116 seconds for a logic 4x5 logic puzzle?? HOW???

[Ellie1]

(I have been using as something to fall asleep to )

I do something kind of similar -- sometimes I'll play the puzzles as a gauge to tell me WHEN my brain is too tired to keep going and I need to sleep. When I'm staring blearily at a smallish Easy/Moderate puzzle with no clue what the next step is, it means it's past Ellie's bedtime XD

[BruceW]

I can solve 3 x 4 Easy logic puzzles in 30 seconds. The difficulty of your puzzle is what makes your case make sense. If it was Challenging, I am just as surprised as you. If it was Easy, 116 seconds is in the fast range. It's pretty normal.

[alispa789]

I play slowly. I don't mark any square until I know it is correct.

There are many key situations where I have two or three options. I know it would be much quicker to:
-guess and mark a square
-remember that square's position
-continue solving until I hit a contradiction
-click undo until the guess is unmarked
-repeat for another option

Like a maze where you keep testing dead-ends til you find the right path. I don't find it very satisfying, though.

Sure, there are situations that may require a series of guesses, and it may grow confusing to keep track of your "undo" state. But I find that in most puzzles I hit one big snarl and once that is solved everything falls into place. Anyway, maybe the resident wizards are masters of the undo button.

There is literally no situation in which you will have to guess, they can all be deduced with logic. No one who is doing this fast is using the undo button at all I assure you, it's all muscle memory when you remember the rules/inferences. Do you mean You don't even mark squares false? If that's what you're doing then you're playing it wrong lol. That is so much slower when they've given you the grid to literally be your workspace. Or else they would just give you the table to fill out immediately. If you haven't read the tips and tricks you should, they're a game changer.

[alispa789]

Don't worry, I'm in the same boat as you. I may sometimes finish the puzzles in less than 1000 seconds, but those are rare (I only do challenging puzzles).
I don't worry about the times, I derive no enjoyment from how fast I finish the puzzles, but the fact that I can do them without error. Maybe there's some wicked trick that allows the really fast times, or maybe it's some mechanical thing that the puzzle form doesn't catch (does hitting the back button when on the puzzle start the puzzle anew and reset the clock?). Who knows.

it's nothing like that, they're genuinely just that fast. A lot of it is muscle memory. I have also questioned these times for as long as I've been playing (years, but my times were so slow and I was so bad I never bothered with an account until now lol) but this year I've suddenly had an increase in my times as I remember more rules/inferences and can figure things out much faster/ on auto pilot. It's literally just practice.

[alispa789]

I know how they do it...
Create a grid on a piece of paper, then fill in the squares from the clues, press "Start Again" then complete the puzzle on the screen in under a minute (as long as it takes to transfer the results).
The people that do this are only cheating themselves and defeating the whole point of the scoring, so I ignore it and just play the game.
It makes no sense, is unfair on other players and the application programmers should come up with some way of stopping this...

it doesn't work that way, that was my hypothesis too and i tested it. the timer does not stop running when you click start over. It's from the second the puzzle starts to when you finally hit submit, no matter what happens in between

[JedMedGrey]

I am happy if I get below the average time, more so if my score is higher than my time. Working on using just the top layer - sometimes I can, others not. And yes, sometimes they put me to slee . z z z z

[ceciyl]

OP, hope you get the times you want to achieve, but don't stress over what others are getting. It's nice to see as a benchmark of what's possible, but hopefully won't end up causing to derail from why you're doing the puzzles in the first place, but if time was the goal, then go for it- some do because it's just good old fun, some like the mental exercise, some play as idle past time, some do for bragging rights, etc.

(I have been using as something to fall asleep to )

[kittyboo]

The thing with the times for the puzzles is that they include all of the different sizes and difficulty levels

Not the case.

If it's a different size, it's a different puzzle. If it's a different difficulty, it's a different puzzle.

A 3x4 will have a shorter time, like thirty seconds. Different difficulty levels at the same size might have similar times, because there's a point of proficiency where it's the clicking that takes most of the time.

[Scarlytt]

The thing with the times for the puzzles is that they include all of the different sizes and difficulty levels in the single time range thing, so you can't really get an idea of how long for the specific size/difficulty level that you did. I find it really annoying, but just have to keep it in mind. So the insanely fast times would be for the smallest versions on easy difficulty. Also, the super long times are usually for people who get inturrupted for one reason or another, because the timer will keep going for days on end if it takes that long to finish a puzzle due to not having an oppounity after having to put it on hold for some reason.

[redlead]

I've solved a few of the Challenging 4x7's in the 120-130 sec range, but it's rare for me. It involves a toooonnnn of practice, deep familiarity with the puzzle structures, only working with the first row, and solving a lot of the clues in my head + keeping that in my working memory. It's a skill like anything else, and it's sort of a stupid one to master (although I wouldn't say I've mastered it). I could probably have learned to play an instrument or read several book series in the time I've spent on these puzzles! Don't look at the record times when you're thinking about where your time fits in the scale. They are extreme outliers.

Edited to add: also, I have set my mouse speed to be fast and once I fill the top row, I hover over where I know the "submit" button will appear so that I can click it as quickly as possible.

[losmond]

But there is no "start again" button that stops the time from ticking.

[David56]

I know how they do it...
Create a grid on a piece of paper, then fill in the squares from the clues, press "Start Again" then complete the puzzle on the screen in under a minute (as long as it takes to transfer the results).
The people that do this are only cheating themselves and defeating the whole point of the scoring, so I ignore it and just play the game.
It makes no sense, is unfair on other players and the application programmers should come up with some way of stopping this...

[MoscaMye]

Correlative rather than causative, but on days I'm having a good day on here, I'm also having a good day programming at my job. And if I'm struggling to focus at work sometimes I can come on here, do a few games to reset my focus, and do a better job at work. It's fun to watch because I know I'm struggling and get a slowish time the first time, average the second game, pretty good the third game, and then I can think again and get back to my job. If I do three games and I'm still struggling, I get up and walk away from the computer for a while. A sort of canary in the coalmine.

Another fun fact: I can't get records when I'm listening to music. I'd estimate that listening to music is approximately a 25%-50% time penalty for me. Classical is less of a time penalty than rock.

For me it's my canary for stress. I always used to find myself playing more puzzles before exams or when I had essays due back when I was at university. Whenever I find myself loading them up more than once a week I usually stop and take stock and I do find that there is something stressful I'm avoiding.

[contrary]

It doesn't have much bearing on the real world, and my claim here is perhaps anecdotal, but as I progressed to the point where I was able to keep mental track of several clues I noticed that I got better at what you might call situational awareness, most noticeable while driving. My previous job involved a fair amount of interstate travel, and I noticed that I got much better at keeping track of what cars around me were doing, at an almost subconscious level. If I glimpsed a car closing on me in the mirror, and it didn't enter and emerge from my blind spot at the times I was expecting, my "spider sense" started tingling. Possibly it is completely unrelated to the memory skills associated with solving these puzzles rapidly, but it almost felt like a game to me, which is what made me think there was a connection.

Correlative rather than causative, but on days I'm having a good day on here, I'm also having a good day programming at my job. And if I'm struggling to focus at work sometimes I can come on here, do a few games to reset my focus, and do a better job at work. It's fun to watch because I know I'm struggling and get a slowish time the first time, average the second game, pretty good the third game, and then I can think again and get back to my job. If I do three games and I'm still struggling, I get up and walk away from the computer for a while. A sort of canary in the coalmine.

Another fun fact: I can't get records when I'm listening to music. I'd estimate that listening to music is approximately a 25%-50% time penalty for me. Classical is less of a time penalty than rock.

[brilliantbelle]

Only solve the top row of the puzzle. It's basically a waste of time to fill out the rest. If a certain clue can't be depicted in the first row, skip it and come back. If a clue says x is either the one with this name or from that place you know this name and that place are not the same thing so you can usually use that in the first row to show what is not what even if you aren't going vertical. The problem with the larger puzzles is you will have information you can't do anything with until later on unless you're filling out the whole thing, and over time you get faster at knowing what to pass on for now.

Appreciate this tip!