Puzzle Description Suppressed:Click below to view spoilers

#1: Jota (jota) on Mar 22, 2024

Who of the active players have been here the longest?

Jota, I'm definitely not the longest player, but I am all-in devoted. In the long ago days before logging in was necessary, I think I started dabbling in 2008 or early 2009. I finally registered and officially started accumulating puzzles solved in November or December 2010. I had read all the comments so I felt as if I already knew many of the usual suspects, but it wasn't until a few years later that I began commenting myself. I *love* this community.

In case this puzzle is the last of the bunch, all these years later let me thank Jan -- what a legacy he left for us -- and Valerie, for keeping us here together.

Absolutely - thank you all so much for many happy hours!

This is my first ever post to this site, but I was inspired to do so to say Happy 20th Birthday to everyone. I have no idea how long I have been puzzling, but the users page says I have done 13670 puzzles. I got hooked on PBN in Games Magazine and when I found a computer site I joined and never looked back. I spend too many hours every day doing puzzles (I am not talented enough to create anything). Congratulations and keep the puzzles coming. I love reading all the comments and feel like I know several of the regulars.

Welcome, Barbara! You're always welcome to comment, whether you've created a puzzle or not. ^_^

I published my first puzzle around Thanksgiving 2009 but started solving puzzles a few weeks before that.

I first used the site twenty years ago today (I created puzzle #7 that day) but then I was rarely around on the site until a few years after Jan died. Though while he was alive he used to talk about the site and the people, so I had heard random bits about a lot of the longtime people long before I was interacting with them.

Welcome, Barbara! I'm glad you are posting!

Longtimers may have heard me say this before: I too found paint-by-number logic puzzles through Games Magazine. In the mid 1990s I showed them to Jan, and, years later, he was inspired to create this site because of it.

Speaking of hearing bits about the longtime people: Jan once said that there was a couple who met on the site and got married. Or got together. Or traveled overseas to meet each other and fell in love, but then it didn't last. Or something like that! I have never, ever seen any hint of that mentioned in the comments here, and have no idea who the people would be. Does anybody else know what I am talking about?

Also: I am wildly impressed by the fourteen users who have each solved more than 30,000 puzzles on this site: sevuse, micplour, jonis, atilganer, smcalkins, nsands, DOGMOM, hollybob7, Lollipop, taay, inghui, rfuller4, and kibitzar. Or for that matter, there are about 225 people who have each solved more than 10,000 puzzles. That is a LOT of puzzle-solving!

According to Valerie's chart, my first comment was in January of 2011, but I know I was solving puzzles for months before I even realized that I *could* create a profile and make comments!

It was when I had my first hotel job with a lot of downtime, so I did a search for online paint-by-number puzzles (or whatever Dell and Penny Press were calling them).

Here's the link to the chart Kristen mentioned, where I wrote
a program to try to answer Jota's question about which current users have been on the site the longest:

https://webpbn.com/read.cgi?type=T&id=1070

Valerie, I am wildly impressed by you.

Valery:could you tell us who is the most senior member of active players?

Jota: I made a list of active players, sorted by when their first posting or puzzle was, and put it here:
https://webpbn.com/read.cgi?type=T&id=1070

Thanks Lollipop!

I spotted a bug in my code, fixed it, and it found a lot more people! I'll go update the page with the list....

#1: theo van emmen (theo) on Dec 19, 2004

for a very small puzzle it is good

Using Find Puzzles I brought up #1 and this was the first comment.

I used to solve the puzzles the old fashioned way: printed them out and wasted a lot of pencil lead solving them. haha. Thank you Valerie for continuing this precious site. We love you.

Show: Spoilers

Goto next topic

You must register and log in to be able to participate in this discussion.