chlorine Daily subscriber Completion time: 48:49:23Used 'check puzzle' when incorrect
Oh I thought it was an easy puzzle and only notice on completion that it is rated as Mild. It was quite intricate for me but I think I learned a few tricks along the way. I'm looking forwards to seeing how I fare on the next futoshiki. :)
Posted 10th Jul 2021 at 11:37
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber Has not played this puzzle yet
The difficult levels are averages of user ratings, and most users mark most puzzles as easy for some reason. So when you see “mild” instead of “easy” as an average rating it usually indicates a tougher puzzle! And yes, I know that’s confusing…
Posted 10th Jul 2021 at 13:04
chlorine Daily subscriber Completion time: 48:49:23Used 'check puzzle' when incorrect
Thanks for clarifying! I thought all puzzles had a base difficulty level set by you in addition to users' ratings.
Posted 12th Jul 2021 at 10:36 Last edited by gareth 12th Jul 2021 at 10:38
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber Has not played this puzzle yet
When I implemented the ratings I didn't realise how inaccurate user ratings would be. :) It would in retrospect be better if I supplied an initial rating for each puzzle. I could also make the rating more sensitive to much smaller fluctuations in user ratings, although then the rating text wouldn't obviously correspond with the actual average you can view on this page and the chart rankings page. At some point I'll change the way this works.
But anyway, the upshot is that at the moment if you see 'Mild' it's probably a pretty tricky puzzle. :)
Posted 13th Jul 2021 at 05:55
chlorine Daily subscriber Completion time: 48:49:23Used 'check puzzle' when incorrect
If you're considering changing how the ranking system I'll point out that for me it's not immediately clear which is the easiest between "Mild" and "Moderate", maybe because English is not my first language, but also because Mild is not an option when you choose the difficulty of a puzzle. Anyway, this is not a complaint, I've understood not to touch anything that isn't rated as easy and found very interesting puzzles here! :)
I never put a rating down and I think I expplained before, why (in short: how difficult you feel about a puzzle is subjective).
Anyway: 1) I guess some people also do similar puzzles from other sources (magazines, websites, ...). Here, the most difficult step is an X-Wing (if I remember correctly) - that might be considered an easy technique by a lot of people. 2) Considering this, for a person familiar with these techniques, difficulty comes down to: how hard is the next step to spot? If there is only one possible next logic move, you have to find exactly this one. 3) Objectively it comes down to: how often is there only one possible next step and, within the possible techniques, how advanced is this one step? And third (the hardest one to implement into a rating-software), how "hidden" is the one next step for the human eye? An X-wing is easier to spot, the more cells in the rows/columns are already filled with a number, or the less pencil marks are left.
And all this does not matter if a person is putting down a correct number by accident without a logic reason. That number might make a "hard" puzzle suddenly easy.... For me it's usually vice versa, though: I often miss to put down one of nine pencil marks - and then it is the one that would have been correct. Or I put down a wrong(!) number by accident without a logic reason...
Posted 13th Jul 2021 at 13:22
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber Has not played this puzzle yet
Yes, fair point on language - I can see that's confusing, and it would probably be better to have some kind of grapical system anyway. Plus less text in general - there's quite a lot of text everywhere.
@gareth: "a lot of text everywhere" ;-) ;-) I should be quite quiet... :-)
Posted 13th Jul 2021 at 22:27
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber Has not played this puzzle yet
Lol - I mean in the design, of course. It's a bit busy, although to be fair I think it's perfectly reflective of web design trends as of 15 years ago, when I made it. When I eventually catch up on all the books I'm writing then one of my priorities is to redesign all of puzzlemix - and add more puzzle types too.
What is much more reliable, but still not perfect (especially for free puzzles) is the average solve time vs. size. It can give you a quite good estimation how difficult the given puzzle is.
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Key
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'.
Last edited by gareth 12th Jul 2021 at 10:38
But anyway, the upshot is that at the moment if you see 'Mild' it's probably a pretty tricky puzzle. :)
Anyway, this is not a complaint, I've understood not to touch anything that isn't rated as easy and found very interesting puzzles here! :)
Anyway:
1) I guess some people also do similar puzzles from other sources (magazines, websites, ...). Here, the most difficult step is an X-Wing (if I remember correctly) - that might be considered an easy technique by a lot of people.
2) Considering this, for a person familiar with these techniques, difficulty comes down to: how hard is the next step to spot? If there is only one possible next logic move, you have to find exactly this one.
3) Objectively it comes down to: how often is there only one possible next step and, within the possible techniques, how advanced is this one step? And third (the hardest one to implement into a rating-software), how "hidden" is the one next step for the human eye? An X-wing is easier to spot, the more cells in the rows/columns are already filled with a number, or the less pencil marks are left.
And all this does not matter if a person is putting down a correct number by accident without a logic reason. That number might make a "hard" puzzle suddenly easy.... For me it's usually vice versa, though: I often miss to put down one of nine pencil marks - and then it is the one that would have been correct. Or I put down a wrong(!) number by accident without a logic reason...
You can however view other players' statistics and comments in the tables above.