5:39 am
digondda
Goodness, I foiund today's hard. Yesterday's not too bad.
6:38 am
lk911
good puzzle...one guess on a double.
9:47 am
tincup
I have been grinding away at the archives. Sometimes it feels like I am trying to empty a swimming pool with an eye dropper! Just curious… how many minutes would you guess, on average, you spend on each type of puzzle… easy, medium, hard and expert. For me, I am guessing around 7, 10, 12 and 15 respectively.
11:50 am
gman
only 10 filled in so far and stuck....anyone else like this???
11:55 am
TallMike
gman, I think it is going to take a lot of trial and error. It seems to be a super tough puzzle.
1:20 pm
TallMike
tincup, I am finding it difficult to estimate those averages. For example, I solve almost all experts in 15 to 25 minutes but a few take much longer, sometimes hours. Medium and hard probably average 20 minutes. Easy puzzles vary widely, between 10 minutes and an hour or more, and average more time than experts (yes, really) because there are often a lot more steps in an easy.
I do not use autogreens any more, although I tried them for a while several years ago. They can make a big difference in puzzle solving time.
1:33 pm
TallMike
gman, I eventually solved today's puzzle by brute force after I kept getting stuck. First I went as far as I could without greens. Next I put greens in all the blank cells and saved that checkpoint. Finally I selected a cell with the largest number of possible values (six, I think) and tried each value in turn until I found one that worked. Luckily it was only my second guess.
1:36 pm
angieplumptit
Aha...got it. 7 hours, 42 minutes.
1:38 pm
TallMike
angie, greens are a way of displaying the possible values in a cell as small green numbers. Autogreens refers to a way of instantly displaying all the greens in all the empty cells in a puzzle. It involves running a small program sometimes called a script.
8:13 pm
Cinna
finally. that was a toughy
11:08 pm
loushka
TallMike, why would you choose a cell with the largest number of values? Why wouldn't you choose a locked pair and just try one of those values? It seems like that way it is 50/50 rather than one in 6. Just curious and wondering if I am missing something...
