General inquiry about the forum

[ThomasJohnsen]

A few abstract thoughts:

* Easy puzzles are typically solved by more people than hard ones. That is in the nature of things; authors must certainly be aware of this when they design harder puzzles. I also take it that less time is needed (on average) to create an easy puzzle than to create a hard one.
* So far I have had no reason to suspect that hard puzzles are generally more likely to be hand-crafted than easy ones. Are there any statistics or other kinds of evidence to support this claim? I don't understand what the term "linear" is supposed to mean in this context; according to my understanding, both easy and hard puzzles can have a linear or a non-linear solving path.
* I can think of many reasons why puzzle authors invest more or less time in a specific creation. The assumption that there is a straightforward link between the time spent designing a puzzle and the presence of a nice, clean, logical solving path is wrong in my opinion - not to mention the fact that different solvers may enjoy different kinds of solving logic.
* Finally: I do not think there is a simple relation between the difficulty and the quality of puzzles. It appears to me that both easy puzzles and hard puzzles have their supporters. As far as I am concerned, they both have their rightful place in the puzzle community and in particular the Portal. Which kind one prefers is mostly a matter of personal taste.
* It may be true that some distinguished authors can be found to produce the one kind more often than the other, but just as with the Sudoku-vs-Non-Sudoku debate, I find it (mildly) presumptuous to argue that the one kind is more "valuable" than the other, or that the majority of puzzles from one group is just "noise".


That said, I do not think it is a good idea to split the portal into two sections as suggested.

I was not suggesting that difficult is better than easy. Or that simple is generically bad. If it is a Monday evening and I have say 15-20 minutes to spare, I enjoy an easily accessible sudoku like a simple sandwich or killer, where I am familiar with the rules and can get straight to solving. But if it is say a Sunday morning, and I have a couple of free hours and a cup of coffee, I might prefer a real challenge. The problem with having easy and simple along with complex and tricky, is that the latter category tend to drop down the pages possibly without ever getting the attention, that the audience might warrant.
If this site had a number of moderators, who could spot puzzles of exceptional difficulty, a particular beautiful logical path, a new set of interesting rules or similar, and could copy them to a separate thread (or threads), I would know exactly where to look on a given Sunday. As it is now, I will have to save/remember or flick through several pages and possible miss something, I would have loved to try out.
I have seen some great puzzles never really get above 5 or 6 solves, simply because they have a huge block of rules. The rules may be very interesting and make for a sweet puzzle, but when you only have a half an hour, you flick past those, and they end up never really getting any attention. Imo it would be easier and more user-friendly to have a place to find those kinds of puzzles instead of having to remember/save them.

All that being said - I'm new here and don't solve many puzzles at all. I prefer making them significantly more. So maybe I'm not the one who should be making suggestions. I just notice, that there are a number of puzzles of a decent to high quality, that never get any attention at all, which I find a bit sad. And that is my 5 cents.