What is the problem?

What I Expected:

When I select “Normal” difficulty, I expect to get puzzles around my current rating (e.g., 1400–1500).

When I select “Hard”, I expect puzzles significantly above my level (e.g., 1600–1900+).

When I solve puzzles that are much higher-rated than me, I expect to receive substantial rating gains (e.g., +10 or more), assuming I solve them correctly.

❌*8 What Actually Happened:**

On Normal difficulty, I'm consistently getting puzzles rated 1800–2000, even though my rating is 1478.

On Hard difficulty, I sometimes get puzzles that are easier than the ones on Normal.

In both cases, the difficulty filter doesn’t seem to control the actual puzzle difficulty as expected.

Regardless of how difficult the puzzle is compared to my rating, the rating gain is very small — usually just:

+2 for a 1707-rated puzzle

+3 for puzzles around 1800

+4 for a 1903-rated puzzle (Puzzle JdrOE)

These are puzzles 200–400 points above my rating, so I expected larger gains for clean solves. The rating rewards do not seem to reflect the challenge.

Steps to reproduce the bug

1. Open Lichess mobile app in a logged-in account.

2. Ensure you are in Rated Puzzle mode.

3. Set difficulty to Normal and solve a few puzzles.

4. Now switch the difficulty to Hardest and solve one or more puzzles correctly.

5. Then switch back to Normal.

6. You’ll notice that despite being in Normal mode again, puzzles being served are still rated 1800–2000+ — well above the Normal difficulty range for a 1478-rated account.

7. Solve these puzzles perfectly.

8. Observe that rating gain is still very low — usually +2 to +4, even for puzzles hundreds of points above your level.

App version

0.16.5

Device Info

Galaxy tab A7 lite / Android 11

Additional information

No response