Re: The 9 x 9 pattern that I most loathe
When reading the thread, I have noticed your previous post
paulv66 wrote:
I think a good measure of the difficulty of a puzzle is how many people manage to solve it and how this compares to other puzzles of the same type. ..
The subject of the difficulty level of a puzzle has been largely discussed in the past. It seems that it's a pending problem, it looks that the method of evaluation used is not very precise. Recently, it has been discussed a lot about the level of the KS's, which ones are more difficult, fridays'?, saturday's?, making comparison with previous weeks, etc., and finding many paradoxical situations.
A paradoxical example: KS of Friday's Aug 28, difficulty 196,3 solvers 305.
Yesterday's Tuesday Sep 01, difficulty 124,5 solvers 85 till the moment.
No one was limited to subscribers only.
IIRC. I expressed my opinion in the past that the best way to measure the difficulty of a puzzle
is simply to relate it to the time spent by the Patrick's software in finding a unique solution.
More time, more difficulty, and vice versa, in this way puzzles of all sizes can be compared among them.
Actually I do not really know if the difficulty level (and, as a consequence, the number of stars assigned to any puzzle) is calculated considering the size, that is, related to the size of that particular puzzle, or not, etc.
In fact, I have lost the interest in this "parameter". But it's true, in the other hand, that I frequently observe (mainly with the more difficult puzzles) the number of solvers, only in real time, when I start solving the puzzle, of course that is a subjective appreciation, in order to have an idea of how much time I will need to find the solution, based on my particular experience (it's clear that the number of solvers will depend on the time of the day you look since, obviously, the number of solvers is constantly increasing along the day
).