This last little while sorta did it for me. None/one/two boosters/hints, none of it made a difference. Around 2800 I hit just pure grind levels. Regardless of difficulty any level could simply block you for hours and almost every level on the first try would turf your streak even if it was just one.
There is a fine line between just annoying you enough to keep you playing and just blocking you until you run out of stored up gold/boosters and whatever else you have.
Might muck around with the mobile version to see how much less insane it is. I know from the past that in general it is not as "hard", but I am curious to see if the difference is noticeable these days.
I will check in from time to time, see if enough money is being lost to force them to revert some of the nonsense going on... not holding my breath but other companies have done the same nonsense and had to change when the balance sheet started to not look so nice.