Residue IE Score: Monitors that all PHE, TYR, and TRP residues are scoring well.

Core Existence: Ensures that at least 30% of the residues are buried in the core of your design.

Secondary Structure: Checks that no more than 50% of residues are in helices; penalties are incurred if more than 50% of residues form helices.

Secondary Structure Design: Penalizes all CYS residues. Penalizes GLY, ALA, and PRO residues in helices and sheets.

Residue Count: Penalizes extra residues inserted beyond the 85 residue limit. Players may insert up to 10 extra residues.

Ideal Loops: Penalizes loops that do not conform to preferred ABEGO patterns. Use Auto Structures to see which residues count as "loops."

The residue count is wrong (85 residues).

Can we please have a policy decision on what to do with this puzzle ? Should we try to make 70-residue designs (and not know how we really score) or go for the 85 residue possibility ?

This is relevant in case the puzzle does NOT get invalidated for the 85 residue solutions. Anyone working on a 70 design will get penalized in points.

You might consider leaving the 85 residues as valid and treating the puzzle as such, then repost the puzzle with a sufficient penalty for the excess 15 residues to allow reloading the current solutions including 70 residue ones in the new puzzle with a new residue count filter.

what a waste of time

To be fair to everyone, the puzzle should just be closed with zero points. I, for one, did not think using the extra 15 residues was an ethical thing for me to do. Not criticizing anyone who did, as I understand that others might not share my opinion. :P

The puzzle can then be re-issued with consistent filters.

I'd like to see design puzzles have arbitrary length, with scoring scaled according to the number of residues. Small designs could then compete on a fair basis with large ones, and there'd be no reason to distort a design by having to squeeze in extra residues in places where they don't really fit (and the converse).

Thanks for the feedback. I've boosted this thread to the team and hope to have some word back on it soon.

Hi all, sorry for the delayed response to this—we were running a little short-handed last week. Since this puzzle is scheduled to close in the next 24 hours, we won't take any immediate action. The puzzle will close as scheduled and will be scored normally.

We apologize to any players who feel disadvantaged by the erroneous Residue Count filter. However, I would encourage those players to share their solutions using the "Share with Scientists" feature—we are still very interested in your work!

So that all players will have a chance to compete with their work on this puzzle, solutions from Puzzle 1302 will be accessible in two future puzzles. Over the next two weeks, we'll follow up with (corrected) 70 and 85 residue design puzzles. For both future puzzles, players will be able to load in solutions from Puzzle 1302.

Is this a change in policy?

In the past, flawed puzzles were always closed without score/rank and reissued with the ability to load saves. It seems to set a bad precedent to score puzzles that do not have a level playing field due to either flawed construction and/or a lack of communication.

I was aware of the mistake with 85 residues early on. Since there was an 85 residue puzzle a few weeks earlier I assumed this was a mistake that would be justly fixed and created 70 residue solutions.

I'll take into account your policy of rewarding players who game the system for new puzzles. You've opened up a can of worms.

agree with tom, this puzzle should not be scored. 2 new puzzles that allow us to use our solutions should be posed.

this is a game after all and it should be fair

Please reconsider this decision.

Let's keep things constructive. Thanks.

Constructive feedback is what was left as far as I'm concerned. What would be constructive on behalf of the players would be for consistent resolution policy for puzzles with errors, inky. I think that the above recommendations are very fair.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! In response to the overwhelming opinion to nix this puzzle, this puzzle will be made worth zero points. I'll also say that your comments informed some good internal discussion about how faulty puzzles are handled, and I think in the future we will be better about sticking to established protocols.

I agree that it is usually a better solution to retract faulty puzzles completely (points and all) before reposting. And we should have taken that step earlier in this puzzle's lifecycle when the problem was first noticed by players. Unfortunately, for other reasons, we weren't able to confront the problem until yesterday, when the puzzle was nearly expired. The only reason for yesterday's decision to let the puzzle stand is simply that we don't like to make such drastic changes to a puzzle so close to it's expiration date. In the future we will be sure to remove points from all faulty puzzles!