TL;DR: We’ve made a small but significant change to how results of pattern searches with the OneLook Search button are displayed. Instead of showing results alphabetically, they are listed by popularity — how common they are in the real world. This puts more useful results closer to the top of the list.
Remind me what OneLook Search does
Most searches you do using the normal Search button can also be done using OneLook Search. This button retrieves results from an external source, not our local database, so you’ll get more possibilities. It knows about words and phrases, so searching with spaces is supported.
A pattern search means using ? or * to look for words that match a template. OneLook also has a special syntax for searching within topics, excluding or including letters, etc. described here.
What does “popularity” mean?
OneLook data comes from the World Wide Web, and OneLook has opinions about how frequently a word is used in the wild. Sometimes these sort orders seem a little random, but they can indicate how useful a word might be for a crossword.