I just completed The Mixed Game at 15:59pm IST [13:59pm GMT] and according to the results it took me 322 seconds to complete the game. I know that I am slow but over five hours is impossible, even by my standards.

This is not the first time it has happened - on one occasion I was registered as having taken over 8 hours to complete a ten question game, and as this month The Mixed Game is one of my Team League games it is rather frustrating for such an error to occur, especially when getting 10/10 for the game.

322 seconds is 5 minutes, not 5 hours. 5 hours is impossible on the mixed hourly as the game would have reset in between.

Usually issues like this are caused by inadvertently starting the game without realizing it. This may for example be a failed load (you click, the request reaches the server but you never see the page). Or, your browser may for some reason have auto-loaded the page (there are some settings or add-ons that do such preloads to speed up display). If you suspect the latter could have happened but can't find a setting for it, make sure you don't call up the game's main page until you immediately want to play. You could also test for this with a daily game or multi-hour game you don't intend to actually play: Call up that game's page and wait for a significant time (I recommend an hour or so - make sure it does not reset), then play and check your time. If it's a normal time, it didn't prefetch, if it shows you a time in the thousands of seconds - 3600 seconds is an hour - it has preloaded and you need to check your settings.

I apologise for my error - yes, it should have been minutes, not hours. But for the last few days I have been checking my times and scores to try and beat myself, and have been using a stop-watch which I click as soon as I click to end each game. According to that I took 1 minute 57 seconds and was rather pleased as I have been trying to get my times down. Incidentally, I do not open any game until I intend to play it so there was no way that my browser [Firefox] could have auto-loaded the page.

When I queried the eight hours, quite a long time ago now, I was also told that my browser could have auto-loaded the page - but it could not have done so as I switch my computer [a pc, not a laptop] off before I go to bed, and it definitely was not still running when I switched it on the following morning and played that game.

I will just have to play that game again today to better my score. But thank you for your help, and again I apologise for having typed hours instead of minutes. I blame it on having been unable to leave my home for the last 17 months.

Do you have a second device (phone, tablet) you play from that could have loaded the game? The way the timing works is completely server side - it takes the difference from when your "start game" request arrives and when your answers make it to the server. Thus to get a time inconsistent with what you actually played and you didn't notice a long delay between pressing the submit button and the time you got the results, it has to somehow have received an earler start command from a device logged into your account.

By the way, one other possible way this could have happened with Firefox is if you restore windows after reopening the browser. The sequence for that is

- You play a game before closing the browser and submit
- After playing, you hit back to the question screen (maybe to re-check something)
- Now you close the browser and shut down your computer.

Then when you restart the computer and Firefox, it will restore your tabs. One of those tabs is the question screen for a game, so it tries to reload that - but that's now of course not the questions from the previous night, but rather the current round. Timer gets started.

If your mixed game was the first thing you played after starting up the browser, this would be quite consistent - three minutes to check in, possibly quickly look at messages and navigate to the game. Then you play (2 min) and the total is 5 minutes.

The cure for that would be to deactivate the "restore tabs" function or always make sure you don't leave finished games open before you close.

No - I only have my pc. I do not even own a smart phone, just a small flip mobile phone which can only be used for telephone calls and short SMS messages. My computer is not switched off from the time I switch it on in the morning until I go to bed, usually around 3am the following day - and Firefox is open all the time. I never close Firefox because that is the browser I use for other sites - each one on a separate page - and none are ever closed. They open when I switch on my computer exactly as they were when I switched it off.

You say



But it is immaterial what time I played that particular game and I do not have to start up the browser because I never close it. It opens as soon as I switch my computer on. And I never log off from Fun Trivia so I do not need any time to check in. I click on the tab and it is there, instantly. As for messages, I rarely get any on FT, and there is no way that I would open a game to play it and then go wandering off to look to see if there are any messages. When I click on a game to start it, I play it.



I switch my computer on around 10 - 11am every morning and it stays on until I switch everything off around 3am. I do not close Firefox during the day, nor do I close any windows or tabs during the time my computer is switched on. And I always check how many minutes there are left before starting games. I even have a reminder set on my computer to pop up every hour to remind me to re-play hourly games if I am trying to better my previous score.

Something is very strange. I have checked a couple of games that some of my team members have been playing, and there is a major discrepancy in two that I have seen - I have not checked all games as I have not been sitting here all day. One player in particular shows as having scored 9/10 yesterday on New Questions and taken 6761 seconds to do so. Today [yesterday for me now] on Who Am I he scored 15/15 in 11465 seconds.

I have only discussed this with one of my members - who is the top scorer in my team most days, and is definitely the fastest. He had posted on our team messageboard some time ago to apologise if anyone thought he had let the team down, because on the Team Heroes game, in which he had got every answer correct [he holds the team record for most of the Team Heroes categories] it showed that he had taken 7000 seconds - his usual time being in the region of 60 seconds - today he took 50 seconds.

So it is not just me, and not my imagination, and I apologise again for my error in typing hours instead of minutes in my OP. My team is doing very well and I am very proud of them all. But it is rather distressing to see times that could not possibly be correct, however you try to explain it. It just does not make any sense.

The fact remains that this is NOT server side - it can't do that from the way things are coded.

The timer starts when the server receives the first request from a specific account. This requires a client to be logged in on the respective account and sending data.

A second "start" request merely sends the same questions again and does not change the timer.

The timer ends when the game is actually submitted.

Long timers are thus caused either by (a) a start request arriving much earlier than the player wants it or (b) the submit arriving much later than intended. Obviously (b) is not happening here, because that would mean you would be waiting several minutes (or hours) between submit and result. So it is (a).

Since I cannot troubleshoot this from here - all I see is that a request has arrived but not why or how - I can only highlight possible scenarios for you so you can check. Something on your (and your teammates') system has been sending those requests without a conscious player action so I am describing things that could have happened so you can check and see if what I describe could match what you have done and how your system is set up. It's expected that many of those things I describe are not it - there are many possible reasons, only one is the one that does it.

By the way, your workflow - not closing the browser all day and restoring tabs when you restart the computer - is exactly consistent with my latest guess for the reason. When you restart the computer in the morning, the browser automatically restores your tabs to the point where you have last been before shutting down the PC. At that point, it will reload data (and thus possibly start games) without you intending to do so.

To avoid this possibility, please make sure that you do not have any game windows open when shutting down your system. (The homepage, profile pages and team pages are safe). Close any tabs that contain a game or surf away from the game before shutting down.

Thank you for your help. I cannot speak for my team members but I only keep the homepage and my team page tabs open. I open games on different tabs as and when I intend playing them, and close the tab once I have seen the result. If I kept all tabs open all the time there would not be enough room on the tab bar on my monitor, as I do use it for other activities!

Sorry, but then I am out of ideas for now as to how it could happen (The "restore tab" thing was a long shot anyway - but something like it caused a really puzzling behind the scenes bug a few months ago). Maybe you want look out for something specific you did when it happens (it doesn't seem that frequent) - if you encounter the problem again and you can think of anyone you did differently from your normal routine before / during play, just ask me and I can tell you if it could cause the behavior or if it was just coincidence.

I am not really over-bothered about my own scores or times - I play for pleasure, for fun, and to learn things - since joining Fun Trivia I have learned a lot about many subjects and it has certain kept my old brain active! Never too old to learn new things! Yes it did bother me at the time but I know that I didn't do anything different to the way I have been doing it since I first joined. I have a set way of doing things and just don't vary them. Plus I never open a game until I am ready to play, and the time doesn't begin until I hit start. So I really am sure of when I start a game.

However, what concerns me the most is the team member who showed as having taken 6761 seconds to score 9/10 on New Questions, and the following day showed as having taken 11465 seconds to score 15/15 on Who Am I. It just does not seem feasible. And I am concerned because he has not logged on since then - he is a new player and I very much fear that he will not be coming back because of this.

There is nothing I can do though, is there. People come and people go. All I can do is support my team as best I can.

Thanks again for all your suggestions and help - much appreciated.