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Hey everybody! Once in a while I set a record time on a puzzle, and I always wish I could see the history of how those have changed over time. It occurred to me, one way we could do that is simply to record a record time in the comments -- write down username, solving time, and date. It doesn't let you know when someone beats your record time, but at least you could see some of a quote's history on the site. What do y'all think? It might be annoying for fairly new quotes, with a whole bunch of record times in a row, and maybe would be too annoying for the admins trying to look for substantive comments about the puzzles themselves.
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I think this is a brilliant idea, Morticia. The game system appears to allow infinite repeat plays to count toward records. I've been playing for 10 months and have gotten at least 2 dozen repeat puzzles in that time. I didn't have any memory of the puzzles themselves; the only reason I was even aware is because I already had the record on them. Because of the sheer brute force of constantly becoming better at remembering the clues, In each case I wound up demolishing my prior record and thus setting a new stupidly fast artificial record that I never in a million years would have gotten on my first try. Realistically the only people who are likely to be able to beat those extra fast "double records" are others who are also playing that same puzzle for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th or more time. I have mentioned before that I was on this site when it was new about 10 years ago, and players getting multiple repeats and setting stupidly unbeatable records was an even greater plague back then since there were a lot fewer puzzles available. But the same problem persists. Over the course of time it is inevitable that puzzles get repeat plays and artificially fast record times, unbeatable by everybody except the very few who play hundreds of games a month. I presume those old puzzles from 10 years ago are still on here to be played too, and still have a record time that represents somebody's 11th try on the same puzzle, totally unbeatable except by someone who comes and plays it for a 12th time.
I have started marking my repeat records in the comments in a [potentially futile] attempt to memorialize the prior and legitimate record and tell people that the new record is nonsense. But the fact remains that there is no way for me to know if I'm playing a repeat unless I beat my own record and therefore see that I've played the puzzle before. If somebody else has the record, there's no way to know if I've played it. If I then set a new record, I might be fooled into thinking I have just set a legit record when I haven't. All of this to say, Morticia, your system of people just marking their time and date sounds cool to me. I like your idea even if not for your stated purpose. I simply enjoy reading the comments whenever they pop up.
I've seen posts now and then with some people saying they don't care about the competition. I am sure that's true to some extent, but I think it's highly probable that lots and lots of them would enjoy the competition if it were simply possible to compete. It would be good and healthy for the site for some kind of scoring or competition overhaul. As always I am grateful that the site exists at all since I love playing acrostics, but 10 years is a long time to go without ever tweaking the same fundamentally flawed scoring system.
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