Scoring Question

[pootie49]

Hi

I am fairly certain Admin does read the ratings and comments.

For an example, the old quote with the French beginning then the English translation,
"to leave is to die a little"...I have not seen the French in that quote for months.
There may indeed be two of them out there, but I think he deleted the French.

I think if enough people disagree with a rating of a puzzle he makes that change as
well.
I tend to agree with Lurker, I try not to look at the rating, I know if its short its worth
more points. But sometimes the really long ones by virtue of number of letters used can
be just as difficult.

psst im on a boatload of meds did that make sense??

[Lancour]

I'm kinda new here but I'm wondering on how points are calculated also....
I've completed some "difficult" puzzles with times in the 50-100 second range for about 300-450 ish points (going with memory here).... but I once went back into a frustrating puzzle and solved it.... (eating fried chicken and getting greasy or something) for a total time of 2,112 seconds (personal best! lol jk)..... but that time was worth 98 points.... how does that compute? Closing in on 100 times in puzzle solving time for only about 4 times the points?.... What link am I missing here?

[BuzzBuzz]

In a message I posted earlier today (copied here below) I show what I deduced about how points are awarded, which is very similar to what Maradnu said is his posts.

I see that several messages about this question mention that each puzzle is marked as "Difficult", "Average" or "Easy". I have not been able to find this difficulty level indication when I play. Where is it? I also have seen five dificulty levels on my chart, although I only have single examples for two of them. Perhaps these two are just anomalies.

Lurker's message suggests that the level might be based on number of letters. I will accumulate this letter count with the other data I have been collecting, and I will post what I learn from that.

FROM MY OTHER MESSAGE

I have been trying to figure out how points are awarded for solving cryptograms. So far I have solved 44 puzzles, and I have plotted a graph of the points awarded vs. seconds to solve. My main conclusion from examining this graph is that there are several categories for difficulty. I am not quite sure how many, but I think there are at least five. For each category, the points awarded is based on the following formula:

points awarded = A – S * B,

where:

A is a point value constant that depends on the difficulty category,

B is a points per point constant (which is about 1/6), and which may or may not depend on the category,

and S is the number of seconds taken to solve.

What remains a complete mystery to me is how a category is assigned to an individual puzzle. Can anyone please help me figure this out?

[gryhnd51]

As I said, there are only 3 levels of difficulty...your 2 outliers are anomalies.

As a rule, the longer quotes are EASY and are worth less points.

I don't really think most of us are interested in an algebraic interpretation.

[BuzzBuzz]

Hi gryhnd51:

Thanks for your repsonse. My investigation of puzzle lengths is that "Easy" puzzles have more than 100 letters and difficult puzzles have fewer than 50 letters. I am currently unable to tell how exactly 50 or exactly 100 letter puzzles are categorized.

I have still not been able to find WHERE a puzzle is labeled as "Easy", "Average" ,or "Difficult"? Can you help me with that?

[gryhnd51]

When you pull up a new cryptogram, on the right side of the page you will see the difficulty level listed beneath the letters. Also, if you pull up "recent games" at the top of the page, you can see all of the 'grams you have attempted in the past 2 hrs. That will show you the info, and also give you a chance to "retry" any that you might have missed.

[BuzzBuzz]

Thanks grynhd41. Very helpful.

[armi]

How often is the average time changed? I see different times on the open page as when I finally finish a puzzle.

[gryhnd51]

I suppose the "average time" would change incrementally each time it is solved by any player.

[jan301]

Nice analysis, Buzzzz. I appreciate your data collection. Been here a couple of years and couldn't figure out the scoring formula at all - drove me crazy! I am glad I ran into this thread.