Speed Records and "Cheating"

[christinedux]

I have enjoyed acrostic puzzles for many years, first with pencil and paper in the Washington Post and the New York Times, now online when I can find ones that are worth doing. These definitely are. I also have constructed acrostics for fun, using someone else's proprietary software; that was even more fun than solving them.

But I do not compete. Speed is completely irrelevant to my enjoyment of an acrostic puzzle--or any other kind. In fact, I consider that the LONGER it takes me to solve a puzzle, the more pleasure I'm getting for my money.

Chacun à son goût.

[redpicker]

Well, waddayaknow? Just when I figure I will never set a new record, I get this!

I realize this isn't such a great feat and I don't doubt my reign as a "Super Solver" will be a short one, but it's fun while it lasts!

[redpicker]

Hi everyone,

...
That said, lookee what just happened today, now that there are tons of new puzzles. I just completed this 25 clue puzzle in half the time that one of these notorious "super solvers" did.
...

While I don't doubt there are all kinds who work puzzles on this site, to me the most likely explanation for these "super solvers" is simply that these solvers have done A LOT of these puzzles. When you get to the point where you see the clue "One who does more than necessary" and not even need to count the letters to know the answer is "overachiever", and can do that to 75% or more of the clues on a specific puzzle, very rapid times can be expected. Furthermore, if one restricts the puzzles to those of 15 clues or fewer, the likelihood or running into a repeat is much higher.

Acrostic puzzles have a much more limited "vocabulary" of "answers" than the general language. I suspect this has to do with the way the puzzles are generated. I like to think this is why some people can achieve such fast times. Many players are also highly competitive, and having a top score means a lot to them. I suspect these people play a lot more than I do and place a stronger emphasis on associating the clue with the answer. While it is obvious that the people who come up with the clues try to be creative, but there is a fine line between a creative clue and one that is too obscure.

I am grateful for the new puzzles. New clues and, perhaps more important, new answers. I don't worry about competing with these "super solvers" since there is no way I can compete at that level. While I have gotten better than I was when I started, but I don't expect to ever set a new record. As far as whether or now someone has discovered a way to cheat this, I don't care. There is so much more evil that men do which am helpless to prevent that I can't afford to express much outrage on this.

In short, if someone has found a way to achieve super fast scores, good for them. Don't expect me to try and do the same, though.

[sewaneesue]

I am a baby boomer, 1946, and not tech savvy. So, don't understand what LMood wrote - screen shot, close it, replay?? I've always believed that the lowest scores are attained by the player having played that particular game before, remembering the exact quote, and quickly typing the quote. Why would someone go to the trouble of hacking games, when no one knows who they are and there is no money involved? Sociopathy could be an explanation, Patience. I just hope that I can continue enjoying playing Acrostics.

[PatienceCrabstick]

Every single competitive online game has cheaters. Every single one. It shouldn't surprise any of us that there are cheaters here.

8 or 9 years ago I was pretty addicted to the Free For All matches in COD Black Ops. I'd play for hours every day. Fun times! Except when one of the cheaters showed up. These guys were somehow able to hack the system to make themselves invisible within the game, meaning they easily killed everybody else in it while taking absolutely no damage themselves.

Based on their rankings and what other information the PS3 network gave, I could see that each of these cheaters had hacked through literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of matches this way. All of that time and effort put in, and yet in reality these cheaters achieved nothing, had no skills to boast of, etc. All they accomplished was to ruin the experience for everybody else in each and every match they showed up in. Sociopathic behavior, pure and simple.

As for those players gaming the system here (and we all suspect who they are), I think they're more to be pitied than anything else. But I do wish they'd either cut it out or just get out.

Rant over!

[LMood]

I stopped playing competitively a few years ago because I wanted to work on some longer puzzles, and at that time the scoring system penalized you for doing so. The new scoring system dis-incentivizes only solving short puzzles.

That said, I have thought about how you could cheat to get the incredibly fast times. The only thing i could come up with would be to open a puzzle, take a screen shot, then close it. With the replay option you have, I believe, ten minutes to look up the answers. Then you can reopen the puzzle and simply type them in as quickly as you can.

[rsmcclain]

Very interesting comment, briang, and it explains a lot. Now I have absolutely no respect for these supposed "record times" Thanks for your simple explanation.

[sewaneesue]

briang, aren't those blue letters New Record beautiful? When I first started playing several years ago, I saw them frequently. Now - nevermore. I'll have to go with the flow regarding changes. But Acrostics is my favorite word game, and the hours fly by, such fun.

[briang]

Hi everyone,

I've been playing on this site off and on for a couple years, and I've always done so as guest. In that time, I've had plenty of time to see the handful of accounts that routinely finish ~1000 second and greater average puzzles (the only ones I typically play) with virtually impossible record times well under 200 seconds and with 100% solving rates.

I consider myself an extremely fast crossworder (sub-10min Sunday Times) and acrostic solver, and I typically feel like I have done quite well to even get within 100 seconds of these scores.

That said, lookee what just happened today, now that there are tons of new puzzles. I just completed this 25 clue puzzle in half the time that one of these notorious "super solvers" did.

Screenshot_2020-10-16 Acrostic Puzzles Congratulations.png

Sure this is circumstantial evidence, but it's for someone that on all the old puzzles scores always outrageously better than this, has a 100% solve rate, and whose records I have never beaten in the past. This strongly suggests to me that Kellnerin et al have access to some kind of database, either self-compiled or hacked, with all the old puzzle solutions in it, and cannot solve the new puzzles nearly as quickly. Incidentally, I also have been setting records on about 90% of my plays on these newer puzzles, something I never managed to do with the old ones.

This is actually surprising to me, since I took a look at the publicly viewable PHP code the site and noticed what would seem to be an extremely trivial way to generate false times without knowing any of the answers, and I had always assumed that the cheaters had exploited this weakness.

I won't go into detail here, since I don't want anyone trying to exploit it, but suffice it to say that the way that the site checks the validity of the inputted answers is NOT very secure.

[stewartp]

At one point, i had completed more puzzles than I had played. I don't know how or why that was. I was also the fastest solver for a long time until others figured out how to game the system. I never really cared about either issue. Now I just enjoy solving puzzles.

[compuspud]

It's not just that they plated the puzzle before. They have to be cheating. No one can solve 40,000 puzzles and never miss one. No one can solve more puzzles than they worked on, but two people have.

[sewaneesue]

I have poor vision, so I choose acrostic puzzles that were solved in less than 650 seconds. This way, I can enlarge the words for easier reading. I would also like to be able to pause play, because I never know when there will be interruptions. I do not know how to pause. I do think that persons who have very low scores have played that puzzle before. I am 73 years old, and don't remember the quotes! So, it's like playing a new game every time. Sue Vaughan

[breldan]

I just saw this comment thread on the side of one of the puzzles and I haven’t read through it all, but I can say that I got a record time-yesterday I think. It was on a puzzle that I had completed only a couple days before and recognized. It was easy to fill it all in from memory once I recognized it. I’ve always assumed that the people who keep showing up with the record times have done the same thing. I can’t imagine spending that much time on something I consider a time waster, but to each their own.

[hootmon]

Pausing the game would be gateway for what many posters are talking about: cheating. If you could pause the game, you could then easily look up answers to the clues. That is the only reason needed to keep it from happening.

[Bullwinkle311]

Is there a way to pause the game? Most of my poor-scoring games are due to walking away from my laptop for any number of reasons. Other online games can be paused, but I've never figured out how to pause Acrostics.