Puzzle Duel Leagues

[pinkagape]

Puzzle Duel has a timed daily puzzle and daily leaderboard.

One of the things they’ve introduced this month is a monthly leaderboard with divisions like the UK Puzzle League, so it’s a great time to get started again as we’re at the start of a month, if you haven’t been around there lately. At this early stage of the month, Matthew is leading Yellow division, so there’s some good UK involvement.

[mwhite]

My original thought that it was an April Fools' seems to have been wide of the mark.

I'm interested to see what will happen at the end of the month as it appears that puzzles are 'live' for the normal five days so I'm not quite sure at what point they will confirm any promotion/relegation. It does seem like a good way to provide some interest/context at a range of levels.

[detuned]

Not sure what I make of it as a system, I suppose it depends on what it’s trying to achieve.

1) first metric being total solved puzzles with no errors obviously penalises those who miss day here and there - and also with mistakes - once you stop from 100% there is no way to recover. I imagine the promotion/relegation will take a while to settle down, if it ever does

2) second metric being total time obviously skews thus heavily to the big point puzzles

Combination of those two mean the correlation between these leagues and the ratings is relatively weak (although undoubtedly still there)

So yeah, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. I’m certainly not playing along trying to optimise/win this in no any way, I guess I’ll play as normal and see where I end up.

[pinkagape]

I’ve noticed those problems too. However, it’s a nice incentive to solve every day and I feel like it gives a more tangible result than the ratings, which feels a bit obscured, though I acknowledge it deals with the longer puzzles more fairly. The ratings are heavily influenced by errors too!

[mwhite]

I've also found it easier to follow along than the ratings on there which I've often found a bit obscure. I think, particularly as the month has gone on, that it has made me slightly more cautious to avoid errors - I do feel like I have something to protect. But on the other hand its also encouraged me to finish one or two puzzles I might not have done otherwise - in previous months I've given up on some puzzle types if I haven't done them in about 5/10 minutes.

In terms of penalising errors, I guess its just one of those things where different competitions are different, but all penalise errors. I guess the thing is here is that in a fixed time competition you can make up for an error by doing more other puzzles in the time, but with puzzle duel you can only do one per day so one error automatically puts you behind everyone who gets everything right first time, not matter how slowly. Hmm - suspect my view on that may change when I make an error!

[pinkagape]

My original thought that it was an April Fools' seems to have been wide of the mark.

I'm interested to see what will happen at the end of the month as it appears that puzzles are 'live' for the normal five days so I'm not quite sure at what point they will confirm any promotion/relegation. It does seem like a good way to provide some interest/context at a range of levels.

So they’re stopping the league hard at the end of the month in case anyone sees the forum but not Puzzle Duel. Sunday’s Puzzle needs to be done on Sunday.

[pinkagape]

Oh I forgot to say that I quite like the format now we’re coming to the end of the month. It reminds me of Tour de France looking at the time gaps.

I think it would be nice if the daily scores were colour coded so you could see who you’re competing with, and maybe if there were a time bonus like in Tour de France if you won your day within the division so there was a bit more of a chance to catch up rather than just avoid losing time.

[mwhite]

Is it just some form of observation bias, or do there seem to be less mistakes all round this month? I've become the latest UK based puzzler to make an error in 'Orange' division; at one point with Maurice, Tom and Freddie in the top 5 it looked like a really strong division for the UK. After a few weeks, I think that it is too responsive to errors although I don't have a solution to offer and I think generally Puzzle Duel want to harshly penalise errors.

The other issue I have is that the divisions are a little false. Freddie would currently be top of the red division and as we all do the same puzzles, his performance is directly comparable to those in the red division. At least in e.g. football teams in the Premiership and Championship are playing different teams each week so nobody would claim that Burnley would outperform Man City this season!

[pinkagape]

Yes, I think everyone has realised that errors are to be avoided. Personally, I like it at the moment, the challenge of balancing error avoidance with fast times is very cool.

An obvious way around your very valid point would be for there to be a series of duels to make up the competition. Fastest time between the pair gets the point, with an error meaning you lose the duel. The current total time could split tie breaks.

Do you think that would work? I think that would be super fun!

[detuned]

My original thought that it was an April Fools' seems to have been wide of the mark.

I'm interested to see what will happen at the end of the month as it appears that puzzles are 'live' for the normal five days so I'm not quite sure at what point they will confirm any promotion/relegation. It does seem like a good way to provide some interest/context at a range of levels.

So they’re stopping the league hard at the end of the month in case anyone sees the forum but not Puzzle Duel. Sunday’s Puzzle needs to be done on Sunday.

Ugh… I had a couple of mistakes this month, thought I was up to date but turns out I missed a fuzuli from a couple of days back…