I would be interested in seeing lifetime daily average for all active participants. What's nice about this score is that newcomers can get to the top of the list quickly, but they have to stay engaged to stay there. And for those who care to keep themselves on top, that will be a motivator to buy more books, which helps Patrick out!

Even though I've been a long term participant, and over the past few years, consistently a high scorer in the weekly and monthly categories, my lifetime daily average is a mere 36.15 because I didn't do the puzzles regularly for a couple of years.

I would also love to see a high score per year for each year past. These can be statically constructed pages, thus don't have to be a big hit on the server once they are constructed. I'm guessing that I was probably a pretty competitive contender in 2015 and 2016.

-Bev

He posted about it, probably when you were on vacation.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1046

Thank you for the congratulations. You are coming up on that milestone, too.

I downloaded the lifetime totals a few weeks back and I could post a top 20 (or whatever number you require) ranked by daily average. I'm in Portugal right now, so it would have to wait until I'm back home next weekend.

From what I remember, none of the newbies had a particularly high average. This is probably because it takes a while to get fully into the swing of things. My own experience would bear this out. I discovered the website just over two years ago. I think I did one or two puzzles on the first day, then skipped a day and did a couple more the following day, gradually working my way up to attempting all the non subscriber puzzles each day. Then I discovered I could earn more points by doing the timed puzzles and started doing them too.

For a long time, I resisted becoming a subscriber. Not because of the cost (let's face it, it's incredibly reasonably priced), but because I was afraid I'd end up spending too much time doing puzzles each day. But I eventually succumbed and became a subscriber around 8 months after I joined. I've been dragging up my daily average by doing book puzzles (although I haven't done any on my current visit to Portugal), but only have about 30 or so to go before I run out. Hopefully, Patrick will have published Advanced Puzzles IV by then!

Paul

This is the current top 20 by daily average.

Thank you Paul.

What I take from that chart is worth doing the book puzzles, and it helps to be good at the timed puzzles.

Doing the book puzzles definitely helps. Unfortunately, I'm never going to be very competitive at the timed puzzles as I don't have the manual dexterity needed to do a really fast time.

I have to admit that I've become a bit obsessive about dragging up my daily average, but I know this is going to start falling once I run out of book puzzles. Just over 20 to go at this stage.

I agree with you that once I get done with the books puzzles, my averages will drop, too.

But take some satisfaction that you have finished all the book puzzles. Its a cool accomplishment.

Other than that, just do ALL the dailies, and do the timed puzzles. I didnt like doing the timed puzzles because I could not compete with the sppedsters, so I didn't do them until another person encoruaged me to do them just for the participation points. I have been doing better since Patrick changed the ways points are awarded on the timed puzzles. I often get into the top 25 of the 8 x 8.

Or at least just do one of each size. I do them all most days, but I often think that it's a good thing puzzling is fun because 4 moderately hard 6x6 puzzles for 1, 2 or on rare occasions 3 points isn't the most economical way to boost your score.

Jaek, Thank you for the correction.

I've 20 puzzles remaining in the two books I haven't completed yet, plus another 11 to do in the book I will get when I take out my 3rd subscription.

I manage to do most of the daily puzzles, but occasionally run out of time, particularly if I've been travelling. It's a long time since I failed to complete all the calcudoku puzzles within the permitted time (i.e. allowing for the extra 2 days on the 12x12s and the extra day on Tuesday's 9x9). But I miss out on the occasional sudoku or killer sudoku as I tend to leave these till last. In fact, this last week was particularly bad as I was travelling home from Portugal on Saturday and missed out on both Friday's and Saturday's killer (I completed the latter a couple of minutes after midnight CET).

Regarding the timed puzzles, I think you're selling yourself short. You're nearly always in the top 25 on the 8x8 and quite often in the top 10.