Times Puzzles 4+

Update 25 June. Yet another month and still doesn’t work. Wht a load of junk. Great advert for what is supposed (ha, ha) to be UK leading newspaper.
Update two months later … 25 May and still doesn’t work. App support is dreadful, no replies in two months. To makes matters worse the other two Times apps (Times Live and Times Classic) which allow you to download some of the puzzles have been revamped and are also now bombing out left, right and centre, either mostly just closing immediately on opening the puzzles or at random times thereafter or giving silly messages like “unable to load puzzles when not online” when there is a perfectly good WiFi connection. New release 2.0.1 out 16 March does not work at all on any of my iOS devices and same on my wife’s. Bombs straight out within a second of opening. Followed all their suggestions, restarted, reloaded, checked memory, got latest iOS etc. Nothing works, and all I can get from their help mail address is an automated response asking for the problem / device information I’ve given them countless times. App useless. Support useless. Subscription being cancelled. Wish I could give zero stars.

I have been playing for a long time. At first you could see all your completed puzzles and part-finished ones. So, accidentally closing a puzzle wasn’t a big problem. But for some time it has been clearing all my entries so that, although it showed a puzzle as completed or part done, when I reopened the puzzle it was completely unstarted. I found that the only way to get back to being able to see part- or fully solved puzzles was to fully delete the app and reinstall it. This means I have lost anything I had done before but at least I can now do a puzzle in more than one session. What was particularly annoying was that the menu button is so close to the exit button that it is far too easy to accidentally close a puzzle when you just want to select an option. When this happens you have to restart the puzzle.
Update Dec 2022:Reloading the app fixed the problem of it not remembering your partly or completely solved puzzles for several months. But it has come back so I’ll try yet again reinstalling it. All other annoyances described by me and others remain. It truly is a disgrace to The Times.

Don’t bother downloading. Definitely don’t bother paying to subscribe. The Times has not bothered to create a functioning app. The interface is HORRIBLE. Keyboard too small. Half the time, the keyboard doesn’t work, making word entries painful. The design is aesthetically outdated, but that’s not as bad as the lack of usability. Enraging when you press things and nothing happens. Also very slow to load… does the Times not have any developers or something? It’s such a bloody shame…

I downloaded this because I like the NYT puzzle app. It is easy to use, things works as expected, nice stats, looks nice too. But the puzzles have American facts and spellings… so I came here. What a mistake… so disappointing. NYT puzzle app is £1 cheaper … do yourself a favour… download that instead.