People who really, really enjoyed this argument about whether it's ethical to watch and/or copy other people's demos are welcome to go read
this topic, as long as they promise not to talk about it.
Personally, I continue to only very rarely download a demo that isn't my own. (I think, in fact, the only times I've downloaded other people's demos in the last, oh, let's say six months have been in cases where my own demo is significantly
faster than anyone else's, and I'm trying to figure out where the delay was for someone who took longer.) But that's, let me stress, personal. Yeah, I optimize--I've been replaying old holds where I have an average rank of worse than six or seven, to try to bring up those scores--but I'm doing it to see how well I can do, not to beat anyone else.
Besides, it's a puzzle: in
one room, mxvladi had a score four moves faster than the other seven people who'd beaten it, including myself, who'd uniformly taken 367 moves. Based on my own playing, it seemed literally impossible to shave off four moves; the room requires waiting until turn 360, and then there were an obligatory seven moves that followed. How, then, I wanted to know, did mxvladi possibly do it? Now, I could have downloaded his demo, watched it, and then done that; also, when I'm doing a crossword puzzle, I could just flip to the answer grid and fill in the letters that're there. But why would I? The whole point, for me, isn't "
hey look I have a high score/a finished grid"
; it's "
wow, I was able to figure that out"
.
Of course, if someone else wants to do a crossword puzzle with an open dictionary, or by Googling answers, or by sitting next to someone and poking them every few minutes and saying "
Hey what's a seven letter word for 'Having fun'?"
, or copying the answer grid--well, hey, it's their puzzle, they should do whatever makes them happy. I'll be over here doing it the way that makes me happy.
Your mileage may vary.
how on earth did I manage that? 
. . . RABBITS!? 
