I’m currently in the middle of one of my worst ever streaks. Today will be the fifth day in a row outside the top 25 and I really struggled to ge to grips with the puzzle.

Usually, if a puzzle takes me more than around 6 minutes, it’s because I’ve gone wrong somewhere and have had to retrace my steps. Today’s puzzle was a struggle right from the start and it took me over twelve minutes to solve it, with just one slight missed towards the end.

My understanding is the timed puzzles should be relatively straightforward, but today’s puzzle felt like anything but. I’m wondering I Patrick has any stats on average times taken for specific timed puzzles and whether the one I did today (assuming he can identify which on it is) has a longer average time than usual.

30 people solved that puzzle so far

6 of them abandoned it.

1 took almost 4 hours, I'll discount that one.

The fastest solving time for it was 2 minutes 16.991 seconds
(but as I see now, this was done by someone using an automatic solver)

The actual fastest was 3 minutes 7 seconds (but this was also by
someone who at the time was caught using an automatic solver).

So the actual actual fastest time was 3 minutes 40 seconds (by pnm )

The average was about 8 minutes and 36 seconds
(not counting those top 2 times mentioned above)

Thanks Patrick. It sounds like I was not the only one who found it difficult.

Was just heading for a sub-50, but when I saw the timer at 44 seconds with only a few cages left, I suddenly got nervous and made a stupid mistake .
I should definitely stop looking at that timer...

That happens to me a lot, but usually when I’m looking at the possibility of going under 4 minutes!

I actually had a top ten yesterday, which is something that doesn’t happen that often, but that was with a time of over 4 minutes (which normally would not be good enough for top 10).

My connection just failed again, of course exactly during the two seconds the site was trying to send in my 8*8

Not quite sure what happened just now, but I got kicked out of tonight’s 8x8 before I could submit my result!

Was this today's (22nd) or yesterday's?

(for yesterday I do see a timed puzzle start at 22.45.46 CET, but no solution submitted)
(nothing for the 22nd)

Hi Patrick

It was yesterday’s. No worries - I probably hit the wrong key. First timed puzzle I’ve missed this year, but that’s what happens when you get distracted (long story).

I had a problem with y'days 8x8 also. I hit go & nothing happened. I thought I mustn't have clicked on go so did again & then it came up that i'd already done my 8x8 for the day. It lost me a point for the day but the way i've been going lately on the 8x8 it probably gave me 10 minutes or so back to my day lol.