5punk

It occurred to me that I might be struggling with it because I have dyscalculia, but that would not explain why I'm not seeing the patterns. It's also possible I'm overthinking it.

I'm actually terrible with numbers. Enough so that I have more than once wondered if I have dyscalculia myself. As such I really rely on seeing patterns to get good times; when my times go to shit or I get mistakes it's always been because there is some bit I can't just see straight away and I have had to do actual counting, at which point I am reduced to putting my mouse over things and going "1, 2, 3..." If I don't use the line highlights for the rows I almost invariably lose track halfway across a line if the number is higher than 3. Counting entirely fucks me.

If you don't believe that I have a numbers problem, just watch me during an RPG. I take an inordinately long time to do something as simple as adding the result of 2d6 together.

If you want to improve your times, my slightly counter intuitive advice would be to forget about the timer for a bit. Go through all the premade puzzles until you have completed them all, and do some random puzzles. Instead of going fast, try and look for shortcuts that let you do less counting. For example, if you see a 1 you know that there will only be 1 around it, but similarly if you see a 5 there will only be one *space* around it. So if you see a 5 and you have already cleared one space next to it, blam out all the others. If you see a 4, then its either two short rows down its side, a three together with one opposite or a curve of four all together. Once you get a bunch of that sort of stuff ingrained in your thinking, so you are not even consciously thinking about it, then counting becomes irrelevant 90% of the time. And once you have that down, you will find yourself speeding up without really trying to go fast.

TL;DR: You are probably not seeing the patterns *yet* because you havent done enough puzzles yet. Do more of them, don't worry about your time, try to do it without needing to count more.

That's similar to how I already play so yeah, it's probable just that I need more practice.

I found as well that doing a bit of a warm up puzzle helped greatly as well, if only to get your brain into the way of thinking (doesn't need to be a full puzzle)

fabyak wrote:I found as well that doing a bit of a warm up puzzle helped greatly as well, if only to get your brain into the way of thinking (doesn't need to be a full puzzle)

This ^

I never used to do it until someone here suggested it. I don't worry too much about mistakes and time, I just let myself settle into it. I was surprised at how effective it was at improving my times.

1:08 and 0 mistakes.

1:06 with 1 mistake.

10:09 - 4 mistakes. Yeesh

6:35, 5 mistakes. Why was that one so damn hard?

7:05, 7 mistakes

9:22 and 0 mistakes. Got there in the end.

1:57 and 0 mistakes today.

3:19, 0 mistakes.

Not bad, just over a minute between us.

Cheers!

2:00 with 1 mistake.

2:45 - 0 mistakes

1:56 and 0 mistakes today. Didn't feel like a great time.

1:45, 0 mistakes. Also felt like it could have gone faster.

2:49, 0 mistakes