Project Euler Forum

You are limited to entering no more than twenty-five correct solutions within a period of time equal to your level in days, which is currently 1 days for you. This restriction should naturally reflect the increasing difficulty of the problems remaining.

So I've just registered, and did some trivial problems for a warm up - they were all a couple of minutes of thinking, and something between one and five lines of Ruby code each, and I was just about to start doing some serious problems - and then I was informed it won't let me for the next 22 hours and 29 minutes.

What's the point of this? Is this some sort of silly anti-cheating system? (does anybody even care enough to cheat here?) Would you be so kind and add me to whatever white list there is to disable this limit?

Thanks

t-a-w wrote:Is this some sort of silly anti-cheating system?

Yes

t-a-w wrote:does anybody even care enough to cheat here?

Yes, a surprising amount.

t-a-w wrote:Would you be so kind and add me to whatever white list there is to disable this limit?

I don't believe there is such a list.

t-a-w wrote:does anybody even care enough to cheat here?

Yes, a surprising amount.

Seriously, why would anybody bother doing such a thing? It's not like there are some prizes for solving puzzles here, are there?

t-a-w wrote:

t-a-w wrote:does anybody even care enough to cheat here?

Yes, a surprising amount.

Seriously, why would anybody bother doing such a thing? It's not like there are some prizes for solving puzzles here, are there?

It sounds pretty retarded to me too, but it's there. Kind of like a pseudo-rule-34 for cheaters.

t-a-w wrote:

t-a-w wrote:does anybody even care enough to cheat here?

Yes, a surprising amount.

Seriously, why would anybody bother doing such a thing? It's not like there are some prizes for solving puzzles here, are there?

For your information, someone had even written and made public a script complete with the answers to all the problems (answers supplied by several other contributors) to automaticly enter those answers and get their names on the "elite" list within seconds!!! There are rotten apples in every barrel.

rayfil wrote:

t-a-w wrote:Seriously, why would anybody bother doing such a thing? It's not like there are some prizes for solving puzzles here, are there?

For your information, someone had even written and made public a script complete with the answers to all the problems (answers supplied by several other contributors) to automaticly enter those answers and get their names on the "elite" list within seconds!!! There are rotten apples in every barrel.

So? Now they'll just have to wait some time before cheating their way into the elite list. If someone wants to cheat that badly, they'll cheat anyway.

If someone wants to cheat that badly, they'll cheat anyway.

Nobody could disagree with that statement. However, it could be done before without any effort. With the extra effort now required, many may just conclude that it's not worth it anymore.

Consider the wait time for working on those harder problems. Some may take you a few days unless you are in a genious category.

Raymond wrote:For your information, someone had even written and made public a script complete with the answers to all the problems (answers supplied by several other contributors) to automaticly enter those answers and get their names on the "elite" list within seconds

The captcha system made this kind of cheating impossible right..?

stijn263 wrote:

Raymond wrote:For your information, someone had even written and made public a script complete with the answers to all the problems (answers supplied by several other contributors) to automaticly enter those answers and get their names on the "elite" list within seconds

The captcha system made this kind of cheating impossible right..?

The captcha in use here is not very sophisticated, and as such would not be difficult for someone to crack with an ocr if they so desired. I'm sure there are some free/open source ocr out there that would work well enough here.

rayfil wrote:Consider the wait time for working on those harder problems. Some may take you a few days unless you are in a genious category.

I don't mean to be nitpicky, but the correct spelling there is "genius." I swear I had NOTHING to do with that there!

genious999 wrote:

stijn263 wrote:

Raymond wrote:For your information, someone had even written and made public a script complete with the answers to all the problems (answers supplied by several other contributors) to automaticly enter those answers and get their names on the "elite" list within seconds

The captcha system made this kind of cheating impossible right..?

The captcha in use here is not very sophisticated, and as such would not be difficult for someone to crack with an ocr if they so desired. I'm sure there are some free/open source ocr out there that would work well enough here.

A professional burglar can break the lock on your frontdoor within a few minutes.
Is that a reason to remove the locks altogether?

waldorf wrote:A professional burglar can break the lock on your frontdoor within a few minutes.
Is that a reason to remove the locks altogether?

Of course not. A lock on your door prevents someone from just walking up and entering your house, like the simple captcha used here prevents automated scripts from filling in the answer. I was simply pointing out that it is indeed possible to get around a captcha, especially one as simple as the one used here.

I still think we should remove all those Top Scorers and Levels pages.

Some people just feel comfortable to find himself in those pages.

I don't like those silly things neither.
If cheating is really a problem, then design a scoring system unreachable by cheaters, such as:

(1) for each problem make a list of only the top 25 fastest solvers.
(2) base the Eulerian score on the last 25 of those lists, as a function of number of entries made, average position in there, and perhaps some other parameters.
(3) maintain the problems page "solved by" column, showing for each problem the number of members having solved that problem
(4) create an anonymous list, showing only the number of members having solved N problems (N = 1..latest problem number).

In this way:
- there still is a competitive element (1,2)
- each member can evaluate his/her achievements reflected on those of the total Euler community (3,4)
- there is no need for all those anti-cheat annoyances

edit: but let's not repeat the viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1599 discussion