Puzzle decline or how I seemed to be good at puzzles and then seemed not to be good at them one bit

Hello,

Has anyone noticed the puzzles have become more difficult of late? I'm not a good player by any stretch - I think of myself as 'ambitiously bad' - but I found I was starting to have consistent success with the puzzles. I slowly climbed up into the low-1900 range and felt reasonably secure in the 1800 range. Recently, however, I've seen my score precipitously fall. I'm now in the 1500 range, which is deeply discouraging. I understand the puzzles are not an absolute indicator of one's chess skill. Still, it was pleasing to someone like myself to find that the puzzles allowed a participation in chess beyond the opening game resignation or embarrassing checkmate.

The puzzles, too, seem more numerously mid-range - that congested-looking arrangement of pieces that leaves me anticipating collapse - or strange endgames where the best moves often seem arbitrarily arrived at but aren't.

All best,

Jon

@jonconemfa puzzle ratings can fluctuate a lot, and the puzzle difficulties can very sometimes... it's perfectly fine, my rating has come down too.

My guess is that you move too quickly, judging by the number of puzzles you make in a day. Your rating will fluctuate a lot less when you only move when you're absolutely certain that it's the right move (the same holds for chess games, classical ratings fluctuate less than blitz/bullet). Even if you see a move that looks like a good move, look again and try to work out every possible scenario. Hope this helps

This happened to me once, I was just rushing and because I got most of them wrong, I got frustrated, I got down to 1900.
But now I am 2400 :)

Hi Jon,

first of all my condolences for your wife and dog, wasn't me I swear

Puzzle rating is really not a rating anyone should care about. I feel just as happy with 1900 right now, as I was with 2400. Maybe you should ask yourself why this has such a huge impact on you. If you need help understanding puzzles, you definitely need a teacher. I would gladly offer that too, unfortunately right now I have no time to do that for free, so you might ask someone else or pay a teacher.

Thank you, everyone, for suggestions and condolences.

Now back to my composting!

Jon