I'm really struggling to get to grips with today's difficult Killer. I note that only 55 people have solved it so far, but we're only 12 hours into the 48 hour window, so maybe that's par for the course.

But the number of solvers has reduced in each of the last three weeks - from 312 to 248 to 148. There also seems to be something of a disconnect between the rating shown for the puzzles and the number of solvers. Last week's rating was 182.9, while the previous three weeks were all over 200. I know Patrick explained how the rating is calculated in a previous thread in this forum, but I'd be interested to know are others struggling with today's Killer and have you noticed them becoming more difficult of late.

Hi paulv66,
The Friday difficult killer has become way more difficult for me. Since I cannot find a logic thread to follow, I am just guessing: I get absolutely no satisfaction in solving a puzzle by guessing. Since the “pain to gain” ratio is way out of whack for me, I simply have stopped trying this puzzle.

wjm

I have to agree with the above post......I use to try them but of late I just look at each one to decide whether or not to do it and like I said I just cannot even find a starting point!!!

I did make some changes to the generation code recently,
which should not have affected the difficulty level, but will double-check this...

Patrick

By the way, I thought I had cracked yesterday's Killer and had around 75% of the cells completed, but ran into a problem. So back to the drawing board, I'm afraid, although I have a reasonable handle on the first three columns. Still around 23 hours left to solve it!

Edit: completed it about ten minutes ago.

You guys are going to kill me.

I have not noticed the difficulty get any harder. It is always a hard puzzle

While I often have to get it by doing the brute force method once I narrow down the possibilities, on this particular puzzle I logicked it out.

If you want to wait for about two more weeks, I will try to do a write up.

You are right, eclipsegirl, that this has always been a hard puzzle, and one that I almost always solved, by “brute force” and taking me a very long time ( I do all the large puzzles with paper & pencil). It could just be that I am no longer interested in spending a LOT of time for the 9 points.

wjm

Decided to try the difficult killer this week - and got it right away! So, I'm guessing that either Patrick tweaked his generation code(?) or I was lucky that the first "line of logic" that I chose to follow was the right one! What did other puzzlers think about this one?

wjm

Took me about an hour. Not especially hard.

For todays - Fri March 30 - what to people think?

I did mine in just under 30 mins.