I knew from our analytics that the Finder was the most popular page on XWord Info. A few years ago, I don’t remember exactly when, I decided to start counting — not page views, but the number of times someone actually types a query into the text box and clicks a Find button. I even added a counter at the top of the page so people could count along with me.
I had no idea what to expect, but I assumed a hundred thousand finds would be an extreme upper bound. Now that the odometer has ticked over 30,000,000, I’m amazed and gratified that so many people find it useful.
It’s all about the Finder
The Finder page gets more attention than all the other pages put together. That’s true for users, and it’s true for me as well. I coded every single page on that site, and my time coding and optimizing the Finder dwarfs all the other work. I’ve tweaked the caching strategies, pushed the parallel processing capabilities, and rewrote SQL database algorithms trying to find the optimal user experience. I’ve added more capabilities over time, bringing in RegEx queries, integrating OneLook and Wordnik, and even a Spelling Bee button.
Jeff Chen’s scored word list
One significant factor that makes the XWord Info Finder uniquely valuable is that all the searches across published crosswords, private word lists, dictionaries, and even OneLook, provide results in the context of Jeff’s meticulously scored word list. You might not agree with all his scores, but with over 260,000 words scored by one successful constructor, it’s at least an interesting starting point. Plus, for every word published in an NYT crossword, you get a complete history of its usage in the Times with one quick click.
Jim’s selfish strategy
I get more requests and suggestions about the Finder page than anything else. I end up implementing some of them, but my main design goal is to build a Finder that I would want to use myself. Most people don’t care about Anagrams or Antonyms or RegEx or Letter Banks, but I think they’re interesting so there they are.
The Finder Future
Whatever other changes might come to XWord Info, I’ll keep the Finder page going strong. If every other page disappeared, many users wouldn’t even notice. Will there be new capabilities added? Of course. Stay tuned.