| Is there a big step between club 19 and club 29? |
Jean
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 2066
Best Total: 20m 50s | Posted - 2007.03.05 11:02:06
I wonder how big a gap there is between the people in each club, and when/if it becomes a continuum. Because I regularly rate in the top ten on the leaderboard just behind the club 19'ers, and yet I know I'm nowhere near that standard (as evidenced by my cumulative time). Don't think I'll ever reach club 19. So if I really were at the top of the club 29 range, there's a big gap.
Or maybe it just seems like it because the leaderboard is biased towards people like me who do the puzzles every day, and thus show up as having done 7 puzzles all the time. While the people who might be in the gap between me and the club 19'ers might only do all 7 puzzles once a week or once in a while. Would love to hear from you if you're one of those.
Thoughts? |
chairman
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 1397
Best Total: 17m 32s | Posted - 2007.03.05 15:58:49
I am in this gap currently. Actually, my best week time has not changed since October! Twice I had 6 fast days on a row and the opportunity to enter club 19, but failed miserably. Right now I am not even club 59. So, at least for me, the gap between Club 19 and Club 29 is much larger than my times suggest and I need a very easy week to overcome it.
Last edited by chairman - 2007.03.05 15:59:19 |
m2e
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 607
Best Total: 16m 43s | Posted - 2007.03.06 03:58:10
For me it took me what felt like ages to make it into club 59, but then 49, 39, 29 all came pretty quickly. I'm STILL clawing onto a club 19 entry though, so for me its been a huge gap, but I'm sure others vary.
Edit: Also notice that this particular week, the best times only just make it to club 19. So obviously you'd need a fairly good week to get in.
Last edited by m2e - 2007.03.06 04:00:48 |
turtlepi
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 2246
Best Total: 20m 39s | Posted - 2007.03.06 04:09:31
my situation is pretty close to that to. I got in to club 59, but then got out of doing the puzzles regularly. When i came back to it, I got 49, 39, and 29 within a few weeks. But now I can barely stay under an hour  But hopefully I can pull it around. |
procrastinator
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 1083
Best Total: 12m 56s | Posted - 2007.03.06 05:11:58
It's definitely a much bigger gap, but how do you quantify it? What I can say is that somewhere between 29 and 19 I started to have doubts about whether much more progress was possible, and others expressed similar doubts. I guess once we'd done it as a group (BECT) we had to believe we could do it individually.
So the doubts were unfounded, but the fact that they appeared at that stage when they hadn't appeared before suggests that maybe there is a plateau there, where the previous methods of improvement stop working effectively. At a guess, somewhere around there you stop learning new patterns with any regularity, and no longer miss the ones you know. So what might you learn?
Somewhere along the line I've learnt:
* the interactions of pairs or groups of adjacent patterns, which helps with visualisation and quick clicking.
* to do the easy things across the whole board before looking for anything tricky in one particular section. As your hand fills in one thing, your eyes can zoom out and look for where to go next. And to scan the whole board before I start.
* to rely on Xes less and less, not just because it speeds up clicking, but because it improves visualisation by simplifying it.
* what my realistic top speed for clicking without errors is, so I can stay near enough to it on the easy stuff. Actually I usually start slower and work up to it as I find my rhythm.
No doubt there are other things I didn't even notice learning, so the real answer is probably just patience, but maybe these can give you something to occupy you while you excercise such patience. 
BTW, twice I got atrocious times on the final puzzle when I was sure I'd make it, but then in the end I got there and if I remember rightly about 3 or 4 others followed within a couple of weeks, so I'm sure there was a bit of a psychological bridge to cross. I know I'm much better when I'm calm than when I'm excited about potentially reaching a milestone. (though better still when I'm a bit angry because someone's stolen a record from me) |
astrokath
Kwon-Tom Obsessive
Puzzles: 3258
Best Total: 13m 42s | Posted - 2007.03.06 10:15:18
What he said. *points at Procrastinator's post*
If you can learn to drop your crutches, that's a start. It'll slow you down initially, but you'll soon pick up speed again once you get used to it. |
