CornerCutter
Member
Just happened in round 1 of OH!
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2 Max Park OH WRs that won't count. Ouch.
Feliks' 6.88 was a misscramble, yes, though his was something like an R' instead of an R. Even if the person scrambled it correctly, it (the time/reconstruction) wouldn't have been that far off.If they counted Felik's 6.88 than they should count this in my opinion.
WCA said:This decision is in line with several precedents.
I’m fairly certain this is the same as Max’s case, there was 1 or 2 moves done incorrectly towards the end of the scramble (saw the recon somewhere). It isn’t the reason this solve was deniedFeliks' 6.88 was a misscramble, yes, though his was something like an R' instead of an R. Even if the person scrambled it correctly, it (the time/reconstruction) wouldn't have been that far off.
But what is the likelihood of a misscramble? The reason you should only check the fast solves is because with the misscramble, it is likely that it was easier to solve, therefore a faster time. It really is not that likely to get a misscramble, so why go to so much trouble just to check more scrambles and take more time out of a competition.Misscramble found during competition ⇒ extra scramble.
Misscramble found after ⇒ keep the result.
Not that difficult. In Feliks's case, it was a suspected misscramble, but the delegate decided not to give an extra attempt for whatever reason and the misscrambling was only confirmed after the competition ended.
I think the real solution here is to carefully check every scramble every world-class cuber gets. Not just the world/continental records, not just the good solves, but all of them. Many of them record their solves and some competitions are live-streamed; look through the footage and check everything. Some people have pointed out that only good solves receive scrutiny, and this leads to WRs/whatever being retracted while less-notable solves get a pass (e.g. qqwref's post on r/cubers); this is a broken process and is unfairly biased against good cubers. If good solves that were misscrambles get retracted and replaced with likely-worse solves, but bad solves that were misscrambles don't get replaced with likely-better solves, that's effectively penalising competitors for factors outside of their control.
(This is assuming misscrambles lead to scrambles of about the same difficulty—an assumption that mostly holds, but not perfectly. There's a rough intuitive reason that random-state misscrambles are actually slightly easier on average: if (say) a clockwise turn was replaced by an anticlockwise turn in the scramble, there can be a shorter "locally optimal" 2-phase solution but not a longer one. The 2-phase solution length doesn't correlate much with scramble difficulty wrt CFOP, Roux and other human methods, though.)
Edit: On second thought, if checking all of the good cubers' solves is too much work (I mean, this could easily run into hundreds of solves to check per week), a reasonable-sounding compromise solution could be to also check the worst solve every time the best solve (which is possibly a record) is checked.
On third thought, this would be a useless compromise. The solves that are checked would be in like the top percentile, and conditioned on the best solve being at the 99th percentile, the worst solve is expected to be around the 20th percentile. Let's say the best solve does indeed turn out to be a misscramble. Since the probabilities of the different solves being misscrambles are independent, the probability of the worst solve being a misscramble as well is the same as the base rate of misscrambles (say, around 1%). Conditioned on the best solve being replaced, (i) the probability of the worst solve being replaced is just P(misscramble) ~ 1%, and (ii) the worst solve is less bad than the best solve is good, i.e. improving the worst solve is not a given, while worsening the best solve essentially is.
To introduce symmetry between the best/worst times, thereby (provably) removing the current bias against good results, we could unconditionally check the best and worst times in every ao5 by all the top cubers. Again, for fairness reasons, this should be regardless of whether the best time is record-worthy or whether the worst time is due to a DNF. This checks only 2/5 solves rather than 5/5 as I initially suggested, but fails to reliably catch situations where the top two solves are both notable (e.g. both sub-5) and the second best is a misscramble.
Yet another problem is that checking the results of only top cubers will fail to cover relatively unknown people (e.g. Steve Cho), but it's hard to do much about this.
I've done 30-ish reconstructions of official solves and 2 of them were misscrambles. They're rarer in well-run competitions with experienced scramblers (or at least I hope so!), but they still happen often enough that we have to care about it. You don't even have to dig very far to get examples: there's this and there's Jeff's 3BLD mean WR.But what is the likelihood of a misscramble? The reason you should only check the fast solves is because with the misscramble, it is likely that it was easier to solve, therefore a faster time. It really is not that likely to get a misscramble, so why go to so much trouble just to check more scrambles and take more time out of a competition.
Goddamn, just disqualify every kid who does this. It's already in the regs that the scrambler can be disqualified for this.Also, people who are faster are also more likely to have a scrambler set up an easy position, so when fast people get a world record, it is more likely that scramble was set up rather than if you got a PB, therefore needing to be checked.
If good solves that were misscrambles get retracted and replaced with likely-worse solves, but bad solves that were misscrambles don't get replaced with likely-better solves, that's effectively penalising competitors for factors outside of their control.
But 2 out of 30 solves is only 6.6 percent. In an average of 5, It is highly likely that there will not be a misscramble. There is a maximum of 4 rounds per competition, which means 20 solves at most for one event. These odds suggest there will only be 1 misscramble out of those 20 solves. If there is a misscramble, It would only be worth taking the time to check the fast solves, otherwise you have to go through every solve to find that 1 misscramble. In well run competitions with experienced scramblers checking the scrambles, it is probably much lower, therefore reducing those odds, making it less likely for a misscramble.I've done 30-ish reconstructions of official solves and 2 of them were misscrambles. They're rarer in well-run competitions with experienced scramblers (or at least I hope so!), but they still happen often enough that we have to care about it. You don't even have to dig very far to get examples: there's this and there's Jeff's 3BLD mean WR.
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