Maybe I have a tendency to overthink the easier puzzles, but the solutions often seem dumb...even though they're obviously the best moves.
I feel like I have a better track record on the 2100-2400 puzzles and when I start getting lowballed I get trapped in low-puzzle hell...
Sometimes I settle for "good" moves and fail to see the best.
A puzzle requires you to find the best move. If you don't really know which move is best than you may try a move that has potential but is not the best.
Throwing in some obvious puzzles to keep the solver honest is a common technique to separate the real tactical beasts from the fakes, If you solve hard puzzles and not easier ones than you really don't know what is best based on calculation and evaluation you are semi guessing based on phycological understanding of compositions and forcing moves.
I have seen videos of strong players doing puzzles, They sometimes find the best move extremely quickly and then check other lines to make sure. It is interesting because as a weaker player I am thinking play the move and they are making sure they are right even though their intuition is 10 times better.
Sure, I find plenty of low rated puzzles that give me a hard time, but also the opposite. I find easy puzzles that are high rated. I've inquired about this before. I have a theory that there're several types of chess skill and these aren't evenly distributed in any player.
@JunoCunerino I think that is closer to the truth than "separating fakes from tacticians."
There is such a wide variety of tactics to apply to any one scenario and you have to keep a lot of things in mind.
It's just revealing a hole in my awareness, nothing more.
And to say it's "semi guessing" based on some intuition about puzzle structure...that's not entirely true because a lot of the harder ones are very subtle.
@burnedtocd , I can't tell very much about skills that I may lack, or areas where I'm good. Seems like I'm often surprized where the correct solution has moves that I never even considered. I just thought they went no where. I seem to be good at choosing the correct order of moves when there's 2 or 3 pieces exchanged. It's surprizing how some of these can be rated high.
These things might be so matter of fact to you since you're higher rated
I'm keeping note of all the tactical themes, especially ones that I miss, I suggest you do the same - think about what the move is doing, like rerouting a knight, etc