I'm sick of not having a backlog on my puzzle site, sick of being a perfectionist about it, and have a free day tomorrow. Therefore: 9 Hours, 9 Puzzles!
This would be unprecedented for me. I don't remember a time when I made 5 puzzles of this kind in a day, and frequently find it aversive to write 1 or 2. However, I have a decent record of doing stunts like this when I put my mind to it. I got a shot this morning which has tiredness as a possible side effect, though I haven't felt that at all yet. I will only bet YES.
I'm not planning to do it in 9 straight hours. Instead, I'll essentially do it in three sessions (morning, afternoon, evening), which consist of three hour-long work periods with ~15 minute breaks in between. Or at least, something approximately like that. I've just drafted myself a provisional schedule, including the puzzle type I plan to create during each hour. I intend to keep each puzzle's creation contained within its hour, though if I finish a puzzle quickly, I may use extra time to revise previous puzzles.
For this market to resolve YES, I must have 9 full drafts of puzzles at the end of the 9 hours. They don't need to be formatted.
My three work sessions tentatively end at 12:15, 5:30, and 10:45, and I'll try to update the market after each session what I've done and how I'm feeling.
Related:
Note that I release three puzzles every issue and currently have no puzzles for the next issue and no backlog. If I created all nine puzzles, that would constitute two issues' backlog, though I would still have to get the puzzles tested first.
General policy for my markets: In the rare event of a conflict between my resolution criteria and the agreed-upon common-sense spirit of the market, I may resolve it according to the market's spirit or N/A, probably after discussion.
🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ173 | |
| 2 | Ṁ2 | |
| 3 | Ṁ2 | |
| 4 | Ṁ1 |
Evening session was...I got there! I'm so tired. I took a shower, and had an idea for a linguistics puzzle. Seventh hour, 7:15-8:15, I initially abandoned my plan to make a themed crossword and tried to make said linguistics puzzle work, but it didn't (at least, not in this amount of time), so I switched to the crossword, but then Crosshare autofill wasn't working for some reason, so I had to switch yet again to a different puzzle type with like twenty minutes to spare, but I did it. Eighth hour, 8:30-9:30, was pretty chill and successful. Ninth hour, 9:45-10:45, Crosshare autofill was working again, so I got to make my crossword! Anticlimactically, I didn't have time to format it. That wasn't something I committed to doing for all my puzzles though, so it's okay.
This was such a crazy day. It's reassuring that I can successfully do a productivity stunt like this, and cool that the puzzles aren't utter garbage! This isn't actually an unreasonable amount of time to create a puzzle, it's more about motivation, so it's good that this hacked it, though I often had to pivot away from more ambitious puzzle ideas. The Manifold money motivation certainly helped. To the NO bettors: I came quite close to cracking at multiple points, and I honestly thought the market was inflated for awhile. I think y'all were making smart bets!
Afternoon session was also a success! Fourth hour, from 2-3, was probably my worst, since I was in a slightly bad mood for non-puzzle reasons, and I also ended up switching from a more ambitious puzzle type to something safer. I came up with something I was happy with but was not feeling excited about not being halfway. Fifth hour, from 3:15-4:15, I felt better - I made a word puzzle which involved both writing code and writing clues, and I got it done in time. Sixth hour, from 4:30-5:30, I had intentionally planned a more doable type. I made like 75% of the puzzle in 10 minutes, but it ended up being really difficult to make an ending for, though I eventually found something with about twenty minutes to spare. I used some of the spare time to do formatting for a previous 9H9P puzzle. Hopefully the momentum of being 2/3 done will carry me into a productive evening session!
Morning session was a success! I don't even hate the puzzles. I was pretty energized when I woke up, so I did my first hour from 8:15-9:15, which was 15 minutes earlier than my previous plan. I finished my puzzle with time to spare, and perhaps should've done my second hour before breakfast, but I then had breakfast. Second hour was 10-11, and satisfyingly finished the puzzle on time. Third hour was 11:15-12:15, and was the most hectic - the puzzle idea I was planning to do wasn't working out, so toward the end I pivoted to a different but similar puzzle type and somehow completed it.