Most difficult levels in existence?

[pieguy]

Oh man, my question is why make a level if only to say "ha, I made the hardest level ever, no one's ever gonna solve it"

Seriously, I think it blows and has absolutely no other purpose than just showing off.

I enjoy designing hard levels in the same manner that I enjoy solving hard levels. And as long as people keep solving them, I'll keep making them. Sometimes it's possible to create a very difficult level without even realizing it. I didn't think "crash and burn" was a very difficult level when I released it, but it's currently my longest-running unsolved level (5+ years).

Some of my difficult levels were born out of curiosity more than anything else, such as my computer.dat levels, and minustwo.dat #8. My goal was to create a level so hard that even I couldn't solve it, and with minustwo.dat #8 I finally succeeded. In the same manner, with the end-of-all-time levels I was curious to see just how long of a level could be made (and I've now pushed the limit well past a googol years). They're obviously impractical, but still interesting nonetheless.

The bottom line for me is that the harder a level is, the more satisfying it is to solve (usually). I say usually because one needs to contrast "real" difficulty with "fake" difficulty (see http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ma...Difficulty).