New Ideas for 2010 WCA Regulations?

[Cyrus C.]

I think the Magic's should be +25% not +2, same with 2x2 & pyraminx.

 

[JTW2007]

I'd like for Skewb to be added, but that would present some challenges that would likely not be worth it. I agree that transparent cubes should be legalized though.

 

[Ryanrex116]

I think the Magic's should be +25% not +2, same with 2x2 & pyraminx.

That would be like a .3 penalty for magic. Penalties should be high enough so that there is insentive to avoid them

 

[Cyrus C.]

I think the Magic's should be +25% not +2, same with 2x2 & pyraminx.

That would be like a .3 penalty for magic. Penalties should be high enough so that there is insentive to avoid them

Magic - + 50%
2x2 - + 25%
Pyraminx - + 15%
???

 

[Cuber3]

I know it sounds weird but in my opinion we should remove the +2 rule at all!

+1

 

[Lucas Garron]

I know it sounds weird but in my opinion we should remove the +2 rule at all!

+1

Alright, that does nothing. What use is it that "Cuber3" decided to declare his agreement to something, without explaining anything?
I'm not mad, but if anyone else posts something like that in this thread, don't be surprised if your post is deleted. This should at least be discussion.

Anyhow, I'm firmly against removing the +2 rule. As qq and Stefan argue, it is there as a safety net for competitions being tests of solving a cube in practice. Removing it is rather scary, and would involve unnecessarily important close calls.
Doing badly because of +2's is sad, but I've never heard someone complain that they should have beaten another person who didn't get penalized enough on their solves (when the reulations were followed).

 

[DavidWoner]

I think the Magic's should be +25% not +2, same with 2x2 & pyraminx.

That would be like a .3 penalty for magic. Penalties should be high enough so that there is insentive to avoid them

Magic - + 50%
2x2 - + 25%
Pyraminx - + 15%
???

Things like this have been brought up before, many times. The idea of a +2 is that it generally takes just under two seconds to realize your mistake, fix it, and stop the timer. I'm not going to worry about whether or not my magic is actually flat if it take 1 second to fix, but I only get a .5 second penalty if I leave it. In fact, someone could leave out the last flip every time and just get a small penalty that actually adds less time than doing the last flip. And you know penalties are calculated immediately after the solve right? How fast can you add a 15% penalty to a 14.83 solve? What about the judges who are less than 12, or sometimes even less than 10 years old? Most of them cannot do these calculations quickly and accurately. All this will do is slow down competitions and add more work for the organizing staff. +2 is fine as it is.

 

[shelley]

I think transparent cubes should be legal.
Its a rather stupid rule in my opinion.

The rule is there to prevent cheating. True, I don't know of anyone who has used transparent cube pieces to an advantage in solving... yet. If we allowed transparent cubes it creates the possibility that someone could develop a way to cheat. You can see things on a transparent cube that you normally wouldn't be able to see on normal opaque cubes and that's enough of an unfair advantage.

I think that the competitors should be called up in a certain order. (ex. alphabetically) It would be nice to know when and if you were called, instead of hoping that your scorecard was in the stack for a while. Also, it is rather annoying when you are called up for a new event while you are solving a different puzzle.

That kind of thing is up to individual competition organizers. I really don't think a blanket regulation like this would improve the fairness or ease of running competitions. At most of the competitions I go to, organizers tend to call up certain people to go first because they a) are faster and b) have agreed to help judge/scramble once they're done. As for being called up for something else while you are doing solves, that's not something a regulation will fix.

With the proliferation of new cubes that can lose not only center caps but also edge caps, corner caps, and possibly other pieces (*cough*typeF*cough*) I think some clarification is needed on how many and which "non functional" pieces can be popped if a cube is to be considered unambiguously solved. Four center caps, for example, can pop off in a way so that the cube is still solved, but if the two remaining centers are on opposite faces, the cube is not considered solved.

I think this has been mentioned already, but Square-1 misalignments also need to be clarified (specifically, a 90 degree misalignment of the slice).

Also, I propose a new regulation that requires all Master Magic competitors to wear a helmet.

 

[Bogyo]

I think that avg5 in megaminx would be great.
-There are a lot of people who solves megaminx faster than 5x5, and in 5x5 we have avg5.
-Now if you miss one solve, then your average will be bad. For example if you are averaging about 1:15, and you miss a solve and got 1:45, it destroys your average. Here is two example:
Kamil Zielinski, Polish Open 2009 Final: average: 1:21.07 times:1:48.09 1:06.96 1:08.15
Simon Westlund, Swedish Cube Day 2009 First: average: 1:26.37 times: 1:54.30 1:16.21 1:08.59

In my opinion we shouldn't remove +2. Sometimes it happens, that after PLL you do the AUF, but you did U instead of U'. It would be annoying if it would be a DNF. But the cube isn't solved. So I think +2 is necessary.
When I practise magic it happens to me more times, that I "scrambled" it than it would be a +2, because it isn't flat.
I think that the +2 rule is simply fair. If you want to correct the mistake you did, it really takes you 1 second, but don't forget this is a penalty, and not the end of the solve.

 

[Rune]

I think that avg5 in megaminx would be great.
-There are a lot of people who solves megaminx faster than 5x5, and in 5x5 we have avg5.
-Now if you miss one solve, then your average will be bad. For example if you are averaging about 1:15, and you miss a solve and got 1:45, it destroys your average. Here is two example:
Kamil Zielinski, Polish Open 2009 Final: average: 1:21.07 times:1:48.09 1:06.96 1:08.15
Simon Westlund, Swedish Cube Day 2009 First: average: 1:26.37 times: 1:54.30 1:16.21 1:08.59

If in some event only three attempts, why not take the median?

 

[antros]

Olivér, ok imagine that we do not have a +2 or other penatly, only DNF.
In Your opinion the following situation should be DNF???

 

[jazzthief81]

Olivér, ok imagine that we do not have a +2 or other penatly, only DNF.
In Your opinion the following situation should be DNF???

This is not a penalty under the current regulations because the misalignment is less than 45 degrees, so why would this suddenly become a DNF?

 

[PhillipEspinoza]

Because of a bouncy surface and some competitors having loose cubes, there are always going to be misalignments that happen completely by accident, and declaring that that should be a DNF is ridiculous.

So what happens if the cube leaves the competitor's hands in the state of a +2 then by complete accident and by bad luck it misaligns another face resulting in a DNF? Should the competitor suffer the DNF even though it would've been just a +2 second penalty? I might be for this elimination of the +2 rule. What if the cube was about to be a +2, but by good luck and chance the cube gets realigned into the solved state? Luck always plays a factor in solves, which is why the avg of 5 system cuts out the best and worst times. I know it will impact the mean of 3 puzzles but as you said, those are less likely to happen anyway. It would also force the competitor to be more careful with bigger cubes and not take advantage of the fact that +2's don't mean as much for 6x6 and 7x7 as they do for 2x2. DNF stands for "Did Not Finish" and in a +2, the competitor technically did not finish the cube.

 

[Bryan]

I'd like for Skewb to be added, but that would present some challenges that would likely not be worth it.

How would adding Skewb present challenges? There's already scramblers for them (although optimal scramblers would be good). The procedure would be just like any other procedure. It's not like team blind or something that would be hassle in the first year.

But yeah, fix the Magic issue. New magics sometimes simply can't lay flat.

 

[AvGalen]

I like the +2 system as it does prevent a lot of stupid mistakes. Just imagine being a U-turn off in MegaMinx and getting a DNF average

I don't like the "two tiles" rule because it is a stupid measurement. For all other puzzles a turn is defined (90 degrees for a cube, 72 degrees for a megaminx) by the physical specifications of the puzzles. And a +2 is given when the puzzle is more than half a turn away from solved. In my opinion a turn on Magic is 180 degrees so everything more than 90 degrees off should be +2 and everything else should be ok. If it weren't for string friction/tightness a Magic that is > 90 degrees off would actually fall back and not be flat but piled up. And if it is <90 degrees it would fall down into the solved position. And the most stupid thing is that currently 2 piled up tiles are +2, but 3 piled up tiles are DNF which actually promotes a particular type of solving for no benefit at all.

Turning +2 into a percentage is extremely hard to calculate and would punish slower cubers more than faster cubers. It also makes a +2 a calculated risk or even an option instead of a real penalty.

For Clock the 1 move away from solved should not include moves of the pins. When I stop solving the clock falls flat on a side and all pins turn upwards. The rule should be "if the clock can be solved by only turning 1 wheel after repositioning the pins it is +2"

The logo/sticker question is a tough one. The new Mefferts 4x4x4 have logo's on every tile but are allowed for some reason (that I don't know, but agree with). I personally couldn't figure out a realistic scenario on how to cheat with a transparant cube. But I understand that the rules have to be strict and have to prevent people from inventing ways to be able to cheat. So I understand the point of the rules but I really hate it when someones cube is disallowed because it has a chipped off sticker/tile.

 

[deadalnix]

Atually, I think the stackmat is the problem.

I think we should have a timer that internally stop after something like 2s. let me explain.

The starting of the timer is the same than standard stackmat.

When you put back your hand on the timer, the drawn time actually stop, and the vallue is stored in R, but internally, the timer continue to run. The timer effectivelly stop after 2s. Then R is the result.

If one hand is removed from the timer, then the time continue to run until the hand are put back on the timer.

Why it shoul like this ?

The +2 penality for puzzles is quite complicated and sometime (especially to puzzle with « clics ») really hard to figure out if a puzzle is +2 or not.

With this timer, the competitor can see that he have not solved the cube and finish the last moves and restop timer.

Another advantage is the unwanted stop of the timer (by accident) or dubtful timer stop (like we have seen in Haag open with Ton as judge).

So the puzzle just need a solved state and unsolved state, not an extra +2 state. The +2 penality can be keeped for some other cases, like incorrect timer stop.

This is my « ideal » idea, but probably complicated to make it real beacause of the need of a new timer.

 

[SuperNerd]

I hope I don't get flamed for this .

I actually would like to see the DNF penalty for an M Layer being more than 45 degrees away taken away. I've had to DNF so many good at-home solves because of M layer turns not being completed.

 

[Muesli]

Where's the confusion? They're called penalties for a reason. It's either solved, or not. As for the magic, I think 90 degress from flat is a perfectly reasonable limit.

 

[Tomk]

Atually, I think the stackmat is the problem.

I think we should have a timer that internally stop after something like 2s. let me explain.

The starting of the timer is the same than standard stackmat.

When you put back your hand on the timer, the drawn time actually stop, and the vallue is stored in R, but internally, the timer continue to run. The timer effectivelly stop after 2s. Then R is the result.

If one hand is removed from the timer, then the time continue to run until the hand are put back on the timer.

Why it shoul like this ?

The +2 penality for puzzles is quite complicated and sometime (especially to puzzle with « clics ») really hard to figure out if a puzzle is +2 or not.

With this timer, the competitor can see that he have not solved the cube and finish the last moves and restop timer.

Another advantage is the unwanted stop of the timer (by accident) or dubtful timer stop (like we have seen in Haag open with Ton as judge).

So the puzzle just need a solved state and unsolved state, not an extra +2 state. The +2 penality can be keeped for some other cases, like incorrect timer stop.

This is my « ideal » idea, but probably complicated to make it real beacause of the need of a new timer.

Couldn't that be abused?

For example one could not bother with look ahead and just go flat out and then pause the timer while searching for an F2L pair

You could also stop after the last pair to recognise OLL and then again for PLL recognition.

 

[Dave Campbell]

This discussion would normally take place on the WCA forums.

I get that the discussion is happening here out of convenience, but it concerns me when we use this site more and more for official discussions. Should one of the over zealous mods decide to ban someone over a violation of forum customs, we are then hindering that person's ability to contribute to these discussions. How someone acts on a fan-created forum, and his or her ability to contribute to official matters should be independent of each other, in my opinion.

But, having said that, i will contribute to the current discussion nonetheless.

I know it sounds weird but in my opinion we should remove the +2 rule at all!

I respectfully disagree with this and all the penalty discussions. I feel they should be left the way they are for all puzzles. I feel they work well enough as is. The idea of using percentages adds complexity to the scoring phase. Simply adding two seconds for the penalty is fine, especially when you keep in mind that the +2 you are discussing is just one of the types of penalties that can be applied to a solve. Should it be another percentage if the person starts or stops illegally, or goes over the inspection time?

I'd like for Skewb to be added

I would like to see the Skewb added as an event at some point, as well. I personally feel it has more merit than a few of the current events. It is a puzzle that needs solving, and not just executing blindly, it is readily available (online) today, and has existing scramble notation that is easy enough to execute.

And, while i am at it, i think Team events should become official. Team solve and Team BLD would be sufficient. I know, i must have lost my mind!

- average of 5 solves for Megaminx. I really think this is possible now that scrambling is fast and competitors are getting faster.

I also agree with this idea. The competitors are fast enough, and if organizers are concerned about time, just use a combined average with a low cut off time like we do for 5x5 events.

I actually would like to see the DNF penalty for an M Layer being more than 45 degrees away taken away.

I actually had not thought of this before reading the post, but i am going to agree, assuming you didn't really mean only the M layer. The thought of having a DNF because someone left an inner slice off during a 7x7 solve feels dirty. I think it could be treated like a +2. Of course, it does open up issues such as, what if two slices are off, what if the two are beside each other, what if they are not, etc.

And lastly, for what it is worth, i don't have an issue with the stackmat timing system. Not that i thought it was going to be changed for the 2010 regulations.