Growing Speedcubing and making it more Spectator Friendly

Should speedcubing be a sport?

  • Total voters
    88
Thom S. said:
Age 13, guy in PE shoots me with a 1 Meter ball, I recoil about 2 Meters against the wall in the air, fall down, break my right hand.
Docors didn't order an X-Ray when my cast came off so we didn't know for 2 years that a knuckle inside my wrist has shattered. There is no surgery for this, turning my wrist is painful.
Ironically I only did Sq1 from 2017 to 2021, so I kind of made the pain better by doing too many solves in a day.

Age 17, sharpened a scythe because I couldn't mow around the field borders as exact back then, slashed through the second knuckle on my left pointer finger. Back then we restorated a local restaurant. Was really weird to hold the sanding block. I now hear a crack if I use my left pointer too much.

I shared too much about me, probably gonna have to start a new account now.
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I'm sorry to hear that. I wish you the best!
 
gsingh said:
View attachment 20310
its a sport :cool:
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Ahh yes, let’s take our source from the website that anyone can edit. Wikipedia is obviously the only source you could find that claimed that speedcubing is a sport, otherwise you would have found a more reliable place to get your information from.
 
BenChristman1 said:
Ahh yes, let’s take our source from the website that anyone can edit. Wikipedia is obviously the only source you could find that claimed that speedcubing is a sport, otherwise you would have found a more reliable place to get your information from.
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I remember something like that happening on a 15-puzzle debate thread. The problem with informative websites that are open to everyone is that people can add unproven, arbitrary things that they feel is the correct thing. In a case like this, cubing really doesn't really fit into the definition of a sport when you compare it to a true professional sport. At best it is a competitive game.

www.speedsolving.com

Do you think that 15 puzzle should be a WCA event?

They didn't mention clock, also "commonly" which implies that they aren't always called "twisty puzzles" :) They also didn't mention any of the other 16 events besides 3x3.
www.speedsolving.com www.speedsolving.com

I really disagree with making it so monetary, even if we could call it a sport. The community should be based on a common interest where we all try our best to beat our own personal records and do the best we can do while we make friends along the way. Turning it into a financial endeavor is going to kill the point of a hobby. Cubing is virtually useless in real world situations. There are much more efficient ways to reach the benefits of cubing and you'll never find a situation where cubing will save your life (unless it distracts you from suicidal thoughts). If we go and turn it into a money-making venture cubing will just be fueled by greed and young cubers will waste even more time attempting to become a "professional" when most will never reach that goal.

Apologies for the short post but I don't have enough passion to write a well detailed post on my thoughts but if I could summarize my opinion in one sentence it would be this: Let's keep the community how it is; it's a competitive hobby for most but let's not take it to the level some are proposing.
 
@Abram Grimsley @Aluminum @gsingh @Owen Morrison

How about instead of just “eye rolling” or “meh-ing” me, you actually provide a good argument that defends your point of view. If you feel passionately enough to give a negative reaction, you should be able to write a post (with correct grammar and actual citations, if necessary) that will help explain to me what you think. As of now, I am much more correct than you all in every way because you haven’t even provided a short response to my post. (3 words, an emoji, and a Wikipedia screenshot does not count.)
 
Family member: "So do you play any sports?"
Me: "Yeah, I do speedcubing"

I think the thing that we all get hung up on is the term sport and the definition. I'm not quite sure what it is, maybe it's related to development as a child, but we all seem to have a deep rooted understanding of what a sport is and should be. To me, arguing about the definition of a sport seems as pointless as arguing politics with your grandpa. Of course some people enjoy having a good argument for the sake of it, and if that is the intent of this thread, then keep continuing.

But in my honest opinion, it doesn't really make a huge difference of what it is considered. If the WCA board officially called it a sport, would it change anything? I personally am happy for what it is, and I think it is okay for it to be what it is without having to conform to all the attributes of an activity group.
 
BenChristman1 said:
@Abram Grimsley @Aluminum @gsingh @Owen Morrison

How about instead of just “eye rolling” or “meh-ing” me, you actually provide a good argument that defends your point of view. If you feel passionately enough to give a negative reaction, you should be able to write a post (with correct grammar and actual citations, if necessary) that will help explain to me what you think. As of now, I am much more correct than you all in every way because you haven’t even provided a short response to my post. (3 words, an emoji, and a Wikipedia screenshot does not count.)
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Yes, but that's effort.
 
BenChristman1 said:
@Abram Grimsley @Aluminum @gsingh @Owen Morrison

How about instead of just “eye rolling” or “meh-ing” me, you actually provide a good argument that defends your point of view. If you feel passionately enough to give a negative reaction, you should be able to write a post (with correct grammar and actual citations, if necessary) that will help explain to me what you think. As of now, I am much more correct than you all in every way because you haven’t even provided a short response to my post. (3 words, an emoji, and a Wikipedia screenshot does not count.)
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Later. When I have time.
 
1660086376559.png

ok which one of you changed it
 
DuckubingCuber347 said:
I really disagree with making it so monetary, even if we could call it a sport. The community should be based on a common interest where we all try our best to beat our own personal records and do the best we can do while we make friends along the way. Turning it into a financial endeavor is going to kill the point of a hobby. Cubing is virtually useless in real world situations. There are much more efficient ways to reach the benefits of cubing and you'll never find a situation where cubing will save your life (unless it distracts you from suicidal thoughts). If we go and turn it into a money-making venture cubing will just be fueled by greed and young cubers will waste even more time attempting to become a "professional" when most will never reach that goal.
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Well, the same thing is true for physical sports, isn't it. Take soccer for example. There is money involved if you are an elite player, and a lot of kids try to get there, even though most never will. It's just how things are. As I've said before, cubing is just a hobby for almost everyone, but for the elite solvers, it's a profession. They get paid, just not enough.
Bringing more money into cubing will only help develop the sport further (yes I said sport), and won't harm people that aren't as good.
People still enjoy sports, even though almost all of them have a lot of money in them. Adding a financial factor won't kill the hobby, only develop the sport.
 
it does require physical exertion and lots of motor skill, unlike chess which requires virtually none. Curling looks silly too but counts as a sport because of the physical aspects of it, and requires some planning as well like cubing. Same for billiards and snooker
 
If people can sit back and label goddamn golf

I don't think the athletic exertion is really the problem, case and point Darts, but more so that not so many people will be interested. There is legit no way to make cubing spectator friendly - the only time people tend to enjoy spectating cubing is when they are cubers that are quite familiar with the particular method being use for the particular event they are watching.
 
Whether you call cubing a "sport" or not doesn't change what it is, and it definitely shouldn't change how we view it either.

If you prefer to treat physical exertion as a core component of what makes a "sport" (i.e. you're in the "neither chess nor cubing is a sport" faction), then sure, whatever. Cubing isn't a sport. So what? You can still cube as much as you want, or as little as you want.

If you want to include mental exertion as a component (i.e. you're in the "both chess and cubing are sports" faction), same deal. Now that cubing is a sport… so what?

"Sport" versus "hobby" is a pretty bizarre dichotomy, if you think about it. Reasonable dichotomies would be "sport" versus "not a sport", or "hobby" versus… "thing you begrudgingly do"? Anyway, nothing precludes an activity from simultaneously being a sport and a hobby.

---

I pulled a fast one on you. There's a third faction: chess is a sport, but cubing isn't. Per SportAccord's old website (idk who they are but they try to make themselves look like big shots), a sport cannot involve any element of luck. Obviously, luck is a central component of cubing, so cubing can't be a sport. Case closed!

On the flip side, it's also pretty reasonable to consider cubing more of a sport than chess is. Cubing doesn't require much physical exertion per se, but it's not literally nothing. In chess, you just have to press the clock and move chess pieces around. Unless you're playing in a very fast format (e.g. blitz?), you don't even have to move the pieces all that quickly either. A similarity can be drawn between cubing and any sport where the goal is to do something as fast as possible, or to do as many things as possible within a fixed time limit.

Ultimately, this boils down to how the word "sport" should be defined. As a category shaped by examples (rather than decided by fiat), the boundaries are naturally fuzzy, and cubing (and chess) happen to fall in said fuzzy boundaries. It would be entirely reasonable to treat cubing as a sport, and equally reasonable to treat cubing as not a sport – as long as you have an idea of why you'd consider cubing to be / not be a sport. You could even be noncommittal like I am, because holey sheet who cares, it's just a word
 
gsingh said:
Well, the same thing is true for physical sports, isn't it. Take soccer for example. There is money involved if you are an elite player, and a lot of kids try to get there, even though most never will. It's just how things are. As I've said before, cubing is just a hobby for almost everyone, but for the elite solvers, it's a profession. They get paid, just not enough.
Bringing more money into cubing will only help develop the sport further (yes I said sport), and won't harm people that aren't as good.
People still enjoy sports, even though almost all of them have a lot of money in them. Adding a financial factor won't kill the hobby, only develop the sport.
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gsingh finally started using capital letters!?
 
LBr said:
Haha I changed it to ‘hobby’ to annoy some people but idk who changed it to ‘game’
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I did. Chess uses "game", and I thought it was appropriate and more neutral than "hobby" or "sport" which is a more precise statement.
I mean, there is apparently disagreement on whether it's a sport or not, but I don't think anybody can say that it's not a game.
 
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