New beginner puzzle type: QTTED

[Susume]

In papers about the game you refer to "game developed experts." It would be good for the game to develop more experts in the Electron Density puzzles; this is a suggested beginner puzzle type to help with that. I hear from jflat that foldit players did quite well on Blind ED puzzles #2 and 3. Why not take the top scoring fold from those puzzles, cut it into pieces (keeping correct secondary structure), place those pieces in a ring outside of the ED cloud (you could change their order, flip some around, maybe bend them a bit), and ask players to fit them correctly into the cloud? This would provide supported practice with seeing structures in the cloud and with matching up individual sidechains to get the correct position. The more players who develop these skills, the better overall results foldit will get on future ED puzzles. If it seems too easy for veterans, you could keep the global points low, but still offer it as practice.

[brow42]

It does seem too easy for an actual puzzle. I'm envisioning something like the locked-cutpoint only puzzle that we did recently. Perhaps something like that, with a NOISY ED, could be a tutorial puzzle to teach people to find structure in the noise. I feel it might be too quickly solved by just trial and error and the move tool, though. I also think something that might be solvable in just 5 minutes and targeted to beginners shouldn't be a regular puzzle, since it only benefits a small group during the short time it is up, and then has to be continually reposted.