pnm wrote:
UPDATE
So far only angelwhite has reacted writing that (s)he is angry, the times are "normal"
(I did see that for angelwhite, a lot of times were normal, but some were not).
(S)he also recommends that I remove the following accounts because they've been cheating for years:
wjgir, kadelson, bram, yinyin_song, rona etc .....
For the record, I categorically deny ever having used a solver or cheated in any other way when solving any puzzle here at calcudoku.org, be it timed or not. Other than this, I shouldn't really dignify
angelwhite's baseless accusation with a response, but I think I owe it to Patrick and the overwhelming majority of the users of this site to offer a few observations which may be relevant to a good-faith discussion of possible timing issues:
(1)
Timing apparently dependent on system clock on user's systemBack in early May this year I bought a (very old) used Toshiba Satellite as a secondary/spare laptop. Its system/CMOS battery is dead and can't be replaced (at least not easily, by a non-expert), which is common to a lot of (older) TS models. The system clock regularly falls behind because it pauses whenever the laptop is turned off or goes to sleep.
Most of you have probably noticed that the congratulations message even for a regular, non-timed puzzle reports the time it took you to solve it. I've only rarely used calcudoku.org from my secondary laptop rather than the primary one, but I've indeed logged in a few times and solved some regular, non-timed puzzles without suspecting that the system clock issue would affect the computation of the solving time. At a few occasions, the congratulations message for a solved
regular puzzle has reported a very strange solving time – once even quite a long
negative one
if I recall correctly. This has caused me to log out of calcudoku.org from the secondary laptop and in again from the primary one before I proceeded to solve any
timed puzzle. If a flattering-but-false time had accidentally been recorded for a
timed puzzle I would've reported the issue to Patrick, but I saw no reason to do so at the few occasions when such times were computed for
regular puzzles, seeing that they'd neither be rewarded with bonus points nor recorded in ranking tables anyway (though they might briefly show up in the animated "solved puzzles ticker").
(2)
Timing of regular puzzles not necessarily "from scratch"As you all know, any regular puzzle at calcudoku.org can be saved at any stage of the solving process, even with just a single cell remaining. This comes in handy if you want to take a break from a large (or particularly difficult) puzzle. It's also a good safeguard in case of a browser crash or a lost server connection (which happened occasionally a long time ago when Patrick was let down by hosting services that turned out to be sub-par, and very recently when calcudoku.org was targeted by DDOS attacks). Back then I suspected (rightly or wrongly) that the very event of having a puzzle solution auto-submitted (right after you'd seen the puzzle turn green) could itself trigger some sort of failure. For that reason I often saved large or difficult puzzles when they were almost finished, just so I wouldn't have to do a large portion all over again. To this day I'm still not certain if saving a puzzle is "safer"/less dependent on connecting to the server than auto-submitting it, but the habit has stuck with me.
Now, if a regular puzzle has been saved and then reloaded at a later time, then the solving time appears to be computed not "from scratch" but from the time the puzzle was reloaded until it was finished and auto-submitted. Of course, if a puzzle has been saved in an almost-finished state and then reloaded before you filled out the last few cells, then an impossibly short solving time may appear in the congratulations message, and, presumably, in the "solved puzzles ticker", which might give a false impression af "cheating".
(3)
In conclusionNot every apparent anomaly is evidence of wrongdoing. And everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, including the two accounts Patrick named. But I have no doubt that he wouldn't be this categorical without solid evidence. At any rate, those users can answer for themselves, and
angelwhite's apparent decision that an attack is the strongest defense leaves me, shall we say, unimpressed. Even if they'd honestly gotton a false impression of "cheating" by me and the other accounts they named (e.g. through the "ticker" as hypothesised above), it would suit them to report those suspicions to Patrick
as such rather than stating
as fact that other users are cheating when they're not.
I can sympathise with that
– even if writing this has taken me only a fraction of the time you must've spent
pnm wrote:
I'm in fact still angry that this is taking even more time.
Same