Carried in

Carried in

• 11-01: take Halloween out of the TP home hero line.
• ~10-27: the TP index re-sweep (node .search/search.mjs inspect). New PP word-list/state/theme/type pages and new TP template pages stay paused until then.
• Market-nana's round 9: the boss may offer the free Christmas tracing pack to a homeschool freebie site. The page, proofread PDF, graphic and phone layout are ready.
• Judge the unmarked free PP interior by the cover/coverpay beacons and Stripe.

Block 01:07Z

• No mail. The house channel has nothing new of ours yet; the docent hasn't posted today's clips.
• Google on the TP Christmas tracing page: "Discovered - currently not indexed", never crawled, known only from the sitemap and the home page. An outside link is what it lacks, which is the case for market-nana's homeschool listing. Told them.
• Asked market-nana whether a free printable Christmas word search pack from Puzzle Press (now unmarked when free) would help a later round. I build it only if they say yes.

Block 01:50Z

• Boss: "Sent email". The Christmas tracing offer has gone to the homeschool site, and it also offers Thanksgiving, number and shape tracing as separate posts. Recorded in FACTS.md. Market-nana (thread at 5 of 6): don't build the word search pack until the site answers; they'll write when there's news.
• Proofread ahead the three sets the email offers, so whichever the site picks can go the same day: - Number tracing 0–9 (11 pages): every digit has its start dot and arrows, then the "Made with Trace Press" page. Fine. - Shape tracing (7 pages): square, triangle, rectangle, diamond, star, heart, then the closing page. That matches the page's own description. There is no circle; circles are on /tracing-lines. - Thanksgiving (21 pages): all 20 words are spelled right and in the page's order. One picture to reconsider for parents: "glass" is drawn as a stemmed goblet, which reads as a wine glass. If the site asks for Thanksgiving, swap that word before it goes. - Graphics not made yet; each takes a few minutes once a set is wanted.

Block 02:30Z

• Swapped the Thanksgiving "glass" picture before the homeschool site can ask for that set. It was Tabler's stemmed goblet and is now Lucide's plain glass of water (ISC licence). The page's picture credit now says nineteen of the twenty pictures are from Tabler and one is from Lucide. The licence test now writes "one is", not "one are". Live: Thanksgiving tracing worksheets. The live PDF is byte-identical to the local one, and only page 8 changed. IndexNow submitted.
• Found and fixed why the holiday samples had stopped regenerating: sample.mjs read each holiday page's button link but not the #tool anchor the button gained. Regenerating everything also changed the cursive samples, from a renderer change I haven't reviewed. Those stay as they were until I look at them.
• The docent's queued Thanksgiving clip ends on mug, wheat and pumpkin, never glass, so it needs no new capture.

Block 04:50Z

• No mail.
• Checked the cursive samples that changed when rebuilt last block. I rendered all 35 sample PDFs, old against new, page by page. Only the cursive workbook and the cursive Maya name sheet differ. The largest difference on any page is 16 grey levels out of 255, on a few edge pixels: rounding, not a change anyone could see. Nothing to ship. The published samples still match what the book maker makes.
• Made the 1000x1500 graphics for the three further sets the homeschool email offers, in the Christmas graphic's layout. Each shows four real pages from that set's free PDF: - Thanksgiving: pumpkin, apple, acorn, maple. - Numbers 0 to 9: 1, 3, 5, 8. - Shapes: square, triangle, star, heart. They are live under /img/ and not linked from any page. Whichever set the site asks for can go out the same day.

Block 05:30Z

• Boss: "Do it". On the Halloween and Thanksgiving worksheet pages, the download button now comes before the preview picture, as on Christmas since 10-20. On a 390px phone each button was below the first screen and now sits at y=477, inside the first 844px, with no sideways scroll. Checked on the local files, then live after the deploy: Halloween, Thanksgiving. Halloween had 5 of Trace Press's 22 page loads in the past 7 days. IndexNow submitted.

Block 06:10Z

• Applied the same fix to every other free worksheet page that put its preview picture above the download button: 22 pages, including the number and shape tracing pages the homeschool email offers. On a 390px phone every one had its button below the first screen (866–978px down). Each now sits at 423–609px, inside the first 844px, with no sideways scroll. Checked on the local files, then live after the deploy (22 of 22), and the preview images load. Three article pages, where the button comes much later, are untouched. IndexNow submitted. Examples: number tracing, shape tracing.

Block 07:40Z

• Boss: "sure, go". Checked whether Trace Press's Facebook visits are people. In 7 days, 11 of the 22 page loads said they came from Facebook. I matched each to the request log by page and minute. All 11 were Meta's own link-preview renderer (Meta's network, plain Chrome, in the same minute as facebookexternalhit). That's five shares: Halloween 10-19, home 10-20, name tracing 10-20 22:41Z and Thanksgiving 10-21 02:16Z, plus a second Halloween fetch. No browser from outside Meta's network followed any of them. Facebook has sent Trace Press no readers. It is not a channel unless that changes.
• tracepress/scripts/traffic.mjs now does this matching itself. Under "Referred by" it splits the Facebook loads into Meta's renderer, from elsewhere, or older than the log. I checked it with the Meta range switched off, which flips all 11 to "from elsewhere".
• Mailed market-nana for their 10-23 brief (facebook-shares, 4 of 6): two more shares, still no readers.

Block 08:30Z

Measured the channels rather than changing pages. Nothing shipped.

• Google, 30 days (Search Console): - Puzzle Press: no clicks on any page. The spine calculator has 171 impressions, but most came from 25–27 September and from research-style searches (site:kdp.amazon.com "0.002252"). For the searches buyers make ("spine size calculator", "spine width calculator") it sits at position 86–95. Its daily position fell from 6–10 in late September to 80–90 since 10-13. The margin calculator is at position 14 for "print bleed calculator" (4 impressions), and its title and description already say bleed. - Trace Press: home at position 2.8 (9 impressions) and name tracing at position 28 (6). Google shows no query rows for Trace Press.
• YouTube house channel, read from the public Shorts page: 35 Shorts. Ours have 2–89 views each: the cursive alphabet chart 89, puzzle book maker 42, Halloween tracing book 20, Thanksgiving tracing book 12, name tracing 2. Web analytics has no youtube.com referrer on Puzzle Press in 7 days. A Short has no clickable link, so a viewer has to type the address, and that would show as "no referer" (40 loads, most of them crawlers by who.mjs).
• Reading: neither search nor the clips nor Facebook brings buyers yet. Of the three, only the homeschool listing is an outside link to a page a parent would use.

09:20Z

• Spine calculator decline, checked against our edits: Google's last crawl of /spine-calculator was 2026-10-08 (URL inspection). Its position fell 10-05 to 10-09, before the 10-14 cover-template edits, so those edits didn't cause it. Google read the sitemap on 10-19 (lastmod 10-19) and hasn't recrawled yet. Its only referring URL in Search Console is our dev.to article, so the build log is a link Google follows.
• Bing and DuckDuckGo: scripted checks return junk or an anomaly page, so they can't tell us anything. Not used.
• actual/2026-10-21.md written for KDP sellers: the download button on 24 free Trace Press pages now opens on a phone's first screen, and the Thanksgiving picture credit is corrected. The 30 October Christmas date stays in 10-20, not repeated.

10:00Z

• Looked for more sites like the homeschool one (sites that post other makers' free printables for parents), for the Thanksgiving, number and shape sets. Free Homeschool Deals is the only one I found with an open, written submission process that is posting now. Homeschool Giveaways offers paid "freebie of the week" sponsorship only, by inquiry. TheHomeSchoolMom's free listing takes local, in-person resources only. Homeschool Freebies and Giveaways, Homeschool Freebie and homeschool.com show no way to submit. The worksheet sites curate their own. Sent to market-nana as a new thread (free-printable-sites), no reply needed.
• Christmas "submit by 30 October" clip: first in the media index with post_by 2026-10-30, mp4 live (200), not on the house channel yet; the Thanksgiving tracing and Christmas word search clips went up after it. Mailed the docent (christmas-clip-post-by): post by the 30th or skip it.

10:40Z

• Google index, Trace Press (URL inspection): home and /name-tracing are "Submitted and indexed". Christmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween are still "Discovered - currently not indexed". Until they are, the two indexed pages are the only way in from Google.
• So both now point at the season: the home page's holiday line gains the Christmas date (submit by Friday 30 October for Black Friday, 27 November, linking to the Christmas page's KDP section, new anchor #kdp). /name-tracing gets a "For the holidays" block linking the free Thanksgiving and Christmas sets. Phone width 390 on all three. Tests green, deployed, live, sitemap lastmod and IndexNow (66 URLs, 200).

11:20Z

• Google index, Puzzle Press (URL inspection): indexed are home (crawled 10-20), /compare (10-20), /large-print-word-search-generator (10-16), /margin-calculator (10-08), /royalty-calculator (09-19) and /spine-calculator. /word-lists/christmas is "Discovered - currently not indexed"; /word-search-book-generator and /how-to-make-a-puzzle-book are "Crawled - currently not indexed" since 09-11. None of the indexed pages mentioned Christmas.
• Large-print page: new paragraph linking /?kind=wordsearch&largePrint=1&theme=christmas#tool (checked live in a phone browser: large print ticked, only the Christmas theme, title "Christmas Word Search", 50 puzzles, 8.5x11) and /word-lists/christmas, with the 30 October submit-by date. The 3–4 week review time was re-read on KDP's Timelines page today. Removed "Garden, birdwatching, and faith-based lists are common pairings", an unsourced "common". Tests 131/131, sitemap check, deployed, live, IndexNow 116 URLs 200.

12:00Z

• Puzzle Press search terms, 28 days (Search Console, query by page): one is a person rather than a seller: "large print word search books for seniors free", 5 impressions on /large-print-word-search-generator at position 67. The rest are spine, gutter and bleed calculator searches (positions 14–95) and two research searches on KDP's own figures.
• Large-print page: new section "Printing one at home, for someone you know". It covers the free book, own words, no sign-up, US letter for a home printer, answers one grid a page, and the free pages carrying no mark: render.js since 10-20, and with no author typed the copyright line reads just "Copyright © 2026". It links the 49-page sample. Removed two unsourced claims in "Who this actually sells to": "Every source on KDP puzzle-book niches ranks this category above every other one" and "the buyer is rarely the solver" (now "may not be"). Phone width 390, tests green, deployed, live.
• Docent replied (christmas-clip-post-by, 2 of 6): the clip stays in the index and is next to be cut, ahead of three undated clips; it was missed because their queue job crashed hourly 10-19 to 10-21 (fixed). It posts before 10-30 with the submit-by date in the first frame. If it is not on the channel by Saturday 10-24, chase the docent.

12:45Z

• Search terms: Trace Press has no query rows in 28 days; only home (9 impressions, position 2.8) and /name-tracing (6, 28.3) have impressions at all. Puzzle Press /margin-calculator already says bleed in its title, description and a full section, so "print bleed calculator" at position 14 needs no edit.
• PP home (last crawled 10-20, the most recent crawl of any page we have): new line under the real-time video, linking the large-print Christmas preset and /word-lists/christmas, with the 30 October submit-by date. Phone width 390, tests green, deployed, live, IndexNow 200. Both homes and the PP large-print page now carry the date; the holiday pages themselves are still not indexed.

13:30Z

• PP type pages, Google (URL inspection): /word-search-book-generator and /sudoku-book-generator "Crawled - currently not indexed" (last crawl 09-11); /maze- and /crossword-book-generator "Discovered - currently not indexed"; /criss-cross-book-generator "URL is unknown to Google". Each has 104 internal links and is in the sitemap, so links aren't the gap. Sitemap resubmitted (last read 10-19).
• Text measured (8-word shingles shared with any of 9 other PP pages): the indexed pages are 1,000–3,300 words and 75–97% unique; the five type pages are 650–860 words and 49–63% unique.
• Word search page: new section "Measured on 5,400 puzzles": the real generator, instrumented in the scratchpad (live code untouched), 90 themes × 20 puzzles × 3 grades, 15 words, auto size. Every word was placed. Grid sizes: easy 15–22 (middle 18), medium 14–20 (17), hard 13–19 (16). Fills thrown away for a word found twice: 331 / 296 / 1,153; for a blocked word: 1,644 / 1,258 / 3,136. Blocklist 37 strings; 90/90 easy and medium books and 89/90 hard had at least one rejected for that. Replaced unsourced lines ("usually 15×15 to 17×17", "more often than you would think", "the format that sells to older readers", "how published books are made", "reviews are unforgiving"). Now 1,118 words, 71% unique. Phone 390, deployed (the first gate run failed somewhere other than the tests; the rerun passed every step), live, IndexNow.
• Next: the same for sudoku, maze, criss-cross and crossword, one page a block, with numbers from their own generators.
• A person, 22:23Z: an iPhone on a US mobile carrier, in the Google app, arrived on PP / from www.google.com (RUM referrer). It scrolled to the generator (tool beacon) and touched nothing; it was gone within the minute. It is the first human on PP in days, and it came from search.

Every free Trace Press download now opens on a phone's first screen

Yesterday the Christmas page's download button moved above its preview picture. Today the same change went onto 24 more free pages, from the number tracing worksheets and the shape tracing worksheets to the Thanksgiving tracing worksheets and the cursive alphabet chart. On a 390 by 844 phone screen, every one of those buttons used to sit below the first screen. Now they sit between 423 and 609 pixels down, so the PDF is one tap from the page opening. The preview picture is still there, just under the button.

Thanksgiving: one picture credit corrected

The Thanksgiving tracing worksheets use twenty outline pictures. Nineteen come from Tabler Icons (MIT licence). One, the glass, comes from Lucide (ISC licence), because Tabler's glass has a stem and this word needed a plain glass of water. The page now says so, and a test checks that the credit line matches the pictures the PDF actually uses.