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User stats sneak peek

15 comments (Add new comment)
Posted 6th Jun 2020 at 03:19
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
I've created a statistics page where you can see a summary of all your puzzle plays - ever!

It's here: User statistics page

The link will only work if you are logged in.

Unfortunately I seem to have deleted puzzle play information some time in 2013, so your statistics prior to 2013 may be mostly or completely empty, if you've been using the site longer than that. I do have them on an old PC in database backups, so I will try to recover them before I add this link into the main part of the site.

Currently you can only view your own information. Once I have completed the feature, I will let you opt in to making your profile public.

The next step will be to allow users to be ranked against one another in various criteria, which again will be opt in.

Posted 6th Jun 2020 at 03:20
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
Incidentally, dates are based on when you first played a puzzle - not the date it was published.
Posted 6th Jun 2020 at 03:21
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
Please feel free to suggest stats you'd like to see, or comment on this in any way.
Posted 6th Jun 2020 at 03:27
Last edited by gareth 8th Jun 2020 at 21:58
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
I guess I could also add general stats too.

Here are some static ones for now:
* The total number of puzzle plays on Puzzlemix is almost 6.7 million: 6,691,303 plays to be precise, not including plays of the demo players on the front page. However I have deleted some old stats, so I think the actual total is around 7.1 million.

* The most puzzle plays of any user (times a puzzle is opened) is an impressive 87,517 plays

* There have been 28,618 separate puzzles published to date

* The first user registered on 20th November 2006

* There are over 18,000 registered users, of whom 14,350 have actually played the puzzles (the rest just registered - some will have been spamming account attempts, no doubt)

* There are currently 210 daily puzzle subscribers (although I don't keep track of the total number of distinct users who have ever subscribed)

* There are 86 'books' of puzzles available to add, containing 7,505 puzzles in total

* There are 777 users who have added at least one book of puzzles to their account (although some had them added automatically, e.g. when I added one for all subscribers last year). In total 2,973 books have been added.

* 11,711 comments have been made on the puzzles

* 551 comments have been posted not on puzzles (i.e. in this forum only) across 93 separate topics

* I have posted a total of 1,694 comments out of both of these last two totals :)

* The largest puzzle yet published was a 44 x 44 Hanjie, only available now for users who have access to the legacy sets page (which is anyone who purchased a set before the current book system was introduced). The same set also included a 48 x 32 puzzle.

Posted 6th Jun 2020 at 04:08
TranslatorBJ Daily subscriber
Thanks Gareth. It's a bit scary to realise I have spent nearly a whole month of my life on here!
Posted 6th Jun 2020 at 12:55
Last edited by gareth 6th Jun 2020 at 12:56
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
On the plus side, there’s good evidence that solving this type of puzzle helps preserve and even build brain function, so that time is arguably very valuably spent.
Posted 6th Jun 2020 at 18:37
HollyBlue Daily subscriber
Interesting, thanks Gareth!
It's about 4 months for me, in 7.5 years. It's that last number which surprises me most!
Posted 7th Jun 2020 at 01:16
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
It might be worth adding that the statistics page total times currently don't omit any ridiculously long times, so if you e.g left the puzzle player open overnight and came back the next day and got a solve time of (say) 24 hours, then this would affect your stats. Or went on holiday for a fortnight and did the same... so I should probably add a filter to exclude really long times.
Posted 7th Jun 2020 at 01:31
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
Some more general statistics, this time from the website analytics, covering the period from January 2008 to today (so similar stats for just this year might be very different):
* Total distinct users who have visited the site: 698,000
* Total sessions (total times the site has been visited): 3.8 million
* Average session duration: 11 minutes
* Return rate: 70% (i.e. 70% of users come back again after their first visit)
* 29% of users are in the US, 23.5% in the UK, 4.4% in Canada, 3.5% in Germany, and then after that the next most popular countries are the Netherlands, Australia, India and Spain
* 4.8% of users are in London, and 1.6% in Chicago; after this the most popular places to visit from are New York, Sydney, Birmingham and Manchester.
* 32% of users use Google Chrome; 26% use Internet Explorer; 21% use Firefox; 14% use Safari
* 68.5% of users are on Windows; 10.5% on iOS; 8.5% on Mac; 8% on Android
Posted 7th Jun 2020 at 09:49
JoergWausW Daily subscriber
about the "distinct users" number: This might be off a bit, unless you base that information on the actual device being used.

I don't know about other countries or companies. But my internet provider at home changes my IP address every 24 hours. Sometimes I check your site with my laptop (not on my PC that I usually use to play). On my laptop I'm never logged in.
The same thing might be the case if people play anonymously on their mobile device using wireless on different airports, open hot spots...

So do you have a number how long people in average wait before they become a daily subscriber?

Posted 7th Jun 2020 at 13:52
Last edited by gareth 7th Jun 2020 at 13:53
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
The users number is from Google Analytics, so will be robust to changes in IP address in general - but I'm sure will overcount across multiple browsers to some extent, or for users who have disabled whatever it is they use to track usage. But that is probably a minority, although I'm just guessing - I'm sure there is plenty of info on this online somewhere. :) So yes I'm sure you count as at least two users from what you say, but conversely some people may be running blockers that disable Google Analytics, so maybe it balances out.

I have never tracked conversions, no, so I can't answer that. It would be interesting to know though. The problem is that when a subscription expires currently the site just deletes that information - it doesn't keep any record of previous subscriptions - so I have no easy way of querying that, unless I reconstruct that information somehow. It might be possible from Paypal records, but I don't know if they extend back very far.

Probably the most sensible change I could make would be to add ads for non-subscribers, but I have no plans to do that.

Posted 8th Jun 2020 at 21:54
Last edited by gareth 8th Jun 2020 at 21:59
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
Just reviewing the stats, and observed that my 'almost 4 million' figure from for the number of puzzle plays must be wrong. Just counting the total for logged in users comes to 5,385,196, and that excludes all not-logged-in puzzle plays. The puzzle records show 1,306,107 'not-logged-in' plays, which gives a total of 6.7 million. I've edited the post above to reflect this. This still excludes demo plays on the front page.

It seems I also must have deleted lots of older puzzles at some point, since that's where the previous count came from (by summing the play count for each puzzle still in the database). So even the 1.3 million statistic above must be an underestimate for the same reason, meaning that should probably be 1.75 million for a likely total of 7.1 million plays.

Posted 8th Jun 2020 at 22:07
Last edited by gareth 8th Jun 2020 at 22:10
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
The most played puzzle is Sudoku 1600 from 2018, which has been played 67,538 times, but only finished 295 times so it seems it got linked from somewhere that people clicked through but didn't bother playing. The puzzle that has been solved the most is 'Hanjie 1: Shaken, not stirred', that was posted in 2011.

Of puzzles with more than 5 ratings, the hardest-rated is 'Wraparound Sudoku 89' from '100 WRAPAROUND SUDOKU VOLUME 1', with a rating of 9.3/10 and an average solve time of 1 hour 7 minutes!

Taking puzzles with more than 5 plays, the slowest average solve is 'Jigsaw Sudoku' 98' from '100 JIGSAW SUDOKU 12X12 VOLUME 1', with an average solve time of 1 hour 22 minutes.

And... that previous puzzle, the Jigsaw Sudoku 12x12 one, has never been solved without significant aids. So that's possibly the hardest puzzle on the site.

Posted 13th Jun 2020 at 10:13
Last edited by HollyBlue 13th Jun 2020 at 10:44
HollyBlue Daily subscriber
I've wondered in the past whether there's any significant difference in completion times when using different devices. Is this information you could produce Gareth?

Edit: My question really is, how significant is the difference? I know from experience that Hanjie, for example, takes longer on my tablet than laptop, but I wouldn't expect there to be as much difference in time for, say, a 9x9 Sudoku. Also, I could finish puzzles more quickly on my laptop if I had a numeric keypad (not that you'd have any way of knowing whether one was used!).

Posted 16th Jun 2020 at 00:30
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
Hi HollyBlue,

Unfortunately the site doesn't preserve that information. The player tries to guess what you're using, but it doesn't store what it concludes. Perhaps it should - I do agree that average solving times on many puzzles will differ. It could also simply be stored anonymously as a set of overall averages.

But in any case, it isn't at the moment so I'm afraid I can't answer your question.

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