Increasing competition....

[TONY BOY]

Back in March and April 2007, I won the High Score challenge. My strategy was to put up about 60,000 the first few days, then about 30,000 thereafter. Now, the competition has increased significantly. I have put up about 60,000 a day for 5 days, and am still lagging the leaders. It is clear there are several players on this site who are quite gifted at solving. There are some who can do it in about half my time. I got stuck on one Saturday night which took me 80 minutes to solve. That took me from 65 seconds to 78. Anyway, I have an overuse syndrome in my right elbow and shoulder from sitting here in one position too long. The competition on this site is simply fantastic! Congratulations to all the competitors!

[maradnu]

Increasing competition

The competition is indeed getting steeper. My average time this month, would over the past five months have put me somewhere in 5th through 7th place, depending on the month. This month, I am 12th on time.

More people, spending more time, and doing better than ever before.

[greenjelly]

Competition? This is ridiculous...
The top 3 in the monthly challenge right now are (names changed):
Player1 August 18, 2008, 6:56 pm 6370/6372 99.96% 51.9 sec. 285.9 pts. 1821793
Player2 August 18, 2008, 4:52 pm 6055/6310 95.95% 73.6 sec. 280.6 pts. 1699191
Player3 August 18, 2008, 6:31 am 4238/4238 100% 108.3 sec. 274.0 pts. 1161439

Its the 18th of Aug. Player1 solved 6370 puzzles at 51.9 secs each, for a total time of 330603 seconds. Over 18 days, thats 5.1 hours a day!!
Similarly, Player2 has spent 6.88 hours, and player3 7.09 hours on cryptograms every day!!!

Do you really enjoy spending 7 hours a day on these puzzles?? All that to get on that list?

[Laura]

Addicted and trying to Cold Turkey

I can't speak for players 2 and 3, but player 1 is definitely addicted and working on cutting down. It is ridiculous. For me, it's just a rush to solve cryptograms. I imagine this is what gamblers go through when they say just once more.

Cutting down is going to be really difficult I think, but I'm determined to stay away. Especially since I messed up my solve rate. If I start sweating and biting my nails, I might play a game or two. Or maybe I'd better just start exercising different brain muscles and switch to Logic Puzzles.

Apologies to all those players who have been working so hard to climb the list.

[maradnu]

Increasing Competition

I am struggling to stay in the top ten only playing about two hours per day.

[hilton2008]

Quickly Becoming Addicted

I agree that it is easy to be addicted to this site. It would be great if there was a cap or something on the maximum points per month. Maybe, all the players with that amount of points or more would then compete based on their average points per game. It seems like the average points per game might be a better measure of skill anyway and, as you all have said, not all of us can spend 5 or 6 hours a day at the computer. The time sure does fly though!

[TONY BOY]

competition

I wasn't planning on spending too much time here in August, but the competition bug bites. Right now I am trying to get my time down into the top twenty. I hit a three early on that took me over twenty minutes each... I really don't care how many points I am gettting. It is all about trying to get my time down now. So that is a challenge and some competition. The time competition is a big challenge since people aren't required to get 100%. I believe going for that last 5% easily adds 20 or more seconds to my overall time. I know the competition is increasing because my time would have been in the top 20 6 months ago.