Puzzles are rated by bloggers and commenters on this site. The purpose of the ratings is to give visitors a snapshot of solvers’ opinions about any given puzzle and hopefully highlight those puzzles that stand out for one reason or another.
A rating for a puzzle can be assigned by anyone who comments on a page by using the drop-down menus just above the “Post Comment” button. A user isn’t required to add a comment; in fact, if you want to rate anonymously without adding a comment, just enter a single period in the comment field. (However, reasoning behind a rating is always appreciated.) Submitted comments will be made visible on the page as will any rating assigned. Ratings will also be added to the average at the top of the page for the chosen puzzle. (You may need to refresh the page to see the latest updates.) Ratings apply to the puzzles reviewed on that particular post, i.e., if you want to rate a puzzle that was reviewed on a previous day, just add a rating to that day’s post and your rating will be added to the ratings at the top of that post. Ratings for puzzles that do not appear on a particular post are ignored. Finally, if you rate the same puzzle twice on the same post, the second rating is ignored without an error message appearing.
A new enhancement is to use the “rate it” links by each puzzle at the top of the post; this will bring you down to the bottom of the page and prefill the comment text with a period and choose that puzzle from the drop down list. You only need to choose your star rating and submit the comment.
Our previous system for ratings was easy to use and anonymous, and that made it popular with many visitors. But that also made it prone to abuse. We hope this new system will prevent the sort of abuse we saw in the past or at least make it easier for us to manage.
As with all ratings systems, our system is entirely subjective, so take the ratings with as much salt as you wish, especially when a puzzle has received only a small number of votes.
It is also dependent on you the users to participate. If only a few people are rating puzzles every day, the averages won’t be reflective of the solving public. So we’re asking for your participation to make our rating system more accurate and robust. The more ratings the better! (As long as each rating is sincere and arrived at honestly.)
If you should run into difficulties, for example if you accidentally gave the wrong rating or assigned it to the wrong puzzle, just leave an additional comment explaining your situation and how you’d like it fixed. Our ratings guru (Dave) will help you out. One tip: if you are seeing unusually large stars on a mobile device, just clear your browser’s cache and refresh the page to return them to normal size.
Thank you for participating in our ongoing ratings experiment and helping to make Fiend the destination of choice for discerning crossword solvers.