Revert Puzzle Difficulty Setting

Thanks for passing that on Martin.

I do have to give one more piece of feedback here in response: This is a paid product that was in working order. Someone thought it could be improved, and there is nothing wrong with that. But breaking the saleable product? Leaving it broken for what sounds like a two month stretch instead of reverting to the saleable product in the meantime?

I gotta tell ya, I wish this experience was more uncommon. Chances are the cost-benefit analysis says not going to the trouble is the right play but it does cost goodwill.

Hi all,

Thanks for your patience and understanding. We recognize the concerns that have been raised and truly apologize for the friction this situation has caused.

Our team has issued an official statement to address the matter directly. You can read it here:
🔗 https://x.com/chesscomsupport/status/1949970540845793609

If you have any further questions or feedback, please feel free to share, we’re listening. 💪🏻

Thanks Richard. Can you also please address this issue? The % pass rate / # attempts that's shown right after completing a puzzle is also broken. It's been showing incorrect stats 100% of the time, for about 6 months now. (The only way to see the correct stats is to click on a puzzle's permalink.) I reported this as a bug months ago but got no reply.

We have no idea. Best guess is to increase user engagement. If the puzzles are easier then users will spend a longer amount of time online, which means more ad revenue. They could also be preparing to sell the site in the future, who knows. If they are able to say "hey we have 300 million users a month and they spend an average of 30 minutes a day on the site, playing on average 3 games and solving 30 puzzles per day" then that's something investors want to hear.

Still not getting a response on this is insane. This thread has got a lot of traction.

Changes to the puzzle system? Fine. Pushing some random part of these changes to prod? Not good.

Puzzles are functionally broken for many, and updates "in the coming weeks" suggests no fix coming any time soon.

Dumping chess.com puzzles in favor of Chess Tempo seems to be the way to go for me but I'd be interested if others have found something better.

There are two posts in this topic that give the site's reasoning (both have the same information)

The changes are actively being worked on.

Indeed, this is obvioulsy work in progress. In particular because the whole puzzle system is unusable for weeks, for some even for months, unless you enjoy tediously solving trivial puzzles.

The question is why push an obviously not finished update to all users. Especially if you have had a working system, just to then tell them after two weeks, that there will be an update at an unspecified time in the future, which solves the current problems.

Will you guys conintue do solve tacticts in the meantime? Or full stop?

Thank you, Richard, for posting this link. It is unfortunate that this statement was made only on X (which I permanently unsubscribed from some time ago), rather than the Chess.com site.

In the UK, we have a saying relevant to this whole ongoing situation: "If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it".

I do hope the promised improvements arrive soon. I have not experienced any improvement at all during this roll-out period; quite the opposite.

I've done a few, but mainly just been using Lichess for now

I've stopped Chess.com standard rated puzzles. I've logged more than 45,000 since I joined the site in late 2022, so it's a bit of a change for me. I can see some benefit in Survival Puzzle Rush, so I'm going to periodically try that, but it easily loses track on mobile so I don't find it great.

For serious puzzles I'm now using Chess Tempo. The UI is a little clunky -- though the inability there to draw arrows or check valid moves is arguably better for developing vision, so that's not necessarily a full minus. I appreciate the years of comments on Chess Tempo from players discussing moves, explaining alternatives, and occasionally just highlighting the flavor of a particular puzzle.

I'll still do tactics in the meantime but mostly because it is a habit now. Might be more of a 2-5 minute thing instead of 20 though.

God I love Chess Tempo, but I really hope at some point they overhaul their UI and UX. Even a third party browser extension that allows you to make the board look like Chesscom or Lichess would be great.

I was around 1600 and it felt right; the points and deductions seemed fair. But suddenly, about two weeks ago, I jumped 600 points in a single day. That’s nuts! The puzzle rating system is crap now. You only gain about 5 Elo per puzzle, no matter how difficult it is, but you lose 17 (MINIMUM) points for one mistake. It’s just so f***ing frustrating!

Hi Richard, you may have already received this feedback elsewhere but the difficulty level setting does not work. I have mine set to Extra Hard but still get the same easy puzzles.

There's discussion about modifying the Extra Hard selection algorithm.

Do eet! Do eet!

I don't want to practise getting things right that I ought to get, especially when it is time based and I'm getting on in years. My glory days of impressive speed are gone and not coming back. I want my brain to go crosseyed in despair as my calculations fail and have to develop new puzzle solving strategies with the help of analysis.

I don't think it's going to be that drastic. Though, you could do unrated and set the minimum puzzle rating really high