When does the time start? When does it end?

[abra]

Okay, I'm silly enough to play with dial-up. I shouldn't, but I got kind of addicted, and tried for a few months to make the top 20, and managed to do it. I decided that I was spending WAY too much time, so I quit.

A few days ago, I started visiting again. The board is even slower for me than it used to be. I just wondered if those seconds it takes to load the cryptogram, and the seconds it takes to submit it, are added to the score. Or does it start when the puzzle is loaded and end when you press "Check It"?

Also, after I had been visiting again for about 3 days, suddenly I couldn't get this site to load at all for about a day and a half. Has that ever happened to anyone else? I was surprised when I checked this forum and no one had mentioned it, so I guess it was just me.

Then just a few minutes ago, when I went to post here, IE just disappeared and I got a message that McAffe had removed a trojan. I don't know if that had anything to do with this site or not.

Sorry for so many questions.

[bansaisequoia]

New things for Abra

Abra, You should try downloading either Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari. They have greater response times than Microsoft Internet Explorer. You will find yourself having much faster solving times. Not only that, you will be taking money away from Bill Gates' conglomerate. Do your best to keep America from becoming one consolidated corporation.



You choose the best browser.

[abra]

I do have Firefox, I haven't used it for awhile, but I will give it a try for this site. Thank you.

[imported_Lurker]

Back to the original question

Abra,

I found out yesterday, when I lost my internet connection in the middle of a load, that it's when you see the quote appear. All that black space before it loads doesn't count. But, once a partial page comes up, it's going, even though you can't type yet.

As for when it ends, I think it's when the stats page comes up. I've had some fairly quick solves that came up with longer times than I thought. Must be processing time.

And, for the record, I'm on Safari.

[fiziwig]

As a retired programmer I looked at the javascript and it is not possible to cheat the time. The time must be tracked by the server. That means the time has to run from the time the server starts to send you the page puzzle until it gets the button click to check the puzzle.

The server-side script has no way of knowing when you finally get the whole page and are able to start solving, so unfortunately you do get penalized a bit for a slow connection.

I do wish the Javascript checked for duplicate letter assignments though. I just hate it when I'm stuck on a puzzle and then discover it's because I had 'E' down as two different code letters.

--fiziwig

[imported_Lurker]

So much for my amazing discovery

Happened again, and this time the puzzle loaded.

Must have gotten lucky that other time, and the server hadn't sent it yet.
Fiziwig's explanation makes sense.

Grrrrr.

[abra]

Thanks for the replies, that is sort of what I figured.

I'm fairly good, but I'm never going to be great, even with a lightening connection, I'm still slow. The Firefox really did help though. Thank you so much, bansaisequoia. For whatever reason things had really slowed down with IE and the Firefox did speed them up again.

[fiziwig]

Thanks for the replies, that is sort of what I figured.

I'm fairly good, but I'm never going to be great, even with a lightening connection, I'm still slow. The Firefox really did help though. Thank you so much, bansaisequoia. For whatever reason things had really slowed down with IE and the Firefox did speed them up again.

Don't worry. I'm on lightning fast broadband and I count myself VERY lucky when I manage to score in the green "average" band. It's only happened about three times so far since I joined last week.