While I find that weekly challenges are a fun way to challenge oneself, learn a new game, or just try to win in an unusual way, I find what usually happens is that one of the "usual suspects" gets the winning post in - sometimes very early on, already on the same day as the challenge is posted. One can certainly try to still play the challenge but it is a bit less fun, and it does not even make sense to post one's attempt if it is not better than the previous post.
Would it be possible to have two tiers to "win" the weekly challenges, so that both regular/experienced players and more casual players can have their fun?

Hi @ronin3b
Thanks for the feedback. I can understand the position you are in, however I unsure about how we'd go about dividing players into two tiers. Its particularly complex as whilst there might be a user who wins a lot of the Chess based challenges, they might be inexperienced at other games, e.g. Go, Othello, Amazons etc, and so might be misclassified for a non Chess challenge. Do you have any ideas of how you would do this?
I hope players would find 'completing' the challenge fun, even if they aren't skilled enough to win the challenge. We do try to design challenges that are doable for most players, but to optimise them takes some skill.
The challenges are always released at the same time each week (Monday 12:00 UTC), so if you are looking for a moment of glory perhaps try and check out the new challenge when its released.
We'll have a think about the Weekly Challenge format and if its appropriate to alter the format.

3

@ronin3b I don't think 1st day leaderboard matters much if they put a hard enough challenge, unlike the atomic (#111) and monster one (#117) where someone can just walk in with something unbeatable. At the end of the day, if someone wants to grind a challenge for hours just to be the winner, they are most likely to win, not much to change that. I have no idea how the tiers you propose would be defined and who would be placed in which. Few people play the challenges as it is.

Weekly challenges are too random and tedious anyway against bots. I prefer Advent of Chess for challenges aka puzzles. adventofchess.com/

Pros:
- don't have randomness
- are usually complex with a lot of thought behind them
- have a lot of categories adventofchess.com/categories

Cons:
- chess-only puzzles
- the "main event" is only once a year and there are no new puzzles before the next one

Unfortunately I'm not aware of any other site where such challenges/puzzles are hosted. I guess that would be a cool website idea to implement (I don't count pychess puzzles in that since they are only mate in X moves).

-5n