Monday 27 February

[TRex]

The Challenge and Standard puzzles have more letters in common than not, plus have the same required letter. That translates to a good number of overlapping words and a good deal of confusion for this wee brain.

Are the puzzles really randomly generated -- or is this overlap deliberate to confuse me?

[Alan W]

Au contraire, TRex. The letter selection is designed so as to make it less likely than random that two puzzles on the same day will have words in common.

This was a very early enhancement to the puzzle, reported here. As I said then, the aim is to reduce the likelihood of this happening, but not eliminate it altogether.

[TRex]

I'm just feeling a bit ..... paranoid (in addition to being confused!).   

[mkenuk]

It seemes to have happened a couple of times recently -'overloaded' (10-letter) and 'uncovered' (challenge) were playing at the same time a couple of days ago, and with 'arrowhead' as the standard, it meant for example that those good old stand-bys 'redo' and 'doer' were in great demand. As T-Rex says it can be a little confusing, and you can easily miss a very common word in one puzzle if you've already played it in another. Never mind. All part of the fun.
MK

[Alan W]

MK, the example you mention wouldn't be affected by the mechanism I mentioned, because the OVERLOADED puzzle had Saturday's date and the UNCOVERED puzzle had Sunday's date. The control on puzzles with common words was designed when we had just two daily puzzles, and they started at the same time. So the comparison is only with a puzzle for the same date.

Now that we have three puzzles, with staggered starting times, there's more scope for similar puzzles to be active at the same time. Maybe the scope of the test should be widened to take in puzzles from the past couple of days.

[cb]

Maybe the scope of the test should be widened to take in puzzles from the past couple of days.

If that is easily doable that would be my preference - I generally only attempt the standard puzzle, but even at that, a lot of repeated words on consecutive days can be too much for my few struggling gray cells!

[TRex]

If that is easily doable that would be my preference - I generally only attempt the standard puzzle, but even at that, a lot of repeated words on consecutive days can be too much for my few struggling gray cells!

Ditto.