I've ignored the leaderboard for its entire existence, as the puzzles release at something like 4AM-5AM in my timezone; there's no point getting up 4 hours early, or staying awake 4 hours after bedtime, for some points on the internet.

Instead, getting gold stars for solving the puzzles is incentive enough, and can be done as a relaxing thing in the morning.

No matter what you do, as the puzzles get harder, you won't solve them in a day (or even a lifetime) if you don't come up with good algorithms/methods/heuristics.