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Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Wed 28 Nov, 2012 2:31 pm
by detuned
Berni: Whilst solving today's kropki, on my mac, I noticed that I was no longer able to mark candidates by pressing alt-3 to get the hash #. I've found that feature invaluable in solving the harder kropki puzzles that have appeared before and this made things significantly more fiddly whilst solving today.

Incidentally, I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying today's kropki was particularly tough, a quick glance at the high scores is enough to tell you that.

Anyhow, having made quite a few puzzles of my own with the general "adjacent pairs marked if and only if rule x is satisfied," I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in actually working these puzzles out slowly and methodically. Without being able to mark candidates today it was basically a guess-fest guided by a little intuition. If the feature was removed intentionally, I'd beg you to bring it back, and if this is just a bug on my end I'd be quite interested in getting this fixed!

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Wed 28 Nov, 2012 7:36 pm
by apollo1001
Well done on yesterday's puzzles Tom/Steve !
detuned wrote:Berni: Whilst solving today's kropki, on my mac, I noticed that I was no longer able to mark candidates by pressing alt-3 to get the hash #. I've found that feature invaluable in solving the harder kropki puzzles that have appeared before and this made things significantly more fiddly whilst solving today.
Sorry Tom, looks like this feature is still working (although I simply press "," on my mac to get it) not that it helped me much - I couldn't complete the break-in logic..

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Wed 28 Nov, 2012 11:27 pm
by Fred76
The # feature works fine for me for the skyscrapers/sudokus/kropkis, but I have another problem:
I find it even more useful to write 2 candidates on a cell using simply the key "-", which seems to work on skyscrapers/sudoku, but not on the kropki.

Is it idelibarate or did I miss something?

Fred

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Thu 29 Nov, 2012 11:59 pm
by detuned
should have read this before cocking up the sudoku just now. Retried it and the comma works beautifully. The trouble with alt-3 was sometimes hitting cmd-3 instead to disastrous effect!

now to make up for things on the inequality...

edit... or not :roll: those two ratings are going to take some recovering now :cry:

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Fri 30 Nov, 2012 12:31 am
by detuned
also fred, the dash only works with puzzles where inequalities are an integral part of the solve (so i think kakuro, skyscrapers, inequality etc) We discussed this way back where berni told us all off for using the dash to indicate pairs instead ;)

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Fri 30 Nov, 2012 10:24 am
by berni
I'm too slow. :( ;) Everything is allready answered...

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Sun 02 Dec, 2012 1:01 pm
by apollo1001
I imagine that I have totally misunderstood the rules of 'Laser' as today's puzzle seems broken, in that one of the outside starting clues appears to be violated given the respective starting internal clues. :shock:

I wont say any more here today, but would welcome someone explaining what I am missing tomorrow...!

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Sun 02 Dec, 2012 9:22 pm
by kiwijam
apollo1001 wrote:I imagine that I have totally misunderstood the rules of 'Laser' as today's puzzle seems broken, in that one of the outside starting clues appears to be violated given the respective starting internal clues. :shock:
I wont say any more here today, but would welcome someone explaining what I am missing tomorrow...!
The first time I did a croco-laser I thought it was broken too, I gave up on it.

The reason for me was that when the laser grid is large, but your puzzle window is small, the marks inside the grid look like little mirror squares. And given that today's puzzle is large, and there is a 3-mirror clue pointing towards 4 marks, I suspect you have exactly the same problem I did. When I put the applet size to 500x350 that's what I see too.
So the solution is to go to your Benutzerkonto menu and in the Appletabmessungen increase the size of your puzzle window. Make it fill most of your screen, makes most puzzles more enjoyable. Then you will see that all the marks inside the grid are Xs, not mirrors. In fact crocopuzzle never includes mirrors in the starting clues, only Xs. Hope that helps.

@Berni: Perhaps you can make the Xs more readable for the low resolutions?

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Mon 03 Dec, 2012 7:32 am
by apollo1001
And it all becomes clear! Exactly my problem James - they all looked like mirrors, so no wonder I was finding it tricky. I'll have a play with the settings, but useful to know there are never mirrors given as starters. Thank you!

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Tue 11 Dec, 2012 8:25 pm
by kiwijam
Mighty fine masyu today Tom, blitzing the field. :D
I notice I've never had a top 3 finish in any of the 1000+ puzzles I've done (a small number of 4ths to 10ths) so I'm slightly jealous of your regular podiums!

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Tue 11 Dec, 2012 10:03 pm
by detuned
I used to have a few more masyu wins before hideaki and gorogoro started playing - so when I saw I'd got them quite convincingly I was pleased. There were a couple of occasions where a constructor's 6th sense really kicked in without having to think today which is where I assume I've made the gains. Maybe I should start making tapa because I seem to have zero intuition there, I keep wanting it to solve like nurikabe and then I simply blank when other logic is called for. I don't want to be more specific than that when the puzzles are still live.

I am however a little concerned psyho hasn't played yet :roll:

...And I'm not quite so sure about regular podiums, although my stats page assures me I make the top three 2% of the time, which has taken me a little bit by surprise. Given there are still plenty of types I struggle with I'm happy I get to make up for them on the odd nikoli/sudoku type or two :)

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Thu 24 Jan, 2013 11:14 pm
by PuzzleScot
Well, albeit very temporary I'm sure, here's something you don't see every day! ;)
tmp.png
tmp.png (8.11 KiB) Viewed 66737 times

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Thu 14 Mar, 2013 2:14 pm
by dickoon
Puzzlebrag humblebrag: they say "all good things come to they who wait", and I've been waiting longer than most. I was also waiting for it on the night shift last night - looks like promotions occur once the 5am CET/CST time score recalculation finishes at around 5:30am CET/CST.
Slooooooooooow progress on Croco-Puzzle
Slooooooooooow progress on Croco-Puzzle
9th-kyu.png (155.32 KiB) Viewed 66493 times
I managed to get my 200-average up to 1198 months back but was on a bad run and thought I was destined to remain 10k forever but I've been on a better run recently. (Taking part in the Croco-League does help your rating, I am convinced of this, simply because it gives you the chance to choose which puzzles you solve and so generate extra opportunities for you to solve the puzzles you find easiest.)

I won't make a habit of this self-promotion, quite literally, but you only ever stop being a Double-Figure Kyu once, and this has been my avowed Croco-Puzzle goal ever since, pretty much, the first time I learnt how the system worked. However, one of the nice things about the site is that there are always new goals in practice. Onwards and upwards!

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Thu 14 Mar, 2013 9:27 pm
by kiwijam
Haha, excellent work! 8-)
It was a year ago (early April) that you got agonisingly close to 1200 then dipped away again, so it's been a long fight back.
Onwards and upwards, you're over 1250 already!

Personally I've found the Liga puzzles drop my rating every second Sunday, not sure why, I know they have a different formula. Or maybe I just do badly at them, as I like to know how fast others have been before I start. Also I've already cut back on the types I don't like, so I don't get that advantage.

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Thu 14 Mar, 2013 9:40 pm
by apollo1001
Wow, nicely done Chris - that was one massive push! No reason why 8k shouldn't be too far away now..

Incidentally, I hadn't actually noticed that League puzzles affected one's normal rating :? We'll have to stop giving bad puzzles to Liane before she notices :lol:

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Fri 15 Mar, 2013 11:57 am
by puzzlemad
apollo1001 wrote:Wow, nicely done Chris - that was one massive push! No reason why 8k shouldn't be too far away now..

Incidentally, I hadn't actually noticed that League puzzles affected one's normal rating :? We'll have to stop giving bad puzzles to Liane before she notices :lol:
Don't mind me! I didn't know that they did either. To be honest, I've never really looked at how the ratings work and don't profess to understand them - never had the time to work through it all

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Fri 15 Mar, 2013 5:56 pm
by detuned
i spent an awful long time going from 2k to 1k (266 days), but hopefully it won't be quite as long to break into the dans! I've been hitting some sort of consistency on croco in the last few months

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Sun 07 Apr, 2013 10:06 pm
by dickoon
6th kyu for Dataman, *and* clear second place in League 2 for Southern UK. Good times! Top-of-the-table clash for you this week and China have the easiest run-in of the top contenders, but it's still looking very promising...

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Mon 08 Apr, 2013 10:08 am
by detuned
I think our latest result was skewed by the fact that we had 3 walkovers - it's not like we were particularly high up the high scores table on those 3 puzzles either. On the other hand, 11th on the overall for the week so you could make either argument reasonably convincingly. Two out of three wins guarantees promotion I think...

Also, great job by our Northern cousins on beating team China!

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Mon 08 Apr, 2013 11:58 am
by PuzzlerNickG
Thanks for the mention dickoon, and your comment about the run-in is spot on.

Closing matches for Southern UK are tough: we play the 1st (Slovakia team), 4th (Croco B&H&Gs) and 6th placed teams. Croco B&H&Gs have the equivalent tough run-in, while Team China play the 10th, 13th and 14th placed teams. Anything could happen. First up is Slovakia team: 100% record, ranked #1 in the entire league. So, no pressure then. :)

Finally, it's quite possible that puzzlemad holds the greatest (non-walkover) margin of victory on any single puzzle for last week's Sternenhimmel. (But kudos to momiji for never giving up.)

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Wed 17 Apr, 2013 9:33 pm
by kiwijam
Beförderungen:
kiwijam (zum 3. Dan)

I am having a good week. :)
Phew, it took me 10 months to get from 2nd Dan to 3rd Dan. Maybe I can open a dojo now?
And great to see that a second UK puzzler will reach black belt (1st Dan) in only a fortnight too!

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Sun 28 Apr, 2013 9:48 pm
by PuzzleScot
Heute gab es folgende Be­för­derungen:
detuned (zum 1. Dan)

Well done Tom! Officially a black-belt now :)

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Mon 29 Apr, 2013 1:36 am
by kiwijam
Yes, congratulations Tom!

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Mon 29 Apr, 2013 11:44 am
by detuned
As was probably inevitable, I've celebrated by having 4 stinking performances for Sunday and today. (although I'd have had a pretty sweet rundweg time yesterday if I'd resized my applet so that it was possible to spot having extra loop segments messing things up. Twice.)

Still, it's nice to have been pretty consistent over single puzzles for the last couple of months. If someone has the secret to translate that over to longer competitions do let me know ;)

Out of interest, has Neil succumbed to the lure of croco yet?

Re: croco-puzzle

Posted: Mon 29 Apr, 2013 7:45 pm
by Nilz
detuned wrote:Out of interest, has Neil succumbed to the lure of croco yet?
Nope! :P I'm really not tempted, either. I spend far too much time looking at a computer screen as it is.
But congrats on all this 'Black Belt' and '2nd Dan' business, whatever it means!