In all my struggles with the Different Neighbors puzzle(I took a certain part as correct which was wrong and kept thinking the mistake is elsewhere), I found about 3-4 openings of different complexities. The easiest one is what Deb mentioned but there are other tricks there. I guess if one wants to stare at it and start over about 5 times like I ended up doing, they'll find all of them :\

Yes, and I think you've given a great idea for how this system would look, with half of bonus scaling by time and half being flat based on rank. That seems perfectly appropriate for an LMI test comparing 10 puzzles just as it works over the year for comparing 10 LMI tests with each other.

Of course, all systems have problems. The scoring of the Marathon test is a huge outlier compared to the normal monthly tests with time bonus, so it is not a good test for the overall rankings as it raises almost everyone more than usual. In this test, the scoring of three of the puzzles led to much less bonus than the other seven. So we are proposing possibilities to address these issues. I don't think there is any dominant answer here, but there are better and worse approaches and it is good to hear from many solvers and aim for better next time.



Well, this is sort of a problem on all tests (as your rank will only ever fall) but with variable scoring there could indeed be small rank changes when solvers are at values where they are "effectively tied". I don't think anyone can cleanly claim victory when things are this close (like when I beat Ulrich by 1 second!) but the rank score will eventually favor one over the other. My sense though is that these effects will be rather small, as they were during Puzzle Jackpot when final scoring wasn't known until all solvers had completed. I could do subsampling analysis to be sure, but I think using rank and not time you will have greater stability. And until results are finalized, you can always just use relative performance for "bragging rights".

"I beat you on 6 of 10 puzzles!"
"Yes, but I beat you by 5 minutes overall!"

Like many things in sports, there aren't always winners but there is always debate.

Wow. Thanks for that video... I now have a better understanding of how to make limiting assumptions on possibilities. Seeing the thought process unfold just made it click :)

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