A few content API questions

[Mike Roberts]

Hi Michael and other friendly Guardian people,

I have a few questions on using the API.

To give context I'm writing a small application that will email me on a daily basis the list of the 'top 5' stories with a headline and/or summary, with a link to the full item, from various sections that I choose. The NY Times has this service and I find it a great way of keeping abreast of the world. I've had a quick explore and written some code, but I'd like to ask a few things:

1) Is there a way of getting a list of results ordered by something other than newness? Editorial would be best, but I'd take popular if necessary. What I really want is the list of results to come back in the same order as they appear on the web or mobile pages. For example if I go to http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk I see a different list of results than if I go to http://explorer.content.guardianapis.com/#/search?tag=uk&format=json

I did try using 'Editors Picks' for this, but this seems to give a completely different set of results, and doesn't return anything for some sections, so I'm guessing this is not what I want to use 

2) What's the correct way to get a list of articles from a subsection? E.g. if I want cricket stories should I just do 'sport/cricket' as a tag search?

3) I don't have an API key yet but when I do will I have access to the summary paragraph that appears on the site? If not is there any other way of getting this that I've missed so far?

Cheers

Mike