Project Euler Forum

Hello,
recently I noted that the numbers of solvers for some problems is weirdly fluctuating. Nothing weird with it going up, but going down is suspicious. And I believe that happens for multiple problems. For a specific evidence, yesterday I solved a problem (763), which was displayed to have 138 solvers and when I solved it, I was told I am the 137th solver and the displayed number of solvers indeed became 137. Why is that? Is PE team banning cheaters on a regular basis and the numbers are updated lazily?

I think it is due to that two 875+ members uselessness and auberginesout4odo set their account to private.

Here is the statistics by clist.by
https://clist.by/account/auberginesout4 ... euler.net/

You can find auberginesout4odo appear in the fastest table of Problem #904,#902,#901,etc.

But when you look up the fastest tables ,You will find auberginesout4odo disappear(in all fastest tables).

Another 875+ member uselessness seldom appeared in fastest table. So there are no evidences to tell.

You can also see the fastest table of Problem#895. It shows 69 solvers in the problem list page, but when you go into the fastest table, You will find there are only 68 solvers. (auberginesout4odo originally is the 65th solver, but he set his account private, so his entry is deleted.)

Unfortunately, the the statistics by clist.by is dynamic. It means that auberginesout4odo will finally disappear in clist.by if his doesn't set his account public.

Thanks for the answer, it's an interesting one. I was thinking that I was seeing these fluctuations more often recently + a few days ago I solved problem, where the number of solvers dropped by only one (i.e. it didn't change at all after I solved it), so there may be more little mysteries here and there, but it sounds like changing account settings is the most likely cause

Also, it's curious that you mention 65th solver for problem 895, because right now that's me, funny coincidence