mayaknife wrote:
It's even worse when you add in the keystrokes/mouse clicks needed to navigate between fields.
The fastest solvers use the keyboard only (mouse is way too slow)
mayaknife wrote:
I've just always assumed that the lowest times are people either using solvers or else solving it using a dummy account, practicing the solution repeatedly, then going at it in their real account.
No, it doesn't work that way. Note, from the top of the page where you start timed puzzles:
"you'll be presented with a puzzle from a large collection of puzzles of approximately the same difficulty level. You won't do the same puzzle twice."
So the two subscriptions trick doesn't work as well.
As I've said many times, I've spent a lot of time and effort to ensure that the timed puzzle results are valid.
And, from the videos page:
http://www.calcudoku.org/ops/videosyou can check out a few videos of "starling" (the 2nd fastest puzzler after sheldolina) solving timed puzzles..
Finally, as you can see from the rankings, I do the timed puzzles myself as well, simply to get a sense of what is possible and realistic.
Patrick