Getting the same storyline twice in a row

[KeepItGoing]

Since the change to the new server, I've noticed a couple of times that I've gotten the same storyline twice in a row. I don't recall that happening before. Am I just not remembering, or did something somehow get changed during the changeover? (That doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would get changed, though!)

Once, I even got the same storyline with what I would swear was the same logic (although not with the same names). I really don't think I've ever seen that before!

[KeepItGoing]

No one else has input? Am I forgetting what used to be, or has something changed? I continue to think that this has changed but I'm really questioning myself and would love feedback from others!

[uigrad]

I have gotten the same story twice in a row a number of times. It hasn't happened to me at all since the new server (although to be fair, I've played a lot less over the last 3 months).

I have once gotten the exact same puzzle twice within one hour. I know this because my comment that I left on the puzzle the first time was visible when I got the puzzle again 45 minutes later. I think I played one or two other puzzles in between. Other than that one time, I don't think I've ever gotten the same puzzle twice in a day, which is actually pretty surprising, considering how many puzzles I've played in my busiest days.

In the HTML code on the page, you can get the puzzle ID on each puzzle you play. I set up a browser addon to pull that data out and save it, so that I could track how often I get puzzles in the same range. I think I solved about 300 puzzles before getting my first repeat. So getting the exact same puzzle twice in a row should be an extremely rare occurrence.

When you do get the same puzzle, nothing changes. The order of the variables and the order of the clues, for example, are all exactly the same.

[fromalabama]

I play rather a lot, and usually in bursts, so there have been occasions where I get the same storyline multiple times in a row. Anecdotally, I think this has been more common when I switch between puzzle sizes, but I know it has happened even when I'm sticking to one size. I haven't noticed an increase in likelihood since the server change, but to be fair, it's not something I've really paid a lot of attention to, so it would be easy for me to miss if it were the case. But I think there's something like 100-120 storylines, so if you play enough, you're bound to get two in a row sooner or later. As far as I know, unlike uigrad, I've never gotten the actual same puzzle twice in less than a week or so, but I generally don't comment on a puzzle either unless I've never commented or unless I beat my best time, so I can't rule out the possibility that I'm getting the same ones more frequently.

[ella]

If you're playing more (and scores look like many people are playing more, though I have no idea if you are one of those people,) then you're more likely to see the same theme. There are so few themes that it's fairly likely to get the same puzzle theme twice in a row, even if it's not the same puzzle. As far as a change since the new server, no - I haven't noticed a difference. If it's truly random, then you're more likely to see two in a row than not sometimes, just b/c that's how random goes. Hope that helps.

[KeepItGoing]

Well, I'd certainly played enough that I would have seen this before. I guess I just wasn't remembering right. Thanks for everyone's input!

[fransansisco]

It's happened occasionally to me well before the move. I usually take it as a sign that I've played way too many and need to stop.

[pub4]

Just FYI, I've gotten the same story within a very short period of time, but I could have sworn the particulars were switched around. I remembered the items were all familiar, but I thought the directions had changed, or so I had thought. Maybe it was completely the same. This has happened a couple times for me actually, but I don't play a lot of these back to back so I don't know if time is the issue. That said, last night I played a different type puzzle (Campsites), one that lists the top ten of all time, and it was obvious that not many people had played this particular puzzle in a long time. Of the people listed, one was from 2015, which gave an idea of how far back the times were being kept. The first nine people had times in the low three digits (such as 300 seconds), but the slowest person had a time of five digits. IIRC, it was around 30,000 seconds. This leads me to believe that A) only nine people over the past four years were capable of completely the game in under five hundred seconds and every other person over these four years took more than 30,000 seconds, which is not believable, or B) the game has only been played a few times over the past four years with on a few people taking longer than 30,000 seconds. I lean toward the latter, which to me means that the algorithm used to pull games for users to play is odd.

[KeepItGoing]

I've never thought there was an algorithm used to pull games—I've always thought it was random. And randomness is unpredictable. When there are lots of different puzzles, it's remarkably like that the occasional be pulled only rarely, while others are pulled much more often. I saw a similar one of these in Campsites this week. (Campsites seems to be less played than some others.) But in all the puzzle types, you'll find some that have much more history than others, even when they've been around the same amount of time.

When you get the same story on logic puzzles, it's generally a different set of clues, since each story is used for multiple puzzles. When I posted that things seemed different, it was because the logic I used seemed the same, even though the names were different. I imagine, though, that there were some differences even if I couldn't detect them.

[SRA60]

I see the same story line multiple times, but is each puzzle different?

[ekansi]

The logic on the puzzles definitely repeats, regardless of what the names / categories are. And sometimes you'll get two puzzles in close succession with the same logic, which is probably why things seem familiar. On the one hand, it's nice because then a variety of puzzles can be generated without too much effort, but on the other hand, it means once you recognize a pattern, you don't need to read the clues anymore because the grid will look the same as it always does for that pattern.