I guess you used the return key instead of clicking on the search icon? Seems to be a bug with the return key, I'll fix that this weekend sorry.

True, didn't occur to me, that I should click on the icon instead. Once I have clicked on the search icon once, enter also works. When I input a short query (single letter) it sometimes just shows a blank page, but maybe that is just HNs hug of death. Consider putting the query term more prominently in the front of the URL, so users can edit it. Also from the startpage, the URL in the URLbar isn't updated. As I already wrote, the browser shows completion for the searchbar on the result page, but does not for the one one the startpage. For my taste I would prefer less JS trickery, which would maybe already get rid of some of these issues.