Can I Delete My Puzzle Stats and Start Over?

Hi Chess.com people,

I've hit a puzzle plateau.  I find that now I've reached puzzles where I simply can't beat them in the allotted time.  I'll spend three minutes or more thinking out a puzzle.  If I'm correct, I earn +5 points at best.  If I'm incorrect, I lose -15 or more points.  I've hit this annoying rut where I'll score +5  +5  -15  +5  +5  +5  -18  -14  +5  and so on.

This is extremely discouraging and robs the puzzles of their fun.  Its sort of like swimming through quicksand; I put in a lot of effort and exhaust myself, but my rating is slowly sinking.  I spend a lot of time wondering if I'm working on puzzles that are too hard.

I also think a lot about how much I loved the puzzles when I started on chess.com.  They were a useful way of tracking my progress.  I'd be very curious to see how quickly I could rate up to 800, then to 1200, then to 1600, and so on, if I were to start over.  Couldn't I delete all my puzzle stats and start anew?

@NervesOfButter  Ah yes!  Thank you...

It likely had nothing to do with a plateau but you were likely getting puzzles a lot lower rated than your rating at the time. In that case, most puzzles are going to give a lot fewer points and incorrect ones will drop your rating, which is normal.

@Martin_Stahl,  Thank you for the feedback, I do appreciate it.  I don't know how the puzzle ranking system works at chess.com, but I hope its more sophisticated than simply, "You passed a 800 puzzle?  Then you get a 900 puzzle next time.  You failed an 800 puzzle?  Then you drop down to a 700 next time."  In other words, I hope that the puzzles you solve or fail are aggregated into a larger pattern, which the website considers when selecting the next puzzle.  Now that I'm starting from scratch, I'll pay more close attention to how the puzzles ramp up in difficultly, and at which rating I reach my new plateau.

In general, the puzzle selection is usually based around your rating, something like +-300 in most cases. I believe there's some logic around that selection being lower after some failures and higher during successes (not directly related to current rating).

There have been other topics recently where some members were getting almost all puzzles the were 400+ lower rated. I believe the scaling still happened base on success/failure in those cases.

I can't verify that's what you were seeing, since resets flush puzzle history, but based on your post, that seems most likely.

My understanding is that behavior is going to go back to closer to the way it had been before, for those impacted.