iPhone Cryptograms
Cryptograms have come to your iPhone! Play as many cryptograms as you want. If one is too difficult, just load up another. Want to play competitively? We track all of your stats and award trophies at the end of each month. Do you have what it takes to enter our cryptogram hall of fame?
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A. This is the most common question that we receive through feedback. The basic explanation is as follows:
The root of the problem is that the cryptogram application is competitive by nature. If we didn't have to submit times to the server, we would do it "your" way (i.e. if you're not playing then the game timer is paused).
But consider if we paused the timer when you weren't playing. What stops someone from opening the puzzle, writing down the jumbled quote very quickly and then closing the program? Then they have all the time in the world solve a difficult puzzle, reopen the application and quickly enter the solution for a good time in the high score list.
So it's easier and more fair from an administration standpoint to make the timer absolute based on when you were first give the quote, in order to avoid complaints about cheating the timer.. How would you like it if lots of people had sub 30-second times, and you couldn't be sure if they actually acheived those, or solved them while offline and entered them into the phone really quickly?
Unfortunately there is no perfect solution to this problem :(
A. Every day the puzzles are ranked by two metrics: 1) by average solve time and 2) by successful solve ratio. The two metrics for each puzzle are ranked linearly from 0 to 1 (so the puzzle with a metric in the middle gets 0.5 for that metric).
Once each puzzle has a value from 0-1 for its two metrics, those values are multiplied together. So a puzzle with a metric of 0.25 and a metric of 0.75 will have a total metric of (0.25 * 0.75 = 0.1875).
The puzzles are then ranked again by their total metric. We use the total metric to map the puzzles linearly between an integer value of 50 through 1000. This represents the "max" score of a puzzle and determines its difficulty. Puzzles less than 330 are easy; puzzles greater than 660 are hard; those in between are medium.
So in the end, harder puzzles are those with a longer average solve time and lower successful solve ratio (but are worth more points). Easy puzzles have a shorter average solve time and a larger successful solve ratio (but are worth less points).
Finally, the number of points you get for solving a puzzle is based on your solve time versus the cumulative distribution function of all previous solve times, scaled against the puzzle's maximum point value. So scoring the mean time on a hard puzzle will gain more points than the mean time of an easy puzzle. But you may gain more points for being the fastest solver of an easy puzzle than the slowest solver of a hard puzzle.