The biggest NewEnigma update in nearly 20 years

For almost twenty years, NewEnigma has quietly evolved.

What began back in 2006 as a place to catalogue the weekly New Scientist Enigma puzzles gradually grew into something much bigger. Along the way I added films, TV shows, albums, books, music tracking, blog posts, user accounts and countless smaller features. Every new addition solved a problem at the time, but over the years the site inevitably became a mixture of old and new ideas.

Eventually I reached the point where I was spending more time working around the existing design than improving it.

So I decided it was time to start again.

Today I'm pleased to launch the biggest update NewEnigma has ever received.

A completely redesigned experience

This isn't just a new colour scheme or a few visual tweaks.

Almost every page has been redesigned from the ground up with the aim of making the site cleaner, faster and far easier to use across desktops, tablets and mobile devices.

The homepage now focuses on explaining what NewEnigma is, making it much easier for first-time visitors to understand what the site offers while still giving regular visitors quick access to the latest content.

Some of the highlights include:

• A completely refreshed visual design.

• Fully responsive layouts for phones, tablets and desktops.

• A brand new dark mode (with light mode still available if you prefer).

• Cleaner navigation throughout the site.

• Improved typography and readability.

• Better accessibility with improved contrast and semantic HTML.

• Faster page loading and smoother interactions.

Much more than a visual refresh

The redesign you can see is only part of the work.

Behind the scenes, the site has undergone one of the largest technical overhauls in its history.

Large parts of the frontend have been rewritten using modern JavaScript, legacy libraries such as jQuery have been removed, and the overall codebase has been significantly cleaned up and modernised.

This has resulted in:

• Improved performance.

• Reduced page sizes.

• Better search engine optimisation.

• Cleaner, more maintainable code.

• A stronger foundation for future features.

The goal wasn't simply to make NewEnigma look better today—it was to make it easier to continue improving for years to come.

Thank you

I'd like to thank everyone who has continued to visit NewEnigma over the years.

Whether you've been solving the weekly Enigma puzzles since the beginning, keeping track of the TV shows you've watched, or you've only recently discovered the site, your support has helped keep this little corner of the web alive for almost twenty years.

While I've tested the redesign extensively, I'm sure a few bugs have escaped my attention. If you spot anything that doesn't look quite right—or have suggestions for future improvements—I'd love to hear from you.

I hope you enjoy exploring the new NewEnigma as much as I've enjoyed building it.