It seems to me that the solve time difference on this puzzle demonstrates that "show repeated digits" should probably be considered more than minor aid.
The 2 top solvers in the "without solving aids" category (as of this writing) completed the puzzle in 5:44 and 7:22, respectively, and both had "minor aid", presumably in the form of "show repeated digits". The top solver with no aid (again, as of this writing) completed the puzzle in 17:21, more than 3x the top solver's time and more than 2x the 2nd place solver's time.
The whole point of this puzzle type is to remove repeated digits. Especially on a puzzle this large, a large part of the solve time is spent scanning the grid for repeated digits. I have no way of quantifying what percentage of the solve time is spent on that, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out it is 50% or more, with the percentage increasing the larger a puzzle gets.
It's just my opinion, of course, but it seems to me that anything that cuts more than half of the work out of a solving a puzzle should qualify as major aid.
Posted 29th Dec 2020 at 22:11
JoergWausW Daily subscriber Best completion time: 18:19Time on first attempt: 28:29Used 'show invalid' Used 'check puzzle' when incorrect
I started the same topic twice so far... the second time gareth agreed, but so far he didn't change anything.
My minor aid was one wrong shaded/unshaded square when I checked - then I looked at the right number, but didn't see the repeated one in the same line.... I didn't want to go through the whole 289 squares, so I checked for the repeated one. It was a 1, too. It started pretty quickly and then I didn't see any logic and changed strategy to "guess and contradiction". Ran into that twice. Probably I should start doing that way sooner instead of looking for a logical approach for too long...
Posted 30th Dec 2020 at 00:50 Last edited by gareth 30th Dec 2020 at 00:51
Okay, I've fixed this now. It was only ever an accident that it counted as a minor aid - it used the same 'show repeated' flag as in the number puzzles, where it counts as a minor aid. Now I've made the game completion code check to see if you just played hitori, and it counts it as a major aid instead.
This will affect ALL plays going forward, so puzzles published prior to today will have different rules for late players for the hitori rankings. I thought this was better than having the rules change dependent on the date of the puzzle you play, which would be confusing.
Now if you see the '*' in the left column, it means the player press 'check' when they were wrong (but just a single time), for all plays from today onwards.
No problem, and thanks for reporting this/reminding me of this - I should have changed this before, because you're absolutely right that it leads to significantly faster solver times.
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A yellow/light blue highlight in the time distribution charts highlights your time, where relevant.
Rating scores out of 10.0 show the average difficulty rating chosen by users, where 1.0 is "Easy" and 10.0 is "Hard".
If a puzzle is opened more than once, including by loading from a saved position, then this is potentially a significant aid so it is listed as being completed with 'multiple sessions' for the purpose of the best time/average rating displays above.
Minor aid is defined as no more than one use of 'Check solution' when incomplete and/or no more than one use of 'Check solution' when wrong; and/or using highlighting aids (show repeated digits, show broken inequalities and show valid/invalid placements [slitherlink] only). Major aid is any and all other use of the solving aids except for 'show wrong'.
The 2 top solvers in the "without solving aids" category (as of this writing) completed the puzzle in 5:44 and 7:22, respectively, and both had "minor aid", presumably in the form of "show repeated digits". The top solver with no aid (again, as of this writing) completed the puzzle in 17:21, more than 3x the top solver's time and more than 2x the 2nd place solver's time.
The whole point of this puzzle type is to remove repeated digits. Especially on a puzzle this large, a large part of the solve time is spent scanning the grid for repeated digits. I have no way of quantifying what percentage of the solve time is spent on that, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out it is 50% or more, with the percentage increasing the larger a puzzle gets.
It's just my opinion, of course, but it seems to me that anything that cuts more than half of the work out of a solving a puzzle should qualify as major aid.
My minor aid was one wrong shaded/unshaded square when I checked - then I looked at the right number, but didn't see the repeated one in the same line.... I didn't want to go through the whole 289 squares, so I checked for the repeated one. It was a 1, too.
It started pretty quickly and then I didn't see any logic and changed strategy to "guess and contradiction". Ran into that twice. Probably I should start doing that way sooner instead of looking for a logical approach for too long...
Last edited by gareth 30th Dec 2020 at 00:51
This will affect ALL plays going forward, so puzzles published prior to today will have different rules for late players for the hitori rankings. I thought this was better than having the rules change dependent on the date of the puzzle you play, which would be confusing.
Now if you see the '*' in the left column, it means the player press 'check' when they were wrong (but just a single time), for all plays from today onwards.
You can however view other players' statistics and comments in the tables above.