Looking at which players are still here after two months, one pattern shows up over and over. It is not the one you would guess.
We looked at retention on the daily puzzle and expected the players who stuck around to be the high scorers. They are not.
The players who last are the ones who play at roughly the same time every day, and who almost never replay.
Same time, same place
Players who anchor the puzzle to an existing routine — morning coffee, the commute, the last ten minutes before bed — keep playing far longer than players who fit it in whenever.
This is not surprising if you think about habits as context-triggered rather than intention-driven. The context does the work.
One run, then stop
The players who grind are the players who leave. A session that ends cleanly after the daily is a session you will want to repeat; an hour of retrying is an hour you will avoid tomorrow.
The daily only ranks your first run anyway, so there is genuinely nothing to gain by grinding the same board.
Playing the games you are bad at
Counter-intuitively, players who skip their weakest games quit sooner. The rotation gives you a reason to come back tomorrow precisely because tomorrow is different.
The players who only show up for Sudoku are, in effect, playing a one-game site with six days of nothing in between.