How do y'all complete puzzles so fast?

[losmond]

i do know that when you are starting to fall asleep whilst going through the clues, it is time to go to bed. It certainly doesn't help my scores.

[contrary]

Also, how well I do can change a lot. Sometimes my brain is firing on all cylinders and I solve the puzzles really fast. Other times, if I'm really tired or have just eaten a big meal or had lots of sugar, I can feel my brain slowing down; the puzzles seem really hard and I get a lot slower. It happens, I don't stress tho', I'm just doing these for fun anyway.

This is so accurate it hurts.

If I get 8 hours of sleep and do a few puzzles in the morning, I'm much probably ~10-20% faster than I am when I get 6 hours of sleep. If I eat a bunch of sugar I'll have a super-charge 15 minutes or so, then drop off the face of the planet. And when I had my wisdom teeth out and was on pain killers for 3 days, I could barely finish a 4x5 in 10 minutes.

[Husky12345]

I don't understand how people are completing the puzzles so fast. Like, on a challenging 4x7 puzzle how is 130 seconds even enough to read all the clues? It took me about 2000 secs to complete. Obv I'm not as advanced as some people (the average was 800) but I just don't see how it's possible. Do you have any insight and/or tips besides practice?

Just try it is not hard

[contrary]

Another thing I forgot in my first post: You can assume solvability for these puzzles, so sometimes you can shortcut to an answer by realizing that if you made certain choices the puzzle would become unsolvable, therefore that must be the wrong choice. I'll try to find a good example at some point.

[tviolet]

Another thing I forgot in my first post: You can assume solvability for these puzzles, so sometimes you can shortcut to an answer by realizing that if you made certain choices the puzzle would become unsolvable, therefore that must be the wrong choice. I'll try to find a good example at some point.

I'd be interested in an example, I can't quite picture what you're describing.

[boxeeboxeebox]

I'd be interested in an example, I can't quite picture what you're describing.

I'm not sure if this is the exact situation contrary had in mind, but if you're in a situation where under Names you have Andrea, Bob, and Charlie, and where under Winnings Andrea and Bob could both have won $5, $10, or $15, while Charlie won either $5 or $10. And under Winning Hand, Straight flush could correspond to Winnings of $10 or $15.

Now, if one of the last clues you have says, "Bob won with a straight flush," it will likely be the case that Straight flush does not correspond to a Winning of $15, because if Bob won $15, then Andrea and Charlie will both have $5 and $10 in Winnings, and unless you have another clue to decide who won what, the puzzle is unsolvable.

However, this is a shortcut, and you can always get to the solution without making this kind of observation (though there are other types of logical eliminations based on remaining possibilities that aren't this "meta").

[Laxgirl]

I cant believe how fast you can do it!! That's amazing!! Great job!!

[uigrad]

Now, if one of the last clues ...

For most examples I can think of, the key is that you are down to just a few remaining clues.

A situation that I often see is where I am down to my very last clue, and the very last marking in the chart. Keeping with your example, imagine the only unfilled boxes I have are Alice ($5 or $10) and Bob ($5 or $10). Neither one is $15.

I have one last clue, and I don't remember all of it, but I do know it was comparing Bob to something else in the chart. It says that Bob is higher or lower than some other thing.

Rather than going back and reading the clue, I deduce that it can't be a "Bob is higher" clue, because if so, I would have marked $5 as false for Bob. So it must be a "Bob is lower than ..." clue.

I don't need to read the rest of the clue to solve this. If that "other thing" is $15, then I know the puzzle is unsolvable, and all puzzles on the site are solvable. So, the clue must be comparing Bob to something else that is $10. Therefore, I can mark Bob as $5 and Alice at $10, without taking the time to actually read the clue.

Does it save a lot of time? No. I doubt it even saves a full second. But when I'm going for records, even half a second could make the difference.

[contrary]

Finally got one! I'm at this point in the puzzle, I know the following. Each line is a discrete compiled clue in my head. The clues I didn't include in the screenshot are no longer relevant because any possible remaining solutions satisfy them.

Order: ( River Kings) - (blank) - (12) - (25). Corrollary: River Kings is in position 1/2, number 12 is in position 3/4, number 25 is in position 4/5.
25 is (4th position/Comets) OR (5th position/Monsters)
Underwood can't be 12
Underwood or Guerra are (3rd position OR Wolverines (1st OR 5th))
There is no more information about Underwood or Guerra in the puzzle.


If I put 12 in 4th position, that puts (25/Monsters) in 5th position, leaving (Wolverines / (Guerra OR Underwood) in position 1 and (Guerra OR Underwood) in position 3, and satisfies the clue that Underwood can't be number 12, since 12 is in position 4. There is no more information to tell us whether Underwood should be 1 or 3, and there is no clue referencing Guerra.
Therefore, 12 must be in position 3/Guerra, River Kings must be position 1, Underwood must be position 5/ Wolverines.

It's definitely not a shortcut when you have to type it all out.

[boxeeboxeebox]

Finally got one! I'm at this point in the puzzle, I know the following. Each line is a discrete compiled clue in my head. The clues I didn't include in the screenshot are no longer relevant because any possible remaining solutions satisfy them.

Order: ( River Kings) - (blank) - (12) - (25). Corrollary: River Kings is in position 1/2, number 12 is in position 3/4, number 25 is in position 4/5.
25 is (4th position/Comets) OR (5th position/Monsters)
Underwood can't be 12
Underwood or Guerra are (3rd position OR Wolverines (1st OR 5th))
There is no more information about Underwood or Guerra in the puzzle.


If I put 12 in 4th position, that puts (25/Monsters) in 5th position, leaving (Wolverines / (Guerra OR Underwood) in position 1 and (Guerra OR Underwood) in position 3, and satisfies the clue that Underwood can't be number 12, since 12 is in position 4. There is no more information to tell us whether Underwood should be 1 or 3, and there is no clue referencing Guerra.
Therefore, 12 must be in position 3/Guerra, River Kings must be position 1, Underwood must be position 5/ Wolverines.

It's definitely not a shortcut when you have to type it all out.

Oh, that's a tricky one. For me, I'd probably rely on Clues 2 and 9 to tell me that #2 is the player from the Monsters. (Clue 9 refers to Owen and Duran, and based on Clue 2, neither of them are from the Monsters, and since Clue 9 itself says #2 isn't on the River Kings, the only team left is the Monsters.)

From there, Clue 5 gives #25 as the player for the Comets, so 9 goals. #12 has 8 goals, and based on Clue 6, isn't Underwood so must be Guerra. Clue 8 says River Kings scored 6 goals. Wolverines scored 10 goals, and is Underwood, based on Clue 1, and the puzzle is solved.

[contrary]

Oh, that's a tricky one. For me, I'd probably rely on Clues 2 and 9 to tell me that #2 is the player from the Monsters. (Clue 9 refers to Owen and Duran, and based on Clue 2, neither of them are from the Monsters, and since Clue 9 itself says #2 isn't on the River Kings, the only team left is the Monsters.)

From there, Clue 5 gives #25 as the player for the Comets, so 9 goals. #12 has 8 goals, and based on Clue 6, isn't Underwood so must be Guerra. Clue 8 says River Kings scored 6 goals. Wolverines scored 10 goals, and is Underwood, based on Clue 1, and the puzzle is solved.

That's the proper way to do it; there's always a solution that doesn't rely on assuming solvability. For me personally, that's really slow in this case because I don't have #2 in my mental index anywhere because I have no order reference for it, so I would have to go back to the clues in the screenshot and figure out which one has a full exclusion criteria from scratch.

[tviolet]

Finally got one! I'm at this point in the puzzle, I know the following. Each line is a discrete compiled clue in my head. The clues I didn't include in the screenshot are no longer relevant because any possible remaining solutions satisfy them.

Order: ( River Kings) - (blank) - (12) - (25). Corrollary: River Kings is in position 1/2, number 12 is in position 3/4, number 25 is in position 4/5.
25 is (4th position/Comets) OR (5th position/Monsters)
Underwood can't be 12
Underwood or Guerra are (3rd position OR Wolverines (1st OR 5th))
There is no more information about Underwood or Guerra in the puzzle.


If I put 12 in 4th position, that puts (25/Monsters) in 5th position, leaving (Wolverines / (Guerra OR Underwood) in position 1 and (Guerra OR Underwood) in position 3, and satisfies the clue that Underwood can't be number 12, since 12 is in position 4. There is no more information to tell us whether Underwood should be 1 or 3, and there is no clue referencing Guerra.
Therefore, 12 must be in position 3/Guerra, River Kings must be position 1, Underwood must be position 5/ Wolverines.

It's definitely not a shortcut when you have to type it all out.

Gosh, that's a lot to hold in your head, but I can see if you can do it, it's very fast.

After reading this thread, I'm trying to teach myself to only use the top boxes and not fill in the bottom ones at all - I was using them a little but concentrating mostly on the top and now I can see the extra time to do even that much will limit how fast I can get. It's interesting, it's either faster or I get hopelessly lost and it's much, much slower. I'll keep working on it.

[tviolet]

I'm trying to teach myself to only use the top boxes and not fill in the bottom ones at all

I've been working on this for the last few days and it's definitely faster - I've gotten two top scores today! And if you see the attached, previously my scores were pretty much in line with forests's scores, now I'm 20 to 40 seconds faster.

However, if I get stuck, I go back to my old method of using the lower boxes and tend to wind up with a score that is much slower than I would have been. I also think using the upper boxes only is only possible because I've been doing these so long and would have been impossible when I was newer. So I guess my advice is practice practice practice and eventually transition to only using the top boxes.

[redhill]

Speed-reading and scanning of the clues is the only way to play fast and get high points. Over-analysing is tedious and slow. Hit the error check button when puzzle is complete before submitting it-(you only lose a fraction of a second ). If puzzle has errors, ditch it !

[contrary]

Speed-reading and scanning of the clues is the only way to play fast and get high points. Over-analysing is tedious and slow. Hit the error check button when puzzle is complete before submitting it-(you only lose a fraction of a second ). If puzzle has errors, ditch it !

That assumes you care about maximizing points. Is there something about incorrect submits that lowers your points for puzzles you ditch? Otherwise I would say skip the error check button since it's an extra step and you get the same information ("something in your solution is incorrect") by clicking the submit button, and you don't lose that fraction of a second.

I also wouldn't do this if you're still working on getting faster. Instead, either backtrack until you figure out where you read the clue wrong, or start over and work the puzzle more slowly until you find where you went wrong. That's how you'll catch reading errors and traps. For example, the one on the crossword puzzle story, where one of the clues usually reads "[Person X] got [word#] right". Speed reading that when the puzzle first came out I would see [Person X] [positive association] [word#] and associate it the two positively and always get the puzzle wrong. Now I know I need to look for that trap.