How is it that the "extra" exponention is more difficult than the bitwise of today?

I’m confused as to why you would expect one to be necessarily easier than the other. I read your post and decided to take a note of the time it took me to solve each of them.

The bitwise took me just under 11 and a half minutes, the extra just under 12 minutes. So I guess I found the extra the more difficult of the two, but not to any significant extent.

.. moved this thread from the "Other number stuff" forum

Well I tried the bitwise a number of times but just no solution for me where as exponent puzzle was solved.....so, from my point of view, bitwise was the tougher of the 2

Ok, I think I understand your question now. You were wondering why the extra has a higher difficulty rating of 75.3 compared to 54.9 for the bitwise. I think this point has come up in the past and I think it’s due to the way the algorithm that calculates the difficulty level works. I think it looks at the number of possible combinations rather than the difficulty of the steps that need to be taken to solve the puzzle.

For what it’s worth I try to figure out where the 8s are in the bitwise puzzles and bold these cells.

Thanks Paul, will try that strategy next time

Beaker,
I am sorry to hear that you didnt get the bitwise puzzle.

Paul is right in finding out where the 8s go is a useful.