I don't know if this is related to the other searching problems,
but when the "Go" and "Search" buttons were swapped, some
strange behavior was introduced. "Go" works fine, but
"Search" doesn't. Two problems:
1. An extraneous "search" value in the query is created.
For example, typing "George Mason" and pressing search should try to
GET
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=George+Mason
but instead it tries to GET
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=George+Mason&search=Search
(note that "search=" appears twice).
Which means you can only search for the word "Search" :-).
2. Even if you hand-fix the search, the title search doesn't work
at all, nor is there any hint that the search wasn't performed.
It should either do a title search (that's not expensive), or
at least say "No title search performed, server too overwhelmed".
I hope that's clear..!