100 percenters anonymous

Huh--I guess I am double-loading! I do try to check, but not frequently enough. I just checked & there were two unfinished! Could def. be my mouse or keyboard. The cat got on the keyboard and wrecked my N key. I have to press extra hard. Or try to type words that avoid the use of that letter. (Which the previous sentence did . . . I had to think about it, though.)

But I digress. . .

[puffybob]

--though I should add, just fast typing alone wouldn't do it. Some puzzles just take time! A 100% solving rate with an average time in the twenty-second range is amazing.

[puffybob]

Yeah, if you want the 100%, you need to check your recent games every day for double loads, just to be safe.

I'm going for 100% this month, but as a result, my average solving time is terrible. I'm amazed by people like nanrich, rotorguru, twskinner, and annamariah -- they get 100% and are about three times faster! I guess I should have learned to type properly when I was young.

I used to get double loads when I used the touchpad on my laptop. When I use a mouse, they very rarely occur (usually only when there is a glitch on the site). I still check my solving rate every few quotes, though, just to be sure.

[mikehallbackhoe]

Do you check your recent games and monthly scores very often? I've regularly seen double loads, where it shows I've "gotten" a puzzle that I never saw. I try to check every ten puzzles or so, but have slipped up and had some go 15 or 20 minutes or more before I caught it and did the puzzle.

for several months I was getting a double load every other game, I replaced my mouse, now no more double loads

[maradnu]

Queethebean

Do you check your recent games and monthly scores very often? I've regularly seen double loads, where it shows I've "gotten" a puzzle that I never saw. I try to check every ten puzzles or so, but have slipped up and had some go 15 or 20 minutes or more before I caught it and did the puzzle.

I would rather solve them all than have a fast solve time. OK, I'd rather have both, but to not solve a puzzle would make me crazy.

I know that something happened this month---I must have opened a second tab and a puzzle came up that I didn't know about?? Something like that, maybe. So, I lost my 100%. But then I looked at my overall solve rate, and it said that there have been about 30 puzzles I didn't solve. I don't see how that can be true?! I may be slow in more ways than one, but I think I'd remember 30 puzzles.

[jbb33054]

I always try for 100 percent. If I get stuck on a quote I will walk away for a while, even for hours. It always works, but my solve times are high.

I'm Sloe and I'm a 100%-er

Still addicted to 100% solve rate and this is me backsliding further into the abyss

I do have a few 100% trophies now but my average solve time is almost always above 240 sec. I have noticed I get anonymously recognized when I have the highest time spent on a quote, I reset that number at the right end of the bell curve. I've done that more times than I would like to admit. My goals now are 100% solve rate while staying under the high-water mark on the bell curve for solve time of each quote.

And this group has only made my 100%'ers addiction seem acceptable. I suppose I'll have to look elsewhere if I really want a cure.

I do agree there should be an elite award for the 100%'ers with an average solve rate lower than 30 sec. This makes them the true crypto-gods as far as I'm concerned and I am not worthy to be in the same 100%'ers top 20 as them.

[killdozer]

I've had to go back and retry puzzles hours later or even the next day when the site has gone down or I've had Comcast outages or sometimes when I've had to get up from the computer (usually to deal with kids) and ended up getting distracted and forgetting I had a live puzzle going. I'm glad I can go back and restore my pathological need to get 100%, but it does demolish your average time.

[mikehallbackhoe]

if you go to recent games, you have up to 24 hours to retry a puzzle

[jimmac1942]

3 times this month i have seen a 100 percenter losing record and being restored to 100% next day,this seems curious

[munchlet]

I think there should be another category for the competition, because people like you who can solve so quickly AND get 100% solve rates are a cut above the rest of us! It should combine percentage solved with speed.

Debzhaus, I've been thinking that for years.

I quickly figured out it would always bother me if I didn't solve every puzzle I started. When I first found the site I wasn't very fast at all, so having a high percentage was the only way I could get in the top 20 every month and get that little trophy. Sometimes I'll find a puzzle hours later that must have been a double-load... I'm compelled to solve it even if it totally wrecks my time for the month. It's particularly galling if it's a stupid quote, but I solve it anyway.

Same here, Carpe, exactly the same. Yesterday I found a quote that should have been solved hours before -- turns out I missed one letter -- solved it, and my average time went up to 89.1 seconds. Woo hoo! That happened a day or two after the Shakespeare quotation that had to marinate overnight.

Distraction often does the trick -- any distraction. Come back, and there's the answer.

I am a perfectionist, always have been, and like to learn new skills. Trophy or no, the more cryptograms solved, the more you figure out various solving heuristics -- although I do lack maradnu's focus and self-discipline: I have no Excel file sorted by author, no key word list organized by pattern.

Solving 100% also means you get to read more bios and -- the best part -- lots more crypto comments, which often surpass the original quotation in intelligence, wit, depth and sheer audacity.

So, there you have it.

I think there should be another category for the competition, because people like you who can solve so quickly AND get 100% solve rates are a cut above the rest of us! It should combine percentage solved with speed.

[marnita]

Not as arcane as it seems

One thing to remember, Tilottama, is that no matter how long a quote is, you never have to type more than 26 characters to solve it - usually a lot less, because very few quotes use all the letters of the alphabet. It's more a matter of how quickly you can either recognize the quote or see some familiar word patterns.