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 user created puzzles! 
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Posted on: Sun Feb 09, 2014 6:32 pm




Posts: 3295
Joined: Thu May 12, 2011 11:58 pm
 user created puzzles!
Edit: you can find the current list of user puzzles at:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=829

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Submit your own puzzles on this page:

http://www.calcudoku.org/ops/submit_puzzle [thumbup]

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The original post:

The plan is to support user created puzzles on the site [woot]

Some experimental code is running at:

http://www.calcudoku.org/user/2014-02-09
(with the 6x6 medium of the 9th of January as a test puzzle)

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Patrick


Last edited by pnm on Tue Jul 04, 2017 4:31 pm, edited 8 times in total.



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Posted on: Thu Feb 13, 2014 9:45 am




Posts: 3295
Joined: Thu May 12, 2011 11:58 pm
Post Re: user created puzzles!
Currently I'm thinking that someone who submits a puzzle should
not be able to score points for solving that puzzle.

What would then be a good incentive to submit a puzzle (other
than eternal honour and glory [love] )?

Also, the plan is to keep the user created puzzles always accessible
(or maybe up to 1 month back for non-subscribers, and no time
limit for subscribers).

Patrick


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Posted on: Thu Feb 13, 2014 9:42 pm




Posts: 253
Joined: Tue May 24, 2011 4:55 pm
Post Re: user created puzzles!
pnm wrote:
Currently I'm thinking that someone who submits a puzzle should
not be able to score points for solving that puzzle.

What would then be a good incentive to submit a puzzle (other
than eternal honour and glory [love] )?

As a grizzled veteran of the cutthroat race for the top of the 7-day and 30-day rankings, I think it would discourage submissions of self-made puzzles if everyone except the constructor could earn points for solving it and thus get ahead in the race.

If you plan to be discerning and allow only one user-created puzzle per day*, then surely constructing a puzzle that gets published would merit a creator's bonus of – tada! – the same number of points that everyone else gets for solving it. But then the creator shouldn't be able to double that up by also getting points for solving the puzzle. Of course, much simpler than putting all of that in place would be to just, you know, let users score points for the puzzles they themselves created.

Am I even making sense here? It's been a long day and my brain has mostly turned to mush. [blush] I guess that what I'm trying to say is that creating a challenging puzzle is normally no less of an intellectual effort than solving the same puzzle once it's been published and thus shouldn't be less awarded, point-wise. If your concern is that some users might deliberately construct puzzles too hard for most human solvers (or tune their automated puzzle generators to do so) in order to get ahead in the rankings, then maybe you could have your automated solver automatically reject puzzles above a certain difficulty level.

Also, if subscribers could earn points for solving user-created puzzles for a full month (just as with the Extra puzzles) rather than just for one day, no one would find themselves in a time scramble if a puzzle created by a fellow user turned out to be unexpectedly hard. But I have this premonition that we'll all soon return to complaining about the "workload" placed on puzzlers who want to score every available point :-)

Sorry for getting long-winded – again! [blush] Better call it an early night [sleep]

*(as opposed to letting users load their puzzles into a fully automated "sandbox" in which your solver would check the puzzles' solvability and uniqueness, assign points according to its assessment of their difficulty and publish them instantly for everyone to solve)


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Posted on: Tue Feb 18, 2014 6:09 pm




Posts: 855
Joined: Fri May 13, 2011 6:51 pm
Post Re: user created puzzles!
In line with the Bram's comments I would suggest:

1. To award the same points either to the designer and to the solvers.

2. To open this puzzle to everybody (subscribers and non-subscribers).

3. To stablish some limits in the main page:

A maximun of 30 days (from there no points would be awarded, though the puzzle could stay only as a sample until a new one comes). In fact, it's interesting having always a link to this special puzzle.

A minimum of 7 days (to prevent the situation commented by bram that someone designs a very very difficult puzzle so that "only the creator" could solve it, since 7 days looks reasonabe to solve it).

In this way, the solver is motivated to solve it in those 7-days or very near to this inferior limit because if a new puzzle appears (and you do not know when) you lose the possibility of scoring those points.

4. To publish the puzzles according to a First In First Out list (the 7-day minimum time could be revised, if advisable, when the frequency of user-defined puzzes is higher than 52 per year).

And for a not far future:

5. To open the actual range (4x4 thru 9x9) up to 16x16, I am thinking now in the Christmas Puzzles, New Year, or those sent by nicow (Red Cross, etc.).

6. To improve :-) :-) the software to include: negative numbers, operators like AND, XOR, and skipped numbers puzzles (i.e., a 5x5 with -9, -2, 0, 1, 5).

Any new feature is always welcome and challenging, I have observed the incredible success of the new 8x8 timed (even with only 1 attempt), it has shocked me having seen some players fighting around 2 hours to gain 1 point and to complete it (they have probably erased the full grid many times [thumbsup] ).


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Posted on: Tue Feb 18, 2014 6:46 pm




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Joined: Thu May 12, 2011 11:58 pm
Post Re: user created puzzles!
clm wrote:
1. To award the same points either to the designer and to the solvers.

Yes, this will be the case tomorrow.
clm wrote:
2. To open this puzzle to everybody (subscribers and non-subscribers).

Yes, for now (not sure what to do anyway, since so few puzzles have been submitted
so far (1)(one)).
clm wrote:
3. To stablish some limits in the main page:

No time limits at the moment (in fact I think because of the subscriber/non-subscriber code,
there is the 30/7 day limit).
clm wrote:
5. To open the actual range (4x4 thru 9x9) up to 16x16, I am thinking now in the Christmas Puzzles, New Year, or those sent by nicow (Red Cross, etc.).

That is perfectly doable. Anything over 12x12 will strain my solver a bit though.
clm wrote:
6. To improve :-) :-) the software to include: negative numbers, operators like AND, XOR, and skipped numbers puzzles (i.e., a 5x5 with -9, -2, 0, 1, 5).

yeahyeah [blink]


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Posted on: Tue Mar 25, 2014 3:54 am




Posts: 57
Joined: Sun Feb 03, 2013 3:25 am
Post Re: user created puzzles!
clm wrote:
2. To open this puzzle to everybody (subscribers and non-subscribers).

Anybody (user)(!) can create a puzzle, therefore I ask you, Patrick, for opening all of user created puzzles (also puzzles from subscribers for non-subscribers)… [cool]


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Posted on: Tue Mar 25, 2014 9:37 am




Posts: 3295
Joined: Thu May 12, 2011 11:58 pm
Post Re: user created puzzles!
kozibrada wrote:
Anybody (user)(!) can create a puzzle, therefore I ask you, Patrick, for opening all of user created puzzles (also puzzles from subscribers for non-subscribers)… [cool]

They are open to everyone (!)

Except today I must have made some kind of mistake in putting it online,
which is why it isn't showing.

will fix... [blush]


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Posted on: Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:40 pm




Posts: 57
Joined: Sun Feb 03, 2013 3:25 am
Post Re: user created puzzles!
pnm wrote:
kozibrada wrote:
Anybody (user)(!) can create a puzzle, therefore I ask you, Patrick, for opening all of user created puzzles (also puzzles from subscribers for non-subscribers)… [cool]

They are open to everyone (!)

Except today I must have made some kind of mistake in putting it online,
which is why it isn't showing.

will fix... [blush]

Thanks, and I’m sorry, I should be more patient in the morning… [blush]


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Posted on: Wed Jan 01, 2020 2:31 pm




Posts: 50
Joined: Fri May 13, 2011 11:45 am
Post Re: user created puzzles!
how much time do i have to solve this puzzle?


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Posted on: Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:06 pm




Posts: 3295
Joined: Thu May 12, 2011 11:58 pm
Post Re: user created puzzles!
veryevilking wrote:
how much time do i have to solve this puzzle?


They're still "unlimited", so you can solve them any time.


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