c4countdown

Charlie, can we please stop having only new conundrums whenever the Duel is Normal variant? Considering there are still getting on for 1000 more new ones still to be seen in the Duel, this could mean Duel competitors only see new (i.e. almost invariably, incredibly difficult) conundrums for about the next 2 years.

Surely there must be some other way for you to get conundrum data?

I've decided to split this into a separate topic, because it's a worthwhile discussion and I am willing to reverse the current position according to popular opinion.

Let me explain first why it's the way it is. One reason is, as you say, that it generates conundrum data, which is to everyone's benefit since it allows the difficulty categoriser to work. In case you were wondering, the rule is only that the conundrums with the fewest data get picked; as it happens, that's currently the new batch and those are generally quite hard, but the system was in place well before that and worked well. Another reason is that putting a very hard conundrum in the Duel doesn't really spoil it for anyone -- if you don't solve it, you'll drop 10 points and so will almost everyone else. If, on the other hand, it comes up in a game, it can be a real kick in the teeth if you needed that conundrum to win, to post a good score, to seal a max or whatever. So for conundrums where we currently underrate the difficulty (in particular, all new ones), it's the lesser of two evils to put them in the Duel. Thirdly it makes the Duels fairer since almost all of the participants will be seeing the conundrum for the first time -- no need to worry that some players saw it in yesterday's Duel or a recent game or whatever.

That said, I do understand the frustration of facing a lot of impossible conundrums. They are broken up because, apart from Normal (and Unlimited) duels, the conundrums are selected more uniformly. But nevertheless I imagine it's quite boring to face a batch of conundrums knowing that you probably won't get any of them, and also doesn't allow conundrum skill to be reflected very effectively in Duel scores overall.

So to conclude, I don't know. Weigh up the benefits and tell me what you think, please, loyal players.

Charlie Reams wrote:I imagine it's quite boring to face a batch of conundrums knowing that you probably won't get any of them, and also doesn't allow conundrum skill to be reflected very effectively in Duel scores overall

On the contrary, I enjoy facing new / difficult conundrums even when I don't get a lot of them (as in today's Duel) and I think it does reflect conundrum skill very well when everyone has to unscramble the same unseen set of 9 letters. I say keep it as it is, or try to encourage people to play Nasty Conundrum Attacks to see those conundrums that aren't in the normal variant.

The only people who recognise that they are new are dictionary nerds who are far too good at apterous as it is so anything that annoys them is a good thing. Seriously though I'd have to agree with Charlie on this one. It's probably better off that they are as hard as they can be for everyone when it comes to the duel.

If it's possible, I would recommend that unrated conundrums be more likely, but not ALL of the Duel's conundrums for normal duels. Like, untested spots are more likely, but aren't most rounds.

There should be some semblance of ability for "typical" conundrum solving in duels, but at the same time Duels are a great way to get instant feedback on newer words. However, "new" conundrums are likely to be either obscure words, or things just added that have only been words for a few months; i.e., very hard. I don't like the default rating for untested conundrums being 2/10, as lower rated players likely to get 2s as their conundrums in 15 rounders will just about never get these (so no data of importance is collected if 9/10 1500+ players don't get it), but I've mentioned this more than once.

That said, you really need to fix the rating system for not well tested conundrums after a duel, also. A lot of them which get like 3-4/70-80 people getting them right are staying 2s or even being downrated to 1s, which makes no sense.

Steve Balog wrote: That said, you really need to fix the rating system for not well tested conundrums after a duel, also. A lot of them which get like 3-4/70-80 people getting them right are staying 2s or even being downrated to 1s, which makes no sense.

There's nothing wrong with the rating system, it just doesn't run very often. They'll be moved upwards in due course. I've never seen one get downgraded to a 1, but if you can point me to an example I'll look into it.

http://www.apterous.org/lexplorer.php?word=ambisonic

Actually I think this was the word that made me wonder why these words are being given to 800 level players.

Steve Balog wrote:http://www.apterous.org/lexplorer.php?word=ambisonic

Actually I think this was the word that made me wonder why these words are being given to 800 level players.

That's been a 1 from the beginning. The change to 2s for new ones came after that was added.

I don't have a problem having all new conundrums in the duel, but surely we should get 30 seconds to try to work out what they might be?

In that case, never mind -- the bizarre 1s I've seen probably all fall into that category then.

I don't really have any strong views on the subject, but I do think it's more sensible for the new conundrums to appear mainly in Duels rather than mainly in regular games. All I would say is that when they come up in batches in Duels, I do tend to give up after a couple of difficult ones in a row, as I assume (rightly or wrongly) that I won't know the rest of them either, in which case you don't really get any data at all. I should stress though that this would also be true if there happened to be a run of very difficult old conundrums, it's not (for me at least) restricted to new ones only (and mostly I wouldn't have a clue which were old and which were new anyway).

Charlie Reams wrote:...doesn't allow conundrum skill to be reflected very effectively in Duel scores overall.

This is my principal objection to the current system. When all the conundrums are very difficult, it's slightly demoralising for the mid-range players, as it doesn't give them much chance to show their conundrum ability above the very weak players. Yes, the very top (say 10% of) players will be rewarded for their skill, but having all difficult conundrums does little other than distinguish the very top few, from "the rest of the pack".

I don't really have an alternative solution, although as an aside, another way to get more conundrum data would be for the new conundrums to be released into Ascension. This is mainly because I enjoyed my previous climbs so much, and don't really fancy waiting another two years or so for all the newies to appear in the Duel. Now, new conundrums appearing Ascension was a problem previously, because there were only 80-odd new conundrums, and it was easy for me (or other Recidivists) to learn these as a concentrated list, thus giving us a huge advantage in the Duels where we knew only these new conundrums would be used. However, now that there have been an additional 1000 or so conundrums released, if these were added all at once to Mt Ascension, any advantage we would gain in the Duel would be greatly reduced, due to the sheer number.


In any case, whatever the decision - I appreciate the opportunity for this to have gone to "the public vote", and I'm quite happy to go with the status quo if that's the most popular solution.

I don't do the duels that much so don't really know what I'm talking about, but I'm going to post anyway.

So is it right that we have only new conundrums, as Matt says? Even if they need to be tried out, it surely doesn't need to be 100% of the conundrums that are in the normal variant. I've no idea if it actually is this though. I've said before that I think it would be good to have specialised duels as well as mixed ones (normally when trying to convince people that we should have more numbers-heavy duels). But I still think this is a good principle. So you could have lots of normal duels with normal rounds and every so often have a new conundrum-heavy duel. One day a week with 20 of these conundrums is probably better than having three every day, for example. People might disagree but I think different duels should cater for different skill-sets rather than having homogenised duels.

Also, on Balog's point that new conundrums are given too low a hardness rating, I can understand that giving them a low rating means that they come up more so there is more data, but do we need them to have a low rating and have them come up all the time in duels? It would be interesting to know proportionally how much of the data for new conundrums comes from duels and how much from normal games. If it's much lower in one than the other, you could argue that you might as well concentrate solely on the more fruitful one - i.e. annoy just one of Steve Balog and Matt Bayfield.

Edit - Today's duel is LLLC. I think really short duels are a bit silly anyway but doing away with these could mean that the whole process of gathering data could be over more quickly.

Gavin Chipper wrote: I've said before that I think it would be good to have specialised duels as well as mixed ones.

Which has been the case for some time now. No pleasing some people!

(Thanks for your other comments though, you talk sense as always.)

I'm pretty useless at conundrums (whether against duel; bot or human) so it makes no difference to me.

I don't mind them too much in duels, but Matt's point about it disadvantaging mid-range players chimes with me.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote: I've said before that I think it would be good to have specialised duels as well as mixed ones.

Which has been the case for some time now. No pleasing some people!

Well, I did say I didn't play them much these days!

(Thanks for your other comments though, you talk sense as always.)

Praise from Charlie! I'm pretty pleased with that.

Just seen the latest news on the apterous homepage. Thanks for listening, Charlie.