing only Profile Names.

    1. And whilst on the subject of the forum, the item I posted there this morning about printing (in the General forum under New Webpage) appeared when first posted but has since disappeared.
      1. I noticed yesterday that my comment had disappeared, and that in fact the latest posting was marked ‘2 days ago’. Why, by the way, can’t they give the date and time of each posting?
  27. I am a lot happier with the new format now that it advised me that “your crossword is only 99% complete, are you sure that you want to submit?” on one Quick Cryptic… now can it do that for silly typos too please? 😀
  29. So now when I try to submit a completed puzzle, nothing happens. When I return to the home page, I’m offered the chance to ‘resume’, but not ‘review’.
    And having inadvertently opened the cryptic Jumbo–which I print out and do at leisure–I find that I can’t print it.

    Edited at 2017-08-12 12:46 am (UTC)

    1. With you on the JUMBO complaint, Kevin. I prefer doing the puzzles on paper, especially the jumbo so I can have lots of room to fiddle and doodle. The rest seems okay……so far.
    2. Kevin, last Saturday the Jumbo was listed twice under different numbers, but at least both had a print option. Today it’s listed only once but the print option has gone and is also missing from the Concise and Concise Jumbo.

      In the meantime you can print all the puzzles via the newspaper site on this page: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/#section-puzzles
      Here you have to open the puzzles first to find the print command on the ‘hamburger’ menu top right.

      PS: You have to click the ‘Show More’ link in the Puzzles section to find the Jumbos.

      Edited at 2017-08-12 05:29 am (UTC)

      1. Bigger problems now – club site has been inaccessible for about the last 30 mins. We are aware and help is being sought.
      3. Thanks, Jack. As you no doubt know, they’ve evidently fixed the ‘submit’ problem and restored the print option, for the time being anyway. However, when I went to the Times site, the only option for each puzzle was ‘play now’, and when I clicked that (for the concise, which I’d done already), I got an empty grid, with no time elapsed; and no ‘print’ option.
  30. I HATE this new format. Today it popped up rotate to view – what??????
    I cannot see the crossword now to complete. Really fed up
  31. annoying that I subscribe to The Times via Kindle but have lost the facility to access the crosswords!

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