Welcome to the New Site!

[admin]

We're happy to announce our newest site is now open for beta testing: Conspiracy Puzzles

You're the detective in charge of unraveling a wide-ranging conspiracy. Given a grid of suspects and a list of clues, see if you can determine who's innocent and who's guilty.

As this is a brand new site there are bound to be bugs/issues that have slipped past our initial checks. If you find anything strange please post here or email to puzzlebaron@gmail.com

Enjoy!

Stephen

[Unikittycornastegasaurus]

I love these puzzles!!!

[admin]

Thanks Unikitty!

[grimmgiraffe]

I'm enjoying the new puzzles, but have a bit of feedback. The Hint and Submit button are quite close for those of us using a touch screen. I just got no points for finishing in 82 sec. because I hit the wrong button, even though all squares were marked at the time. It would be simpler if there was some space there. Thanks you!

[Anachronismatic]

That's a good suggestion. I miss my 100% completion percentage on other games.

This one's fun. I like the variety in logical procedures required to work these through. I've also yet to find any mistakes at all in the puzzles.

I would suggest a scramble of the clues to add to the challenge.

Adding: In #15756, clue 6 is unnecessary.

[grimmgiraffe]

I feel like the missed games is because as soon as you hit the play tab up top, you get a game. In logic puzzles, you still have to confirm difficulty. So, I was going from records to play, getting a game made, and not really realizing it. Now I make sure I don't do that. lol
I have one missed game, and know I finished all the ones I really played, so I can only figure that that's how I missed one.

As to difficulty/clues, I like the level of difficulty because there's no place to mark notes or maybes so you have to hold it all in your head. It can't be as complicated as a logic puzzle. But, I know the top logic puzzle players hold way more in their heads than I do. I just started not using the bottom of the grids (as much) the last 2 months.

[admin]

I'm enjoying the new puzzles, but have a bit of feedback. The Hint and Submit button are quite close for those of us using a touch screen. I just got no points for finishing in 82 sec. because I hit the wrong button, even though all squares were marked at the time. It would be simpler if there was some space there. Thanks you!

Great suggestion! I've upped the spacing between buttons by 25% now. Thanks!

[admin]

Adding: In #15756, clue 6 is unnecessary.

Good catch - I'm working on a better system to catch unnecessary clues, I think we've caught the majority of them but a few have still slipped past.

We also expanded the puzzle library yesterday by about 350%, had no idea you guys would be playing through these so fast. Will keep making more!

[SippyGurl]

wow dude i love these puzzles! thank you! really didn't think i was gonna like these but totally do!
have to agree with grimmgiraffe about the hint button. the first time i requested a hint, i didn't know what would happen, but apparently we lose credit for the game. then i got one trying for the restart button and then one trying for the submit button. mebbe the hint button could be moved across the room or to the very bottom? thanks again for the puzzles!
edit... 2x going for submit puzzle.

[Slugman]

These are a lot of fun, I find them just challenging enough to keep me interested but not so hard that they become frustrating. For the issue with the "hint" button, I would suggest moving it below the sound button.
Once enough puzzles are made and the admins have enough data, a difficulty selection would be nice. I would think easy would be the easier levels with an undo button, medium would be the harder levels with an undo button, and hard would be the hardest levels with no undo button...I kind of like the penalty of having to reset the whole puzzle when I click a square by accident and didn't pay attention to which square I clicked.

In all though, very nice work on the new puzzle and the deployment Puzzle Baron team!

[sooki]

Enjoying these! Just registered to offer a bit of feedback.

My only real negative is the wording on the “across the column” clues. Years of crosswords have ingrained in me that “across” is horizontal and “down” is vertical. So I occasionally catch myself filling out the row instead of the column when I read “across column 4 and 5,” for instance. Also, when going for pace, speed reading gets “across 4 5” and I have to mentally slow down and check if it was row or column. Would much prefer it to say “across rows 4 and 5” and “down columns 4 and 5.” Maybe the wording is built in as part of the challenge, but I think changing it to "down" for columns would cut down on silly errors.

Also, in the Tips and Hints, you might tell users that filling out the guilty ones is sufficient. Innocents can be marked but aren’t required to complete the puzzle.

Thanks for the new challenge!

Edited to fix font size.

[grimmgiraffe]

I get the "across columns" confusion. lol makes me slow down, too, but I've mostly gotten used to checking. I do like the extra challenge of no "undo" but am also happy I don't get penalties for submitting incorrectly, since there's no "undo" or "check answers."

[The123QwertyAbc]

Is it possible to add a way to see your best leaderboard positions somewhere? I like trying to get fast times on puzzles but after I set my time I can never see the leaderboard for that specific puzzle again. Maybe by showing a list of puzzles with just your position and time for each puzzle, that lets you see the full leaderboard on that puzzle by clicking on it? It could maybe be added to the 'My scores' page so you can also see the best leaderboard positions of other players by clicking on their profile.

[Anachronismatic]

Good catch - I'm working on a better system to catch unnecessary clues, I think we've caught the majority of them but a few have still slipped past.

We also expanded the puzzle library yesterday by about 350%, had no idea you guys would be playing through these so fast. Will keep making more!

Good to see more variety, more puzzles. In #29766, clue 7 is unnecessary. One thing you could add, since the logic works the same way, is the word "Interior" to complement "the edges". That way, and I'm not 100% sure - I'd have to look carefully when I see it - you might be able to combine two clues in a few of the templates. If I see an example, I'll post it.

[admin]

Great feedback everyone, thank you!

1. I've further increased the spacing between the buttons to prevent accidental hint presses.

2. I've reworded the "total guilty people across row/column X and row/column Y" to get rid of the word "across". Now it says: " There are a total of N guilty people in row X and row Y combined".

3. I've analyzed the puzzle library and found about 11% of puzzles contain a correct but unnecessary clue. These are already fixed now on our development server but I want to run a few more tests before I move the fixed puzzles to the production server. Should be up later this week though.

4. I'm putting the final touches on an improved hint system that will provide "smart hints" instead of just a random guilty/innocent value. It will be smart enough to know the next logical step in the solve process based on your particular grid state, and it will tell you which clue or clues (in combination) would have been used to come to that conclusion. That should go live within the next 2 weeks.

5. A scoring update is also in the works, which will make total points per puzzle much more reflective of how you performed compared to the general population of solvers. Again, within the next 2 weeks.