Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

For the discussion of daily/weekly puzzles.
PuzzleScot
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by PuzzleScot »

dickoon wrote: Next week's fixtures are as follows:
I've updated the fixtures form...
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driv4r
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by driv4r »

For me the U-bahn defo wasn't easy, probably because I hadn't solved any of them before and therefore didn't get going! ;) Well, at least I wasn't last.

EDIT: Solved the snakes late, so giving afcwarren a chance to equalize tomorrow. They were new for me but they were okay (solvable without spending hours on them), though I had to do some guesstimating to get the right snake together, especially in the 1st one :P
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Nix
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by Nix »

PuzzleScot wrote:If a current puzzle is revealed in any way, on any public forum, no matter how briefly, that might help anyone else, the puzzle is scrapped, and the results wiped (quite rightly). Don't do it again.
I'm sorry to have my first post be a negative one, but this practice totally irks me. It does rather little to prevent cheating, and almost nothing to discourage posting puzzles in the future. Quite the opposite – from a purely gaming perspective it is advantageous to post puzzles that went badly to have the scores wiped. Meanwhile having a good result wiped because someone violated the rules is horrible. I would say much more horrible than having a bad result not wiped, knowing that the puzzle had been posted somewhat increasing the probability of someone having cheated.

If someone wants to cheat after seeing the puzzle on a forum, let them. If they really wanted to, they could cheat some other way anyway. As for someone accidentally stumbling upon a posted puzzle, they probably wouldn't gain much by just glancing on it. If the puzzle happens to be such that they would, they could just disqualify themselves for the day. Or preempt the situation by not looking at puzzle forums before solving their daily puzzles.

I concede that a big part of my motivation to complain is that to my recollection I've had good results every time this has happened. Slalom is one of few types I'm practically guaranteed to get a good score in and the only type to even give an excellent chance of getting the top spot. That day I was solving after the results were already wiped, but didn't notice that until I had it solved in well under 3 minutes and the top time from when I had last refreshed the high score table.

If anyone is still interested, the puzzle in question didn't require any bifurcation or in fact much stopping during solving for me. I remember using just one deduction that I would consider fancy. But sure, that's if you know all the deductions, and this isn't the easiest puzzle type in which to find, learn and use them. I guess I should post some hints for slalom puzzles, but somehow I don't really feel like doing that just now.

I hope I managed to stay somewhat objective, as I still can't be calm when thinking about the topic. :oops:
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driv4r
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by driv4r »

Well, I'm sorry I ruined your possibly good result in the highscore table :(
Anyway, for me it was really tough and I never got it solved, so I would love some tips on how to solve slaloms better. I tried to use those in the rules & tips board under slalom tips but they helped me to get just less than half of it solved and not all of the tips were easy to understand for me (as a noob).

EDIT: Btw, seeing that you are from Finland, I'm from Estonia myself (though currently not living there) ;)

EDIT 2: As I was watching football earlier I couldn't get those puzzles solved on time, just solved the arukone now, didn't bother with the starry sky as it seemed really tough considering times. However, afcwarren hasn't solved anything so far this week, so I am still in the lead somehow :roll: I gotta keep it up :!:

EDIT 3: Anyone knows what that means on http://www.croco-puzzle.com/Rating/ratingdescr.php: 'Assessment for the rating of driv4r: 145' (Google translation) ?
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PuzzleScot
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by PuzzleScot »

Nix wrote:
PuzzleScot wrote:If a current puzzle is revealed in any way, on any public forum, no matter how briefly, that might help anyone else, the puzzle is scrapped, and the results wiped (quite rightly). Don't do it again.
I'm sorry to have my first post be a negative one, but this practice totally irks me.
Erm, welcome!
I have to say I agree largely with what you say, and withdraw my "quite rightly" statement.
Any online contest has an opportunity for 'participating outwith the rules', so we should respect that the players are trustworthy.
There are already safeguards in place to identify cheats. Along with trust, this should be sufficient, and puzzles only withdrawn/replaced if they have an obvious error.
berni
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by berni »

driv4r wrote:EDIT 3: Anyone knows what that means on http://www.croco-puzzle.com/Rating/ratingdescr.php: 'Assessment for the rating of driv4r: 145' (Google translation) ?
When you start to solve puzzles the rating starts at 0 and needs some time to get to it's real level. The number there is an estimation of that. Experience shows, that the estimation is often below the value, one reaches later. This is quite sure due to learning effect.

Something else: Concerning the discussion about the removal of all results: I'm still not sure, what really makes sense here. It happens about once a year, that someone publishes a puzzle before the day is over. But there might be publications in forums I'm not reading and people might even use my approach to cancel all pre-published puzzles, to get rid of a bad result. Yet, we had some annoying cheaters from time to time...
Nix
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by Nix »

driv4r wrote:Well, I'm sorry I ruined your possibly good result in the highscore table :(
Anyway, for me it was really tough and I never got it solved, so I would love some tips on how to solve slaloms better. I tried to use those in the rules & tips board under slalom tips but they helped me to get just less than half of it solved and not all of the tips were easy to understand for me (as a noob).
Don't worry about it, just don't do it again. I can't help still being the slightest bit mad at you, but much more at the rule of voiding the scores as a result. There's always bound to be people who are new to something and don't know the expected conduct. I'm sure you didn't intend to ruin anyone's day. Should've said that in the first post too. :oops:

I posted some tips for Slalom now in the Rules & Tips section. If you can decode my text and put in the work to find out what the actual deductions for each pattern are, it should be enough to at least let you solve Croco's Preisrätsel Slaloms.
kiwijam
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by kiwijam »

Publishing a puzzle just to avoid a bad score seems an extreme plan. I would suggest that if a top solver did it then they might be immediately expelled from Crocopuzzle. Lower solvers don't have as much to gain, so might be allowed one 'accident'. Something for Berni to decide for each case of course.

And maybe Nix has a point: if a puzzle is published in a forum like this and the first person to find it gets it deleted, then it may be available for only a couple of minutes. We then ask anyone that saw it to not compete (or Berni can mark their times as 'unofficial') and rely on their honour. Just an idea?
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driv4r
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by driv4r »

Okay, missed the U-bahn of yesterday due to watching football again but now that I have solved Koralle (Coral) it's safe to say I have beaten afcwarren!! Not sure what's going on with him but I am quite sure it's a huge surprise that he'll be relegated.
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detuned
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by detuned »

^The table seems to suggest he hasn't been playing this week :roll:
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driv4r
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by driv4r »

Exactly. That's why I was wondering what was going on with him...as he hasn't told he would be away or anything, he's kinda disappeared :?
Good for me though, 2nd time in it and I won't be relegated, not that I'm happy to win this way but I'm happy to stay up and to get another chance.
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by dickoon »

Here are the results of last week's fixtures on the croco-puzzle ladder, courtesy as ever of Alan's page. (Thanks for setting the fixtures up, Alan!)

detuned 7 rodders 3
drsteve 7 Dataman 5 after tie-break
PuzzleScot 6 erika 4
afcwarren 0 driv4r 4 (and six tied)

Congratulations to our winners! Next week's fixtures are as follows:

detuned - drsteve
rodders - PuzzleScot
Dataman - driv4r
erika - puzzlemad

Waiting list: dickoon, afcwarren

Errors and exceptions excepted. Byes are available; please give as much notice as possible. If anyone on the waiting list wants to drop out, that's fine. Feel free to concede a match, or all your future matches. New players are welcome (though after this week there will only be ten further weeks played in the ladder) and I shall change the length of the ladder if the waiting list reaches four or zero.

Only two months to go to the start of the Croco-League, too!
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furudo.erika
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by furudo.erika »

I will be away from Croco until the 18th so please concede/bye me until then.
PuzzlerNickG
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by PuzzlerNickG »

Congratulations to drsteve. That was pretty close.

The puzzle types helped me: my statistics show my top five are Arukone, Sternenhimmel, Koralle, Slalom and Schlange. I would have been beaten more soundly without that I think.
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by drsteve »

PuzzlerNickG wrote:Congratulations to drsteve. That was pretty close.

The puzzle types helped me: my statistics show my top five are Arukone, Sternenhimmel, Koralle, Slalom and Schlange. I would have been beaten more soundly without that I think.
Really thought you had me after messing up the Zeltlager - one of my better puzzles, but I missed a tent out - v careless. Good game, Nick. I'd say see you in a fortnight, but I'll be sunning myself that week.
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driv4r
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by driv4r »

Wow, very nice -- new week, new puzzles, new opponent & I'm still in it 8-) Lucky me, didn't expect to win by solving just 4 puzzles (Monday to Friday)! Anyway, I'm excited by the prospect of competing against Dataman and I am hoping for all 3 sudokus to appear this week (and some of them more than once) as we had none whatsoever last week ;) Gonna be a tough one, that's for sure but I'll give my best!

EDIT: My actual solving time for Hitori was ~1 hour shorter (for 1 hour it just stood open in an un-used tab) but it wouldn't have changed the contest standing here anyway...

EDIT 2: Update after solving Wednesday's puzzles. Had a decent day after a while! :) Have beaten 3 guys from here in Hitori and 1 in Starry Sky, though it was the first one I have solved! Most importantly I managed to beat Dataman in Hitori and wasn't too far away from getting a double against him as I lost by 17 seconds in Starry Sky. And I spent about 10-20 seconds on checking if everything was correct, so maybe I should taken the risk this time... :roll:
So, after 3rd day the competition is still on!! 8-)
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rodders
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by rodders »

I believe my rather enjoyable match against Alan has gone to a tie-break, and I've only just realised that I won't be anywhere near a computer from lunchtime today until Sunday afternoon. Is there any chance we can play our tie-break on Sunday? Appreciate that's very late notice, so if not I will concede graciously.
PuzzleScot
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by PuzzleScot »

Close game indeed! It's fine by me to use Sunday's game instead.
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driv4r
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by driv4r »

Unfortunately it's all over for me as this idiotic thing just doesn't let me in: 'There have been too many failed login attempts. This account has been temporarily blocked for security reasons. Please try again in half an hour.'
"Stupid is as stupid does." -- Forrest Gump
PuzzleScot
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by PuzzleScot »

@Rodders - VERY glad we agreed to skip today's - I can have an 'early' night.

@driv4r - since you had been beaten in 6/8 matches Mon-Thu, I wouldn't worry too much about Friday's match!
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driv4r
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by driv4r »

Yea, well I didn't want to give any points away easily but now that I have solved the Starry Night of yesterday I can say that Dataman was faster anyway, so yeah, it didn't matter much but it was still hugely annoying at the time.
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by drsteve »

PuzzleScot wrote:@Rodders - VERY glad we agreed to skip today's - I can have an 'early' night
Well, after messing up the shorter one in my tie-break with Tom, I'm tempted to not bother with the other. Not enough time to waste on a 25 minute ABC Box...
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by drsteve »

Whoever I've got next week, congratulations in advance as I'll be away all week. Back for the following week though...
PuzzleScot
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by PuzzleScot »

Well done Rodders. Very close all week, tied after the (delayed) tie-break, you win on total time. Couple of real stinkers in there week!
Late on in the rundweg solve, I realised I'd made a mistake somewhere early, so started again, and did the whole thing in well under 10 minutes - wish I'd abandoned and restarted earlier. Oh well...
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Re: Any interest in a UK croco-puzzle ladder?

Post by dickoon »

Here are the results of last week's fixtures on the croco-puzzle ladder, courtesy as ever of Alan's page.

detuned 7 drsteve 5 after tie-break
rodders 6 PuzzleScot 6 after Sunday tie-break; rodders wins on lower total time
Dataman 8 driv4r 2
puzzlemad w/o erika

Congratulations to our winners! Two more very tight matches. Next week's fixtures are as follows:

detuned - rodders
Dataman w/o drsteve
puzzlemad - PuzzleScot
driv4r - dickoon

Waiting list: afcwarren, erika (NB erika has byes booked for 16th/17th July)

Errors and exceptions excepted. Byes are available; please give as much notice as possible. If anyone on the waiting list wants to drop out, that's fine. Feel free to concede a match, or all your future matches. New players are welcome (though after this week there will only be nine further weeks played in the ladder) and I shall change the length of the ladder if the waiting list reaches four or zero.
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