Woodpecker 10(0)1 - III

Woodpeckering my way through 1001 chess puzzles in 2021

Here's another thing that I didn’t think about before I started Woodpeckering: how difficult should the problems be?

Smith and Tikkanen have little to say on the question of how challenging the chess problems you use should be. Which is curious when you think about it. Each cycle you get faster, but accuracy isn’t something they really think about. They even say that, "Counting the number of points you have scored is optional".

Which I have taken to mean that the question isn’t important.

One thing about the 1001 CEFCP problems that I didn’t know before I started was that they vary a great deal in difficulty. At the start of each chapter so far I’ve scored 90% for 15-20 positions in a session. Towards the end of chapter one ("Elimination of the Defence"), I was able to get through just 4 problems - only one of which I actually managed to solve.

Over the first cycle my overall solving percentage has ranged from 90% down to 78%.  Sooner after the low water mark, things picked up a bit and stayed steady at 81% to 82% thereafter. Perhaps this is all a sign that the next time I do this the pool of problems should be more of a challenge.

I guess the key thing is that it’s a bench mark against which I can judge myself in subsequent cycles. There’s no point working through the problems twice as fast if my error rate doubles.

PROGRESS

By the time you read this I’ll be working my way through the first week of the the second cycle of the first problem set.

Here’s how cycle one ended up:-

Cycle One Running totals

Week One: 80 puzzles at 84% accuracy in 6 hours 21 minutes

Week Two: 109 puzzles at 81% accuracy in 11 hours 2 minutes

Week Three: 172 puzzles at 81% accuracy in 15 hours 51 minutes

Week Four: 277 puzzles at 82% accuracy in 22 hours 42 minutes