149 comments on “Site Feedback”

  1. Gaufrid, I have unwittingly made a comment on the Araucaria puzzle, could you check 26,429 Paul, @34 in particular. I don’t think I would have made such a boob with another puzzle, but it seemed to be a special one that could be happily commented on at any time and anywhere in the future.
    I am most truly sorry, Marion Cook

  2. The comment I made was two days after the appearance of the Araucaria puzzle. Some people save puzzles until the weekend. I should have thought of that. My mistake may indirectly have lost a valued commentator to the site.

    Sil van den Hoek has recently cited a puzzle in Picaroon 26,432, @52 in his ps, giving clue and answer.

    The wording at 3 on site policy is rather ambiguous.
    ‘Comments added to posts about a specific puzzle should be relevant to the puzzle under discussion’.
    Does this mean another puzzle, if relevant, may be referred to after a suitable time delay?

  3. Hi Cookie
    I introduced that particular clause in the Site Policy at a time when there was a lot of irrelevant banter being posted which was making the relevant comments difficult to follow. For example, on one Araucaria blog there were over 120 comments but only about 40 of them contained something that related to the puzzle itself.

    I don’t see a problem with referring to a clue in another puzzle if it helps to explain what one is trying to say. However, if there is a chance of providing a spoiler for someone who has yet to solve the puzzle then it would probably be better to quote the clue number and provide a link to the relevant blog rather than type out both the clue and the solution. This way, if someone wishes to avoid a spoiler they just don’t have to follow the link.

  4. Thank you Gaufrid. That makes sense. The problem with the Araucarian clue was that muffin and I in the weeks before had mentioned the Camberwell Beauty several times and it would have been hard to give a hint to him that others would not have cottoned onto. I should have waited until the Monday.
    I regarded the Araucarian puzzle as an in memorium tribute, and felt that it could be commented on anywhere and at any time. My error.

  5. Hi Gaufrid
    Is it possible (though no doubt discouraged) for someone to have more than one identity on this site? I ask because a “new” contributor on today’s (17,12,14) Guardian thread, called “Ximenes_or_nothing” is, I suspect, in fact a regular contributor.
    I’m not complaining about his amusing post!

  6. Hi muffin
    I had a similar thought when I read that comment but I could find no evidence of it being from another contributor.

    Multiple identities are discouraged except in certain circumstances, such as a setter wishing to comment, in different posts, under both his/her real name and pseudonym.

  8. I see that the site guidelines state that:
    “Any criticism of a puzzle or clue must be valid, constructive and presented in a polite manner. The reason for any dissatisfaction should be clearly indicated. Comments that do not comply with these criteria may be removed.”
    Recently there have been a number of contributions posted about Guardian crosswords which are definitely not “constructive” or “presented in a polite manner”. Usually they are not “valid” either. They are from one particular blogger who is, by now, well-known to other users of the site (so I am not going to name him) for his frequent unhelpful and highly critical comments. Can I suggest that you take a look at the site and take appropriate action if you think fit? Many thanks.

  9. Hi,

    Thanks so much for your site. I’ve taught myself how to disencrypt by looking at your explanations of answers and working backwards. Now I want to set my own. I have done so and feel that my work is reasonably strong, but I’m working on paper. Is there a reliable (and free, would be nice) program that can be downloaded for this? Thank you.

    Andrew

  11. Hi Tom
    Sorry to hear that you have been having problems with site access. I have tried accessing the Boatman post via every link on the site and have been successful each time. Others don’t seem to have had an access problem either as there have been 78 comments added so far.

    There are no relevant entries in any of the error log files so I am at a loss to explain why you have received a ‘forbidden’ error. Did this occur several times and are you now able to access the post?

    If you are still getting a 403 error then please let me have some more information so that I can investigate further, namely: the type of device you are using (PC, mobile etc), which browser and how you are trying to access the post (via the 15² home page entry, the categories list, the recent posts list or the calendar list).

  13. By default, internet traffic from our office is routed via a proxy server in Germany, and I have noticed that when I attempt to access this site using that, I have to pass a Captcha to get in. This does not happen at home or when I change the browser settings to use a proxy in the UK.

    Is this a deliberate site policy or is the rule imposed by the hosting service?

  14. Hi beery hiker
    “Is this a deliberate site policy or is the rule imposed by the hosting service?”

    Several years ago I signed up with CloudFlare in an attempt to control the amount of spam the site receives each day along with other activities that waste server resources (a recent, reputable report stated that nearly two-thirds of all internet traffic, and hence server resourse use, is due to spam, hackers and other unwanted activity).

    CloudFlare gives me the ability to control site access by IP address or range or by country and I have used this facility to block those countries that generate the most spam etc as listed on the Project Honeypot website (unfortunately I couldn’t include France and the USA, two of the largest sources of unwelcome activity, because we have regular, genuine visitors from those two countries). Anyone attempting to visit the site from a blocked country/IP address will be presented with a Captcha to prove that they are a human and not a malicious bot.

    Germany is not in the list of countries I have blocked nor is your proxy server being blocked by an IP address in my ‘block’ list. However, CloudFlare maintains its own blacklist of IP addresses that are known to be problematic due to spam, hacking, DDoS attacks etc and it is possible that your proxy server is on that list.

    If the problem had been due to Germany being included in my blocked country list I could have overcome it by adding your proxy server’s IP address to my ‘trusted’ list but I don’t think that my ‘trusted’ list will override the CloudFlare blacklist.

  15. Gaufrid,

    Thanks for the explanation. We have had similar issues with a number of other sites, most recently Google, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the proxy server is on a more general blacklist. We have been told we’ll be moving to a UK one soon, so the problem should go away once that happens.

  16. I am currently in China and cannot access the fifteensquared website. When I try to access the website I am presented with a captcha page, which is fair enough for requests coming from China. However the captcha page tries to access the google recaptcha site. All access to any google service is blocked in China, so the captcha page never completes successfully. I can access from a computer using a complex tunneling system. However I cannot access the page from my tablet or phone.

    Anybody have a solution for this?

  17. Hi Charles
    I’m sorry to hear that you are having problems accessing the site. Because of the large amount of spam and other unwanted activity that originates from China, I have use CloudFlare to block that country, along with a number of others.

    A genuine visitor from a blocked country should be able to complete a Captcha and access the site having proved that they are not a bot. I was not aware, prior to your comment, of any tie-in with Google and the consequential ramifications. I will investigate this further later today.

    If you are going to be in China for a significant period, and if you have a fixed IP address, then I could add that address to the ‘trusted’ list and you will not be presented with a Captcha when visiting the site. Please feel free to email the details using the address on the ‘About 15²’ page.

  18. Hi Gaufrid,

    Thanks for your reply. I am only in China for another week and after today my IP Address will be changing as we are travelling. When I access fifteensquared the browser hangs for a long time and eventually gives me an error message:

    “There was an error communicating with the captcha provider. More information may be available below”

    More information is that the operation timed out. By looking at the HTML for the page it appears that the offending code is:

    src=”//www.google.com/recaptcha/api/noscript”

    The problem is that the captcha provider is google and so the above url is tha google.com is blocked in China.

    This isn’t causing me a huge problem at the moment so don’t spend a lot of time looking into it. It may of interest to CloudFlare, although they probably know about it anyway.

    I’m very impressed by the way you run the site. Keep up the good work.

  19. Charles
    Thanks for the additional info. During my research this morning I found, by googling, that CloudFlare requests the Captcha from google.com (there is no mention of this on the CloudFlare website that I can find).

    As you say, they are probably aware of it already but I will raise the issue with CloudFlare.

  20. I am looking for the blog on Guardian Prize 26507 set on 28-Feb. It appears that the blogger has gone AWOL.

  21. Hi chas
    Due to a technical glitch the post for this puzzle has been delayed. It should be published within the next hour or so.

  23. Hi, I was looking for the entry for Guardian puzzle 26,107 which was Araucaria’s last puzzle published before he died. I believe it was printed on 16th November 2013. I was wanting to read other people’s comments. But it’s not there under Guardian. Do you know where it is?
    Many thanks.

  25. I’ve already added the link to 225 on my links page.

    Any chance you could add Alchemiland with its address of www dot alchemipuzzles dot com to yours?

  27. Hi – is there any way of getting the mobile version of the site to show the number (and time) of each comment? At the moment it shows only the date, which makes it difficult to follow references of the “Gaufrid@26” form.

  28. Hi DuncT
    I can understand your frustration but I’m afraid the simple answer is no. I use the WordPress plug-in WP Touch to generate the mobile version and, though it can be customised in some respects, there is no way that I can alter the comment display to include the time posted.

    Also, unfortunately the plug-in does not support comment numbering. To save me some typing I am gong to copy and paste from a reply I posted 15 months ago:

    “As for comment numbering within a post, I doubt that this will ever be supported. The WordPress theme that 15² uses is rather old now and on several occasions I have spent quite a bit of time looking for a more up-to-date one. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of themes available but very few include comment numbering, and of those few there have been other factors that rendered them unsuitable. Nested comments, which I strongly dislike, are now the norm and these are problematic to number which is probably why the majority of more recent themes do not do so.

    If the vast majority of themes do not include comment numbering then I think it unlikely that the creators of the WP Touch plug-in will ever provide support for it.”

    Given that I am unable to provide comment numbering/timing in the mobile view, I can only suggest that, if a reference back to an earlier comment number is confusing, you use the option at the bottom of the page to switch to ‘desktop’ view and then revert back to ‘mobile’ view once you have identified and read the comment in question.

  29. Thanks Gaufrid @24, don’t know why I couldn’t find it!

    One of the comments includes a link to a snippet of an episode of University Challenge in which Araucaria clearly took part. What a shame they didn’t include the whole episode!

  30. Thanks Gaufrid – I suspected that would be the case. It’s a minor frustration. I agree with your view on nested comments – an all too common example of design being led by technical gimmickry rather than function.

  31. Hi Gaufrid,
    I really hate the way the Guardian blog has lately become monopolized by a single commenter, with a bulk of the rest of the posts responding to him rather than discussion of the crossword. Is there any way at all a policy of constructive criticism only could be imposed or is this just something we have to live with? I’d really love to get back to the fair and friendly, even if sometimes robust, discussions we used to have.
    Val

  32. Just to add to my above post…

    What prompted this was going through the blog for last Friday (20/03/2015)’s Guardian crossword, which I’ve only just done. It was a particularly bad day for the vitriol – 72 comments of which 27 were either just the usual initial blanket list of complaints and then the responses to that. It’s hard to work through that amount of unrelated clutter to get back to the essence of the blog. As so many people, solvers and setters, have pointed out already, a lot of the enjoyment of the site has been lost.

  34. Hi muffin
    Today’s scheduled blogger lives in the USA. Usually he solves/blogs in the evening before going to bed but if something prevents him from doing so then it is likely to be early afternoon our time before he is able to post.

    I have just checked again and PeterO is preparing his blog as I write.

  35. Hi there

    Any chance that you might add the Calendar site to your list of blogs. There’s not too many there to do a year and it would be helpful to me – and others I assume!

  36. Hi Davem195
    An interesting suggestion but it is not really within our remit, as indicated by the site’s name.

  37. Hi, having bought the CRUX app for my iPad i am trying out the Independent cryptic instead of my usual Telegraph. Fifteen squared great help if I don’t get the parsing or the answer ,but is there a way to use the site to get the hints without the answer being already displayed?

  39. Hi Ridgerunner @37
    “but is there a way to use the site to get the hints without the answer being already displayed?”

    The simple answer is no. We don’t go in for hints but merely provide the full parsing of each clue.

  40. Hi Cyborg @38
    Thanks for the heads up. I didn’t have time to solve any puzzles yesterday so I filled in the grid using the solutions given in the blog and then saw the Nina. Nice one Phi!

  41. Gaufrid,

    I submitted a comment on Quiptic 809 by Hectence and it never appeared so I re-submitted and got a duplicate message but it still isn’t on the blog. Any ideas ?.

  42. Hi Davy
    Your comment was intercepted by Akismet, the spam filter, as was this one. I know not why unless your IP address is on a blacklist. I have reinstated both comments.

  43. Thanks Gaufrid,

    I don’t know of any reason why my IP address should be blacklisted. I’ve also read through the original mail and there’s nothing to set alarm bells ringing. If Akismet does not give an intercept reason, then we can call this a glitch. I don’t expect a reply to this message.

  44. Gaufrid,

    Is it possible to refine the site search facility? I tried searching for MARC just now (someone mentioned he didn’t know this word and I am convinced we had it very recently in another Guardian crossword), but the search includes all entries for MARCH. Are there any filters available?

  45. Hi Dave
    I am not aware of any specific filters, the search facility simply matches any occurrence of the text typed into the search box.

    However, I have found a way round this. If you type “marc ” into the search box, including the inverted commas and space, you will only get results which contain the isolated word marc.

    Unfortunately, yesterday’s Philistine blog was not included in the list for a reason that I’ve been unable to determine (possibly because MARC was actually a link) so other occurrences may be missing from the results as well.

  46. Thanks for this, Gaufrid. I had tried “marc” with no space, but without success.

    I have just now tried brandy and found Picaroon Feb 27, Chifonie Apr 3rd. They both have marc in the comments, but the search for marc does not seem to pick them up either

  47. Hi Gaufrid
    I tried posting a comment of the Independent thread today – in fact I was asking if the download method had changed, as Crossword Solver refused to download it today (I haven’t tried for a few weeks) – the comment didn’t appear. I repeated and got the “already said that” message, but sill no comment visible. Is the site working correctly?

  48. Hi Gaufrid
    It’s 1327 on Friday and we don’t have a Guardian blog yet. Is something amiss?

  49. I’m not sure where is the most appropriate place to ask if and when there is going to be a blog today for the Nutmeg puzzle. It seemed to me to be fun, but was also simple: still deserves a blog though!!

  50. muffin & Coltranesax
    The scheduled blogger has failed to turn up today. A stand-in is currently writing a post which will be published erelong.

  51. Gaufrid

    Not much more than an oddity, but I would draw your attention to comments numbered (currently at least) 15-18 in today’s Chifonie.

  52. Hi PeterO
    Thanks for drawing my attention to this. It ties in with the fact that the two FT blogs scheduled to appear in the early hours of tomorrow were actually published mid-afternoon today.

    So far as I can tell, between 1335 and 1510 (or up to an hour later) the clock used by WordPress for the timestamps was 9 hours fast! I have edited all the comments posted during this period to correct the timestamp and am pursuing the clock error with our hosting company.

  53. Gaufrid

    For the last few days I have found that the site ‘hangs’ for a long time – sometimes timing out & sometimes eventually loading – I don’t experience this with any other websites, so I don’t think it’s my pc – it does load sometimes, so it’s only a minor inconvenience, but I thought I should let you know what’s happening.

  55. Hi Shikasta & JuneG
    Thanks for the feedback. There is a problem with server overload at the moment which is, at best, causing long page loading times and, at worst, ‘connection timed out’ errors.

    I contacted the hosting company early yesterday evening and again shortly after 9am today and was told that they were aware of the problem and that their technicians were striving to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

    If it’s any consolation, the problem is even more severe behind the scenes in the admin pages where I have spent most of the day.

  56. Thank you Gaufrid. I note from your announcement that normal service was resumed at 17.15 & all does appear to be well now – hope it is at your end, too.

  57. Re Daily Telegraph Cryptic. The last few days hovering on the “click here” bar just gives a hint and not an answer (as for the prize X-words). Is this intended?

  60. I am reading Peter O’s blog on today’s Philistine in the Guardian, but for some reason the lines overrun the right hand margin of the box, so that the last word (or more?) of each line cannot be read.

    It’s not a problem with any earlier blogs – can anything be done to remedy it?

  61. Hi Mac Ruaraidh Ghais
    Sorry about that. The fixed width of the Great Skua picture was causing the table to be wider than the viewing pane so text was not wrapping as it should have done. I have resized the image to correct this and everything should now be viewable.

  63. Hi jmac
    Of course, at the appropriate time! 😉

    The closing date for entries was extended to 3/1/16 due to the festivities so the blog will appear on the 4th.

  67. Hi Gaufrid,

    Totally minor – I am in Japan and am being forced to do the Captcha to get onto the site every time. I see from an earlier thread that this happens in China so guess it’s the same phenomenon? Japan is the home of robots after all.

    best,

    geof

  68. Hi geof
    Sorry for the inconvenience. In order to reduce wasted server resources, I have added most of the countries included in the various Project Honeypot lists to the CloudFlare ‘Block’ list so anyone trying to access the site from one of these countries has to complete a Captcha to prove that they are human and not a bot.

    If you have a static IP address, and if you are going to be in Japan for any length of time, I can add it to the CloudFlare ‘Accept’ list which will then remove the need for you to complete a Captcha.

  69. Hi Gaufrid,

    Thanks for the response – I’ll be here a while but the address is dynamic unfortunately. I’m looking at it as a chance to improve my Captcha skills – am getting it about 50% of the time now, which is a marked improvement.

    Terrific site – thank you so much for all your work.

    geof

  70. Gaufrid

    2015 is my second full year of solving The Guardian crossword on most days of the week and of reading and contributing to the blogs on this site. Practically all my posts are to the Guardian pages.

    It’s time to thank you for maintaining such a good blogging site. I can imagine but may not have appreciated how much skill and energy go into keeping the site working and maintaining quality. So a big thank you for achieving all this. And a thank you to anyone else who may be involved.

    I find this site intelligent, tolerant, good humoured and often witty. The setters, bloggers and contributors must all take a share of the credit for making it so.

    One thing I really like about the design of the site is that all posts are ‘in-line’. By that I mean when you post something it appears in line at the end of what is already there. On sites where you are allowed to reply to a specific post, and what you write then appears indented, and so on, it is hard to follow the general thread of the crossword puzzle as a whole. For some reason, on blogging sites where a single issue is allowed to expand through replies (and replies to replies, …), the posts tend to get too long, and the general thread gets obscured.

    Well done, and a Happy New Year.

  71. Hi Alan
    Thanks for your kind remarks. I can assure you that nested comments will not be implemented on this site, at least whilst I am administrator. I agree with you about the difficulty following the discussion but for me the worst aspect is having to read from the beginning each time to see if anything has been added since the previous visit. I’m OK on this site because I can view all comments in chronological order in the admin panel but I no longer read comments on sites that have them nested.

  72. Gaufrid

    I don’t think the General Discussion page is used much, so I’m using this just to alert you to a post I have just written to the Guardian page for 31 December – no. 60. (It is a rather late post for that day.) In it, I make a parenthetical reference to the administrator.

  73. An actual website issue: I normally read this forum/blog on a PC, and understand the @xx form of referencing previous comments. But – I’ve just had a look with my Android phone, and on that platform – the comments are not numbered at all – which makes the references a little cryptic. Are you able to tweak the Phone-specific website to add the numbers?

  74. A recent sore topic has resurfaced in today’s blog of the Guardian cryptic crossword for 20 December (no. 26,785 – Boatman).

    Boatman has cleverly and provocatively provided a clue (13D) with ‘compileritis’ in it, the answer being UP ONESELF. Some contributors couldn’t resist commenting on this – and why not – but some comments were uncalled for, and at least one is gratuitously offensive to, or about, a person who is no longer here.

    Please let me give you the relevant parts of the particular posts that I am concerned about:

    Rullytully @3
    13d is doubtless a dig at HH, but as (according to Gaufrid) he never existed, I have no problem with that.

    Shirl @9
    Can someone confirm Rullytully@3’s comment about the non-existence of HH? He did give a name and say he had Aspergers – was this a lie?

    Simon S @11
    Shirl @ 9: see the comments on the graun crosswords from about Dec 30 onwards, and specifically Gaufrid’s comment 60 on the Rufus 26771 on Jan 4.

    JollySwagman @37
    Thanks to SS #11. I didn’t see that at the time. Good riddance. I’m sure all those on the inside know precisely who’s behind all that. Backstabbing other setters is one thing – feigning a physical handicap to do it is surely beyond contempt.

    It’s the last one of these that I am most concerned about and would draw your attention to.

    It’s good that on this site the regular contributors themselves manage to discuss anything in an adult, whether it’s about the clues and answers or something else. I need to say something myself on this but am reluctant to continue an unpleasant discussion on the main thread – hence this note on this part of the site.

    You and I have already had a brief discussion on the topic I’m raising again now (which is about hedgehoggy but also your role). It’s not ‘established’ that hedgehoggy is genuine or that he is not. I believe he is, and I believe his now well-known pained ‘resignation letter’ on this site (I think he wrote it on 1 January, but on the 30 December blog) is also genuine.

    As for ‘feigning a physical handicap’, I cannot comment on the truth of that (but I remember it being something you reported), but that is the particular phrase that I consider to be gratuitously offensive, personal and unnecessary. I hope that particular sub-plot on the day’s blog peters out.

    Finally, my main reason for believing what I call HH’s resignation letter to be genuine is that I had already detected quite clearly, before he posted that note, the same mental symptoms of Asperger’s that my grown-up son has. I empathise easily with Asperger’s sufferers, and I tolerate just as easily the negativity and the irritating orderliness and black-and-whiteness that shone through HH’s contributions. That’s why I was one of those who encouraged HH’s return to the site if he wanted to do so.

    Thank you for listening.

  77. Gaufrid

    re: my post @74

    Fortunately the offensive post on 20 January that I referred to has been ignored as I hoped. I’m sure you noted it and my comments above.

  79. Gaufrid – just out of curiosity!
    Occasionally I attempt to finish a post with a line of “..”, to show uncertainty. Twice I have been “refused permission to post” (automatically); deleting some of the “..” lets it through. What is going on, and what is the maximum number of “..” allowed?

  80. Hi muffin
    The simple answer to both your questions is I don’t know. Until a few minutes ago I was not aware that this happened so I will need to do some research on the WordPress support website (if I can think of a suitable search term!).

  82. Hi!
    Not sure if I found the right place to post this…
    Looking for a cryptic puzzle setter for a new, bi monthly magazine.
    Medium level
    Anyone interested?
    Please let e know on what conditions you would like to work and if possible an example of one of your previous puzzles.
    Looking forward hearing from you!
    Have a nice day!
    Edward

  83. Edward @82

    I might be interested in providing puzzles for your magazine. How do I get in touch with you? You’ve given no contact details in your post.

  84. No one, here or elsewhere, seems to write up Antico’s Genius crosswords for The Oldie – not as challenging as Inquisitor and its ilk, but themed and thus more interesting on that front than routine cryptics. Would the masters of Fifteensquared be interested in a blog submission on the current Genius puzzle?

  85. Hi David @84
    Sorry for the delay in replying to your comment (busy day yesterday). This is not a publication/crossword that I am familiar with (read hadn’t heard of it at all until yesterday). A google brought up the on-line version but I could find no trace of a crossword so I assume that it is only available via subscription.

    If that is the case then I doubt there would be sufficient interest to justify the time taken to prepare and publish a blog, particularly if it is going to be a one-off, but thanks for the offer.

  86. Gaufrid @85: Thanks. I meant to offer a regular Genius blog if the first effort was thought satisfactory, but it’s easier still not to bother. You have high standards: Oldie circulation is well over 45,000 according to Wikipedia.

  87. muffin @81

    Although I can’t answer the question you put to Gaufrid concerning the row of dots that you typed in, what I do know is that you could type just 3 dots, which forms a horizontal ellipsis (or just ‘ellipsis’), which indicates something like ‘and so on’.

    In fact, when you type three full stops, the software used by the site automatically converts them to a single-character ellipsis of 3 dots. The dots in an ellipsis are smaller (i.e. fainter) than individual full stops – but I suppose you could make them bold to make them stand out more.

    To make a longer line of dots you could break it up like this:
    … … … … …
    which in bold becomes
    … … … … …
    [which I think is too bold].

    I have encountered a related problem to do with dashes, but again there is a straightforward solution. I sometimes want to type something like
    ––A–––B–
    to illustrate a point. However, I achieved that by using en-dashes and not hyphens. If I use hyphens it appears like this:
    –A—B-
    which is not what I want (the line lengths are proportional, but you can’t see the number of dashes). To achieve the successful result above I typed in the HTML character code for each en-dash, which is as follows:
    an ampersand followed by the letters ndash followed by a semicolon

    I’ll point you to this post on a Guardian page soon if it is evident that you haven’t seen it!

  88. A short addition to my own post @87:

    Instead of the long-winded

    “an ampersand followed by the letters ndash followed by a semicolon”

    I could have given it as

    –

    (but for some reason I thought the site software would not process the HTML escape code for the ampersand – the preview confirmed that it does).

  90. Hi Tony @89
    This has been raised a number of times before and my reply has always been the same. The i cryptics are recycled ones from the Independent which originally appeared 4-5 years ago so we have already blogged them.

    The following site prepares a daily blog for the i which includes a link to the original 15² post:

    https://idothei.wordpress.com/

  91. Love the new format. Numbers too in Android.:-) I just have a couple of questions. How do you skip to the end? Is there a way of doing it without laboriously scrolling through? And what does pinging mean?

  92. Hi Meg
    Thanks for the feedback. I wasn’t aware that there had been any change to the mobile format. I used to be able to emulate various mobiles in Google Opera to see how the site looked but this feature seems to have been removed (or at least severely restricted) in the latest version. I can still emulate a Windows phone in IE11 but the display doesn’t appear to have changed and there is still no comment numbering.

    I don’t know of a way to avoid having to scroll through the comments to get to the end but perhaps someone who has a smart phone (I don’t!) might be able to suggest something. As for pinging, if you really want to know 😉 , see here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_(blogging)

  93. Thanks for the info Gaufrid. I only asked about the scrolling-through business because at the top of the general discussion page it says you can skip to the end, and I thought, that would be handy. I’d never heard of ping, that sounds like a good wheeze too, but open to scamming apparently.
    I don’t know what the new format looks like on a smartphone, I don’t have one. I have a tablet which uses Android, which I believe phones use too so it’s probably the same.

  94. PS Anyway the new layout is brilliant and it’s great not to have to bring up the menu whenever you want to go to a different part of the site. Thanks for what must have been a lot of hard work.

  96. Sorry Gaufrid, it must have been a strange blip with my operating system. For a few hours it went to the full site on my tablet. I’d never seen it before because I’d never accessed it on the PC, and assumed the site had been redesigned. After a few hours it went back again to the Android site. Weird. Sorry to have taken up your time but it was well meant. I wonder if anyone else has had the same experience.

  97. Hi Meg
    No problem. It was more likely to be a glitch at the server end with your user agent not being recognised as a mobile device therefore you were presented with the desktop view rather than the mobile one. If you prefer the former you can always scroll down to the bottom of the page where you should find the option to switch between the two.

  99. Hello Gaufrid,

    For the last few weeks I’ve had to enter my name & email address each time I comment, otherwise the preview shows me as “Anonymous”. Any idea as to why this should have happened, please?

    June

    PS: have just checked & it didn’t happen this time!

  100. Hi June
    Your name and email address are stored by your browser and so will be removed if you delete your browsing history. You may have done this manually or a setting may have been changed so that the history is deleted each time you close the browser.

    You don’t mention which browser you are using. My reply is based on IE11 but I’m sure Chrome and other browsers will have a similar feature.

  101. Thank you, Gaufrid.

    Have just realised that the change happened at the same time as the search engine suddenly switched, so I must have pressed something by mistake. My husband “stole” my laptop for a few weeks while he was having computer problems in the middle of important work, so I’ve been relying on my iPad, about which, I have to admit, I do not know much! Anyway have checked on the laptop & there’s no problem there.

    Thanks again,
    June

  103. Hi, Gaufrid,

    I have just discovered that pressing the delete key deletes the entire Reply, when you have gone to Preview Comment. This is most galling after having spent some time on writing the reply (yes, I know wise virgins make copies first)

  104. Hi Dave
    Thanks for the feedback. I’ll look into this issue (probably tomorrow, I’m a bit busy today) but I’m not sure if I will be able to do much about it unless there is an alternative WordPress plugin that I could install.

  105. Thanks, Gaufrid.

    As I replied to Mr B, if you use the browser’s forward button you can recover the “lost” comment; if, as I did, you click on the crossword name again, you have lost it.

  106. Hi Dave
    Not good news I’m afraid. The plugin that generates the ‘preview comment’ feature hasn’t been updated for six years so it is obviously no longer supported. I know that it does not work in the later versions of IE unless ‘compatibility view’ is invoked and it may not be long before updates to WordPress cause it to stop working altogether.

    There does not appear to be another, supported plugin that provides a similar function so for the time being we will have to make do with what we’ve got. Sooner or later I will no doubt have to remove the preview facility due to WordPress updates.

  107. Thanks for taking the trouble to investigate. I’ll try and remember the trap in future and its recovery.

    Dave

  108. Two site questions please.
    How do I get rid of the Cookies message that is frozen at the end of the day’s blog? (mobile only – Android)
    How do I get this ongoing site dialogue to display the latest entry at the top of the scroll rather than the bottom?
    Many thanks by

  109. Hi nametag
    I don’t have any mobile devices to be able to check but, in simulation, clicking on ‘Accept’ should remove the ‘Cookies’ message (for a month, after which it will re-appear until ‘Accept’ is clicked again).

    The site is set to display comments in chronological order, both on the desktop and the mobile view. I would be reluctant to change this. I don’t know if it is possible to override this setting when using an Android.

  110. Hi Gaufrid. I’m also having a problem with the cookie notification box obscuring the most recent post. I have tried to click the “accept” button but nothing at all happens. It does not seem to register that I have touched the screen. While I’m here, just to say many thanks to you for this wonderful site. Jenny

  111. Should have added some details. This is the mobile site using an android phone and the chrome browser, all up to date. Charles using a Firefox browser doesn’t have the problem.

  112. Hi Jenny
    Thanks for the additional feedback. It seems that the WordPress plugin that generates the mobile view might not be fully compatible with all browsers (or perhaps with the ‘cookie’ plugin).

    I will check the support forum for each plugin to see if anyone else has reported a similar problem, but at the moment my best (or rather only!) suggestion is to scroll down to the bottom of the screen, select desktop view and then see if the ‘Accept’ button works, after which you can return to the mobile view.

  114. Gaufrid, sorry to bother you but once again a post on the Guardian site has appeared signed by Robin Harland and not Harhop . Any chance of correcting it?

  116. Hi Gaufrid
    Minor problem – for some reason my ID now has the “website” field filled in (http:// followed by my Email address), so my name appears as a clickable link, though it isn’t of course. I tried deleting it, but it came back again. Is it possible to get rid of the entry in this field?

  117. Hi muffin
    This is probably due to the autocomplete function in your browser. I would suggest deleting your browsing history and autocomplete entries then starting afresh.

  119. This for Gaufrid and probably just FYI in case someone else has a similar experience.

    When I am in China on business travel I am unable to access Fifteensquared. I first receive a message stating something like “one more step required”, which then attempts to display a “captcha” but the site that generates the captcha is not reachable. This is a common situation due to the the Great Firewall (none of the Google sites are accessible for example), but it is a bit frustrating that Fifteensquared is reachable but the attempt to validate the visitor is human blocks access.

  120. Hi HKrunner
    Thanks for the feedback. I am aware of this problem. Because of the very high level of spam that the site received (15,000 in a single day at its peak) I blocked most of the countries on the Project Honeypot lists using the CloudFlare facility. This means that any visitors from those countries need to prove that they are human, and not a bot, before they can access the site.

    In the majority of cases this works well but unfortunately CloudFlare uses the Google Captcha and, as you say, all Google sites are blocked in China. I notified CloudFlare of this problem a couple of years ago but nothing has been done about it.

    If you have a fixed IP address whilst in China I can add it to my CloudFlare whitelist and you will then not receive the Captcha intercept. Email me at the usual address if this is an option.

  121. Gaufrid,

    Dang, lost yer e-mail address. But I have a question for you.

    I should have shared this at least a year ago, but before I do I want to just ask if I can do it via the General Discussion and whether I can use the appropriate web site links in that post.

    What it is is that I have two gadgets (free to all) that I wrote that I use to share the occasional favourite clues with non-Guardian solvers. The idea is to give those friends a more elegant experience than manic scrolling down an e-mail to find “the solution” to clue(s) at the top of the e-mail.

    I therefore developed a small web form that should work in any browser to share the clues with. This allows me to share 1 to N clues at a time. Obviously, that gadget has to be reconfigured for each new set of clues that I want to share. Therefore, I also developed a Windows program to produce new instances of the web form gadget. This also allows me to, at the click of a button, start a blank e-mail in my default e-mail program but with the web form file already attached.

    This makes more sense if you try it! Click on my name to get to my web site, click on the “Cryptic Crosswords” button, look to the right and scroll down to the last mini-panel which relates to this. There are two links. The second is an example of the web form which you can click on to run immediately in your browser. The first link takes you to the download site from which you can download the Windows Setup file for the generator program.

    As I said, these are totally free to anyone who wants them. I just need to know if I can post a less rambling message, complete with those same links, in General Discussion, which would make more sense to les autres.

  122. Hi Derek

    I’m rather tied up with other 15² issues at the moment so won’t be able to look at your gadgets today. With a bit of luck I will be able to find the time to do so after I have blogged tomorrow’s Guardian.

  123. Gaufrid
    You may have seen a general plea for help from S Panza and others on Saturday’s Enigmatist blog about the unexpected and unexplained removal of the latest Saturday crossword (Paul’s) from the Guardian site – only the print version is available.
    I have just had another look, and the situation is still the same.
    I don’t suppose you have any better way into the Guardian’s editing or production team than I do (i.e. none whatsoever), but I thought I would alert you here just in case.

  127. Hi Muffin
    Our aim is to have a blog of each daily puzzle posted by mid-afternoon (3pm). Most days they appear by early/mid-morning but occasionally other commitments prevent this.

  129. I’m getting a 404 (page not found) for last week’s Shed puzzle (Guardian Prize 27,154). It was there in the early hours this morning and still has an entry on the front page, remarking “4 responses” (which were there earlier I think).

  130. Hi Tony
    Thanks for the feedback. For some unknown reason Eileen’s blog was originally published with a 31 January date so it didn’t appear on the home page. She thought it had been lost and therefore produced another one. I deleted the original early this morning which would account for the 404 error if you have bookmarked that page.

    The ‘correct’ blog on the home page has, last time I checked, 22 comments so you may need to clear your browser’s cache/history before visiting the home page again. You should then be able to access the Shed post without a 404 error.

  131. Ah, yes, thanks, Gaufrid. Didn’t think to reload the home page. Once I’d refreshed that, it came up with “22 comments”, so should be fine now.

  132. Gaufrid (following on from 177 on the General Discussion page)

    I did what you suggested, selecting the Desktop version, then RSS feed for comments and selecting Feedly (which I use for feeds). I was transferred by android into my Feedly app, which (unfortunately) had feeds from comments on all 225 pages. Also, it didn’t add anything to my list of feeds, so I wouldn’t be able to select it even if I wanted to (which I obviously don’t — just posts on crosswords I do plus comments to them and comments to General Discussion and, possibly, Site Feedback and Events).

    However, I did manage to get a usable feed from General Discussion by selecting Add Content from within Feedly and giving it the page URL. This will at least mean I get a timely reminder if I post there and someone replies, avoiding my earlier discourtesy to you (and Alan). I’ll repeat the procedure for Site Feedback and Events.

    If you (or anyone else) knows how I can use Feedly (or another free(!) app) to achieve my ideal, as described above, I’d be very grateful. At present I have to keep reloading any page of interest to see if comments I’m interested in have appeared.

  133. Hmm… I now see there isn’t an Events page as such but individual pages listed under the rubric Announcements — on the Desktop View only. Any plans to fit this into the mobile version too, somehow?

  134. Hi Tony

    I have never used RSS feeds so much of what you have said is new to me. I was aware that the RSS feed sends a short summary of all comments but that is the best I can offer at the moment.

    There is a WordPress plugin that, if installed, would provide the feature you are looking for, ie being able to subscribe to an individual post and then receive an email notification of any new comments added to it. However, for the last three months or so we have been experiencing problems with the hosting company’s server (or rather servers because the site has had two migrations during that time) and I am unwilling to make any changes to WordPress until such time as the issues have been resolved.

    With regard to event notification, the announcement post will remain ‘sticky’ (ie at the top of the Home page) for a period of about 1 week so mobile users will see it. A short while ago, when there were several announcements appearing during the same week, I didn’t make them ‘sticky’ (because I don’t want more than one or two ‘sticky’ posts at any one time), instead I posted a ‘sticky’ umbrella post (as can be seen here) so that mobile users would see the same links to individual announcements as were in the left hand sidebar.

    The mobile view is generated from the desktop view by a WordPress plugin (WPtouch) and I have very little (read almost no) control over what it displays on a mobile. I wish I had because I would like comment numbering to be included and the ‘reply’ option removed as we don’t have threaded comments and the use of this button messes up the comment numbering/order in the desktop view.

  135. Gaufrid,

    Sorry to have bothered you with this, as I now realise all I have to do is use Add Content in my Feedly app and copy in the url of the page for the particular puzzle I want to follow. Perhaps it will help someone else who has been as slow on the uptake as me. Thanks for your time and trouble. (Still interested in getting announcements on my mobile without switching view, though)

  136. Gaufrid and Tony
    As a watcher/listener I found that discussion of feeds very interesting, and of course I have been aware for some time of the limitation of the mobile app (especially in the fact of having no comment numbering).
    I shall stick to using the desktop view myself (on my laptop, incidentally, as I only use my android device while travelling).
    Also, I’m not into using feeds at present, and I shall continue visiting the General Discussion page from time to time (much less the Site Feedback page) looking out for comments from Tony. Well, anybody actually, but Tony is the one whose comment I missed!
    It’s an excellent site, Gaufrid, and, quite apart from the consistently high quality of contributions from bloggers and commenters, I particularly like the linear nature of the days’ blogs – without nested comments/replies.

  137. Tony @135.
    It was no bother, I’m glad you have found a solution. You will still get announcements, on your mobile, they will be ‘sticky’ for about a week so should appear when you access the Home page.

  138. Alan B @136

    Thanks for the complement re “excellent site”. As I have said previously, at least while I am Administrator, nested (threaded) comments will not be an option. I abhor them because you have to re-read the whole list to see if anything new has been added.

  139. Yes, thanks, Gaufrid. My last commemt crossed with your full reply, so I hadn’t read that when I posted, but I’m happy to say I was made aware of your reply by checking in to my Feedly. I do have a laptop, but it’s incredibly slow, so unless I have a special reason to fire it up, I stay on the mobile. It is a shame about the comment numbering, though using “[n] above” is a reasonable compromise, I feel.

    In fact, I realise now that I saw your sticky umbrella notice, which is how I even knew about Events (and I’m really glad I heard about the London S&B this month, even if there didn’t seem to be any 225ers there). Later I was puzzled (npi) when I couldn’t find it on my mobile to check the details. Then, when I saw it on the laptop, I assumed that’s where I’d originally noticed it. All is now clear, thanks.

    It would be good if you eventually implemented the plug-in for email notifications because I would get an alert. I get such alerts from (non-crosswordy) Blogger-driven blogs I post to and it’s very handy. I can understand your reluctance, though.

    Anyway, I’m in a much better position now than I was yesterday. Thanks again.

  140. Gaufrid @138

    On Blogger, at least (don’t know about the WordPress plug-in you mention), using a system of email notification gets round the problem of having to scroll through to see if any replies have been added where replies are nested, as any reply generates an email if you’re following the post. On the other hand (at least on the Blogger blog I’m most familiar with), you don’t know what comment the reply relates to, so you still have to look for it. I ameliorate this problem by copying (some of) the text of the reply from the email, then using that to search the blog page. Nested replies are most useful when you’re reading through comments after the hurly-burly’s done, because you can ignore lots of toing-and-froing about a point you’re not really interested in. So, not so useful for your blog, really, where it all happens over a couple of days and is then largely forgotten.

  141. As if the puzzle wasn’t torture enough in itself (I got nowhere with it), Bert and Joyce’s blog on Boatman’s Genius 168 suffers from the text disappearing off the rhs of the page, so no (or very little) relief there! It seems a slider is needed, but I don’t find one. Is that the case for everyone, or am I just too stupid even to read the solution properly?

  142. Tony
    It’s not you! I have had a look at the post and the table that the bloggers have used to format the clues, solutions etc has been set to a fixed width so the text doesn’t wrap round to a new line on narrower displays. I will see what I can do to rectify this.

  145. This is a test – I have been having problems posting this morning – first one disappeared and the second refused the correct Captcha value

  148. Gaufrid
    Re: Guardian Pasquale thread on 19 July.
    Don Manley has just asked if ‘someone’ could extend his apology for the clueing error in OCEANID to ‘GU’ (comment @45 on that thread). I take it you are in a position to do this. I wasn’t sure what you see and don’t see when you are taking another blogger’s turn!
    No need to reply to this.
    Alan B

  149. Hi Alan B
    I had seen Don’s request (I read every comment posted on the site) but will have to leave it to someone else to extend his apology because I don’t know what he is referring to when he says GU.

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