How to be in top20?

[dzik0n]

Hello,
Last month I discovered this site, this month I set the goal to stay in top20 for the end of the season. Since 1st of January I was literally playing like crazy almost all the time. I tested different puzzle types and figured out I can do best on 8x1 when I compared 100 games on 8x1 and 100 on 10x1 - it looks like "points gained to time spent" works much better for me on the first kind.
I can barely keep up with top15. How is it possible that someone already has 165k points at this point? It's 4 times more than me already. When comparing time to solved puzzles that means almost 33hrs during 3 days solving puzzles - is it really possible to spend almost half of the time just solving puzzles? Is that person not sleeping, eating and not looking away from the screen for half the day? If that's true, I admire dedication for a game that rewards no monetary prizes. Otherwise - what I need to do to keep up for the end of the month? It seems like I would need to do nothing else in my life but playing starbattles for a living.

(It's not a rant post - I am genuinely interested what drives people spending so much time and how to remain in top20 without losing my eyesight).

[cosmicsweety]

The harder the puzzle, the more points it's worth, so doing the hardest puzzles out there will net you more points than someone doing the easier ones.

[FidgetCat]

I've never really focused on competing, but every day, whenever I'm bored and have nothing better to do, I end up playing this game for a couple hours, since it's fun. The more you play, the faster you get, so you can end up earning more points in a shorter amount of time. Plus, like the other person said, more difficult puzzles mean more points. Last month, I was playing 12x12 2 stars puzzles and ended up 2nd, even though I wasn't playing nearly as much as others might be.

[Martika14]

It's a good question, though. Last month's winner seems to mostly play 12x12 2-star puzzles. This month, they've played 559 puzzles at an average-per puzzle of 270-something seconds. That comes out to more than 40 hours! That means that for the last four days, they've spent 10 hours per day playing. I find that hard to believe, and I wonder what sort of shenanigans are going on.

Last month's 2nd place finisher has "only" played 320 puzzles in the last four days, so about 4 hours per day, which is much more reasonable. What I don't understand there is that their average score is 293.7. Given that the maximum points for a 12x12 is 300, that means that they're pretty much always doing record-breaking times. Again, my shenanigan detectors are going "awooga! awooga!"

[FidgetCat]

Like I said, I play a lot of these, so I've gotten decent at doing them quickly. I honestly had no idea my scores were that good, but I promise there are no shenanigans lol. That is weird about the 1st place though.

[Dr.Buttbeard]

Martika14 I just did a 12x12 in 76 seconds which was 23 seconds off of the top time, and received 294 points. So it doesn't need to be record breaking, just consistently fast. Seems like fidgetcat is pretty consistently fast based on their avg times, so I don't think there's any shenanigans here.