Doctor’s Note – Week 4
Still recovering from my trip to Boston so this week’s note will be brief. I hope you enjoyed the Arrow Sudoku and Cave Puzzles. This coming week will bring the first of the loop puzzle genres, Masyu, and Consecutive Sudoku, another of my favorite sudoku variants from the past, in this case from explorations in Mutant Sudoku.
As the topic for this week, I want to know what you think of the times given with the puzzle each day. For the competitive puzzlers, do you like seeing these times? Is the master time a bit too hard to reach? Would a slightly easier standard give a better target? For the recreational puzzlers, does seeing a time change how you approach the puzzle to care more about the clock than otherwise? Would you like an option to keep them hidden instead?
I am considering adding a self-reporting of times to the solve box once there is a finishers page for each puzzle. It is not a high priority at the moment as I view the times as a guideline to set an expectation for the puzzle, and not yet that my site is a “competitive puzzle site” like some others that record solving histories and such. But I welcome your input on any changes you might like me to think about going forward since I do have several excellent testers that have been giving me good data every day.
Cheers,
Dr. S
Well the times are handy if you want to find out how you well you do at a puzzle type. So I feel this would be handy for new puzzlers or new puzzle types. The TomTom’s I timed and the large Star Battle as the high expert time got me curious, as I couldn’t imagine taking that long on a 2 star Star Battle.
But as an experienced puzzler I know my base level on most common puzzle types. And after solving I will generally have a feeling if I did well or not. And then knowing how I am relative to the set times doesn’t matter to me that much as I’ll know if I could have done better or it was a really good solve for me.
So I’m guessing the times are generally more interesting for newer solvers.
>> This coming week will bring the first of the loop puzzle genres, Masyu
Yay! But, I consider Cave to be a loop genre as well. Or at least, a second cousin to the genre anyway…
>> For the recreational puzzlers, does seeing a time change how you approach the puzzle to care more about the clock than otherwise? Would you like an option to keep them hidden instead?
I pretty much ignore them since (despite spurious attempts otherwise) I don’t bother timing my solves anyway. However, I was thinking about the difference between expert and novice solvers. I don’t think an x3 (or xN) time difference is applicable. I think what marks the difference between expert and novice is the ability to follow the logic of the constructor. What costs time is losing the thread of logic that the constructor wants you to follow. When that happens, you end up looking at the entire board for the next deduction which is an O(n^2) proposition rather than O(n). The novice loses this thread more often than the expert. This means that as the difficulty goes up, the novice’s time goes up quadratically rather than linearly like the expert’s. So the ratio of novice time to expert time is not constant, but linear.
This is all pretty good reasoning. I’ve copied the linear model from another site, and it does work very well on sudoku, but does not on other types.
It may be better to go to a Master/Grandmaster time and not try to do anything more. With my set of testers I can do this as ~fastest time and ~mean time.
I like the solving times as a guide for how much time I need to set aside (although this is usually important for Friday/Saturday) and to gauge my progress. I’ve been posting my times on my G+ recommendations. I’m usually around +- 10-20% of the expert time. For my better types (Masyu, hooray!), I hope to push the master times. If it’s out of reach, that’s fine because I’m not the near the best in the world in any puzzle type. I know my range of puzzle skill, but I need the guidelines to push me to being even better.
If you did set up a recording of times, the most important feature to me is a personal history displaying my time, master time, expert time, and ratio compared to some standard (master probably). Seeing that ratio approach one is more important to me than seeing how I compare to everyone else. I have CrocoPuzzle for that.
Hi motris..All the features till now are perfectly fine.I have no issues with the timing.Dont make it non-available in case you are planning to.And i dont solve the puzzles keeping the time in mind.Only when i about to take the printout of the Pds that i notice through the corner of my eye the times and only after i solve do i completely see it.
But what i would like to see is in the doctors note every week some general clues that would help amateurs like me to solve new puzzle types.You would not believe me if i say that i was solving the second of the caves for some 5-6 hours(cumulatively not continuosly)In the end i solved it .And the hardest of the caves i am still yet to go half way through the puzzle.So if you could provide general clues that can be done or followed blindly in the puzzle it would be really helpful.For example the checkerrule is very good.
I like your ask dr.sudoku section very much even though it takes me a lot of time to understand the shortcuts.((I broke my head to understand the tougher star battle where you alloted 2-4 stars in each section))It was simply way above my level.But i would have got it immediately if you had explained a bit more.
So from a personal perspective i would love to see doctor sudoku post some general clues in the puzzle at the beginning before going into the ouzzle and then go on to explain a particular hard puzzle of the week.
And by the way i enrolled my name in the World sudoku Grand prix.I was a bit disappointed that i could not see your name in the list motris.Would have loved to see doctor sudoku stamp his class amongst the worlds best solvers!!!
Your notice on “basic tips” is well taken. I tried to do a little more of that with this cave entry, since it is a less common style, but I obviously cannot do basic stuff all the time.
I really appreciate the solving times being posted for the puzzles, and I’ve timed every puzzle I’ve done so far. This is the only place that I’ve been able to get a feel for how skilled I am at each puzzle type, and thus which ones I need to work on more. I’ve been tracking my solving times, and plan to retry puzzles I struggled with after a month or so.
I agree that seeing a ratio to some standard would be the best part about recording times.
I guess I am a semi-competitive puzzler. I like seeing the times and checking how I did if I have a solid block of time to set aside for working a puzzle. Alternatively, if I am multitasking (working a puzzle while watching my daughter, for example), I like being able to use the times as a guide to puzzle difficulty.
I am all over the place when it comes to achieving the times. I’ve done well enough to achieve the Master times on some puzzles (Cave and Nurikabe are my best, and probably Masyu once I’ve tried those puzzles). I am closer to the Novice times on basic Sudoku. On the Sudoku variants, I rate as an Expert. It’s really interesting to me to be able to compare my skills across the different puzzle types in that way.