Unfair competition

[marnita]

Once again, I got kicked off the site while trying to check my solution to a puzzle. I could not get back on for over 2 hours, and now that I'm back, my 100% is gone. I was docked for a puzzle I solved but never got credit for and never got to retry. And Beagle had the same problem, only worse - docked for several puzzles because of trying to get back on the site. I know it's just a game, but a lot of time and effort goes into solving these things. If it is going to be touted as a competition, it ought to be fair.

[marnita]

Thanks to Admin for addressing this problem!

Just got an email from Stephen saying he was increasing the Retry time period to 24 hours so that anyone who missed out due to the site problem could complete their missed puzzles. I did, and it worked for me! Thank you so much, Stephen!

[imported_Lurker]

Wow, we can set some fantastically slow times now!! Thanks for giving us the extra time, Stephen, since the site is almost never down for a whole day.

[gryhnd51]

Stephen, that's a wonderful fix! Thanks so much.

[Quizzical]

I tried to think of a solution earlier and couldn't. I like this one. Is it permanent or just to fix yesterday's long outage?

[gryhnd51]

I'd bet it's permanent. Some of us will find reason to grouse that it takes too long to scroll thru 24 hrs worth of crypto's, but unless there's a better way to solve the problem w/ the site, I'm all for this change.

[maradnu]

Site down

Site seems to go down more often. I lost out earlier in the month before Stephen's fix, but even if it had been in, it would have screwed up my average solve time.

When the site fails though no fault of ours, we either get screwed on completion percentage or on average solve time.

[momof7]

Maradnu, that can be a hard choice sometimes. Been there.

[montyb]

All I miss is the playing time and the entertainment reading the comments.

[marnita]

It would be great if someone could think of a fix that would take care of the solve time problem as well as the success rate problem. My solve time is always a disaster anyway, so it doesn't matter that much to me, but I feel bad for those who are competing in that way.

[gryhnd51]

we'd all be better off if we adopted montyb's philosophy. Enjoy the game, but prize the company and the comments and the chat. But don't confuse that enjoyment with real life and what's REALLY important in your life. After all, this site IS just a game that we all love to play. Many of us have made friends here, and that's a wonderful thing.
I know I'm in 1st place right now, and perhaps I will come across as lecturing or something worse! But I'm sure I just got there by default and not by any expertise on my part. I just hope that the new fix will make it more enjoyable for those who are new to playing at cryto's. I still have great fun trying to keep my brain working and chatting with folks who share my interest.
There's lots of new cryptogrammers at the top for the past few months...WOW, that's really exciting for me to watch!

[marnita]

I agree, Gryhnd. I'm still rooting for Beagle.

[Beagle]

Thanks, marnita. That's kind of you to say. No hard feelings here, it's all in fun... but it sure was frustrating. And now I'm doubly frustrated to find out (too late) that a fix was put in whereby I could have saved things. Ah, well...

[caa]

Perhaps any puzzle that times out, whatever "times out" might mean, could just be dropped. No failure, no long solve times. Sure, some failures won't get counted, but how much would that matter? I don't have this problem, and I'm not competitive, so I don't have a dog in this fight; just a suggestion.

[Beagle]

caa, that's a good suggestion, but the problem is that if that were the case, then whenever folks came upon a puzzle they couldn't solve, they could just let it "time out," and... voila... 100% solve rate.