Thanks for the responses.

I think Craig had the reason in rule 1.16. I over flew my flight trace from earlier to close the flight, but where I crossed the flight it is 1100 meters difference in height. The shorter first leg could be start location, but it is still about 2km shorter than it could be from a location that was about 20 minutes after release.

On Sunday, May 9, 2021 at 9:42:25 AM UTC-6, Ramy wrote:
The most common reasons for wrong or different score from what you expect:
1- triangle was not closed according to rules.
2- start altitude is very high, cutting down your finish point
3-OLC picked wrong start. You are now required to confirm your start is correct. In many occasions it will be incorrect and requires correction.

Ramy
On Sunday, May 9, 2021 at 8:19:49 AM UTC-7, Craig Reinholt wrote:
On Sunday, May 9, 2021 at 7:08:26 AM UTC-7, Tim Taylor wrote:
I don't usually look closely at the OLC scores for flights but on a recent flight I was given a very short triangle that didn't make sense. When looking closely, I noticed that some legs were scored shorter than they should have been by several km. The triangle was scored at about 15 km rather than at least 100 km or more that it should have.

Is this common?
I had a similar issue on Tuesday. I contacted OLC and they referenced 1..16 in the OLC rules. Your start and finish point have to be within 1000 meters (horizontally and vertically). I shut down my engine in a thermal and started out on course well above my inbound track. I think the only way I could have closed out the big triangle would have been to fly under my initial thermal.
Perhaps the 1000 meter requirement got you too?
Craig