The Online Crosswords Championship – Second Try

175 comments on “The Online Crosswords Championship – Second Try”

1. Only one problem really, bless their little IT socks.

   I can’t manage tomorrow so wish everyone well, that can.

   It occurs to me, Vinyl, that if it does go ahead, and results are produced, the link on the right of the page to the 2019 championships could be replaced/updated

2. Staying up till 3am once may be deemed a misfortune, to do so twice begins to look like carelessness 🙂
3. Morning all, so who’s having a bash today?
   1. If the site doesn’t work this time… I’m going to be so angry! And then sleep for 3 days.
      1. That’s going to be one hell of a caffeine crash….
   2. Yep, I’m in
4. Looks like the site is struggling again.
5. The reschedule favours us UK solvers. Not much else we can do at the moment. I’m in.
6. Error 504. Eek.
   1. It looks better than yesterday (so far) but not exactly great, eh?

      Edited at 2020-11-22 10:23 am (UTC)

      1. Perhaps the plan is to keep rescheduling it until numbers have dwindled sufficiently that the site can handle the load…
         1. Ah yes, the old Ragequit Protocol.
7. I’m in – but connection was slow. Fingers crossed.
8. I have serious doubts about whether it’s going to work this time. About 1 in 3 of old puzzles I call up works at the moment. If it’s a traffic issue, it’s not going to improve.
9. I’m logged in, but it required patience.
10. I’m normally sympathetic to the excellent people who provide us with puzzles every day, but I don’t see the point of postponing a problem but not fixing it? If the server was overloaded yesterday, isn’t it likely to be overloaded again today? Maybe things will improve …
11. To quote Han Solo, even though we never saw him solving a crossword on film, I have a bad feeling about this. Same errors as yesterday for me…
12. I’m hoping that:

    1. People will only load one puzzle of 3 at 10:30
    2. Once solving begins, the load will reduce because people won’t be loading puzzles to test it ….

    1. How many people were trying to get simultaneous access yesterday? Just curious.
    2. It’s not like a minute or five of reloading will matter before some of us can get in, naturally…
    3. Hope is not a strategy.
13. …and am getting response. It is slow, but coming back.
14. No, I can’t get in at all now.
15. HTTP Error 504 – now past a joke.
16. Loading the puzzles I don’t mind trying a couple of times – as long as the 503s and 504s don’t start when I submit
17. On a side note, I’m worried my avatar doesn’t strike the same fear into readers as Verlaine’s.
18. Just solved the ST Concise as a warmup, but got a 504 when I submitted. Yet another disaster looms…
19. Nothing doing. “The page isn’t working”. How amazing. Did the Times stress test this time or is the aim just to stress test putative competitors?
20. This is pathetic.
    1. I’ve just tried that, and it’s really quite depressing at the moment. A blank page on the Crossword Club site might actually be more appealing.
21. I have a 503 on the club page
22. suddenly I got this incredible sennse of deja-(non)vu…

    Anne L

23. It’s not working FFS. 503
24. All the same as yesterday. It doesn’t help that there are no instructions here as to whether this is the right place or we need to be somewhere else …
25. To borrow from Verlaine ala Oscar to fail once may be a misfortune, to fail twice seems like carelessness.
26. So sorry everyone. It looks like the site is just not up to it, despite the database changes that IT made yesterday. Bear with us for a few minutes…
    1. It never seemed to me like a database issue, so I’m not surprised. You need a performance engineer to analyse the bottlenecks in the system and redesign for the scale of processing and connectivity required. As Mike O says it could be network bandwidth, but more likely the managing of connections to the server and memory to support the user sessions.
27. Ridiculous – messed up again – I said they should wait a week instead of rushing
    1. Hmmm. Clearly not a database problem, more of a bandwidth issue I would say.
28. I’ve finished the first one.

    🙂

29. The Club page isn’t loading for me.
30. It is not bloody working. Again. I am unhappy.
31. Looks exactly the same to me this morning. I was able to get into the crossword club at least, but can not load any of the puzzles
32. Got in after a few tries opened first puzzle at 10.30, dumped out. Having another go or 2
33. Yeah still busted. Very disappointing.
34. You can’t build scalability into a live system that wasn’t designed to be scalable in an afternoon, so I’m not a bit surprised it’s not working again.
35. This is just about as bad as trying to get Glastonbury tickets…
36. Farcical! I wonder how many people are wasting their time for the second day running? Any ideas as to roughly how many are being inconvenienced? Grrrr!
37. David – reschedule again! Give yourself an hour or so … we can’t all just hit the puzzle and live in hope … must have a precise starting time …
38. ….this is mildly stressful and probably not conducive to a good solve.
39. FFS
40. Please listen this time. Make a quick decision to defer until next Saturday. Noone can start at the same time so this is not going to work.
41. The IT dept should try turning the club site on and off. That ought to do it.
    1. They tried that with the earth – its called COVID – nothing is working any better for it..
    2. or give it a good kick … or give *someone* a good kick …
42. I’m guessing 1 across is deja vu.
43. It’s well known that the promises of your IT guy are written on the wind and the rushing water of course.
    1. That’s because they’re IT people.
44. A suggestion.

    1) Pick a 24 hour window
    2) set up a virtual queue to allow as many people in at a time as the site can comfortably handle
    3) once in you have 90 minutes at which point all 3 are submitted.
    4) nothing is marked or scored until the 24 hours is up.

    Yes, I do solutions architecture for a living.

    1. It is clear that we are overloading the system, so I think we need to be let in in groups the size of which won’t crash the server, as mikeosborne suggests. R J Fletcher
    2. I like your suggestion Mike but I can’t see IT at The Times being able to implement it.
       1. Fair point based on recent (ie last 24 hours) evidence
    3. Good suggestion, but implementing a queuing system is likely to be a significant system change. Simpler just to publish the 3 crosswords in online only format diabling print and pause functions and tot up peoples times for the 3, letting people do them any time in a 24 (or maybe 48) hour window.
       1. I don’t do simple solutions sorry.

          But yes that would work 🙂

45. Almost, at least the page came up!
46. I’m getting 404s so presuming puzzles have been pulled until the problems are fixed.
    1. alternating between 404s and 503/4
47. I’m in but getting 404 on the puzzles.
    1. Same here
48. Good news! The home page stays up
    Bad news! No effin crosswords ..
49. How about emailing the puzzles to us and trusting us to email completed puzzles back with times taken. It’ll be quicker!
    1. It used to be good enough for the qualifiers
50. I can’t get into any of the puzzles – get blank screen or 404

Comments are closed.