I think this would not work at all in practise.
Thanks for replying.
I'm not suggesting changing the system, I'm suggesting adding a very simple layer of redundancy. Redundancy is how engineers design safe systems. I've made a good living doing this for longer than you've been alive.
<<The first major problem is that many competitors don't pay attention to boxes going up to the solving stations. They're chatting to their friends or practising solves while they wait. The second problem is, if this were to work, competitors would have to be watching boxes, which would eventuate in competitors watching the scramble table, which is definitely not what we want. The fourth problem is the de-personalisation of things by turning competitors into a number; names might be hard to pronounce, but learning how to pronounce them is a good way to introduce yourself to people. Also, assuming it is experienced competitors running and judging, and assuming it is new competitors with the names no one knows how to pronounce, it would be a good way for experienced competitors to get to know the up-and-coming generations.>>
I'm not suggesting a change here. The names still get called out. Let me spell it out:
(0) When the heat is called, the competitor drops his cube and his paper into a box. If he can't hear too well, he might want to remember the color of the box so he can recognize his box sitting lonely by a judge later, in the event he misses his name being called.
(1) The box is given to the scrambler. The scrambler examines the paper to determine the appropriate scramble and applies it to the cube. The scrambler puts the scrambled cube, with paper, back into the box and hands it to a runner. The runner shouts out the name and drops the box at an empty judge.
(2) The competitor hears his name, or notices his color box next to a judge. He goes up and solves. After the last solve he leaves with his cube. The judge puts the paper (and possibly the cube) back in the box. The runner picks up the box and if there's a cube in it, takes it to the scrambler, and if there's not, takes it to the place where the completed papers are kept.
<<The third problem is keeping the right cube with the right box, which could easily get mixed up and throw everything out of whack.>>
Most people will simply wait for their name to be called and so this won't effect them. But now that you mention it, it's possible for the wrong person to respond to the calling of a name (as well as the color of the box). But with two pieces of information, box color and name calling, the chance of this happening should decrease. This is the advantage of redundancy.
So has anyone ever sat down to solve and discovered that the cube under the box isn't their cube? And that the piece of paper doesn't have their name on it? I would think that this is something that already happens every now and then. If this is a problem, you need to have the judge read the name off the paper to the competitor when they sit down. As in "Carl Brannen, are you ready?" If they're not Carl Brannen, now would be a good time to fix things *before* the competitor discovers that the cube doesn't seem to turn like it used to and that his name isn't on the paper.
As it turns out, I've scrambled cubes at a competition. It was a wonderful way of learning how other people's cubes feel (and how clean their hands are, LOL). The cubes come in sitting on their corresponding paper but the two don't always stay together. This results in the question "whose cube is this?" Having the cube put with the paper in a box seems to me to make it more likely that the cube stays with the paper which is the important thing.
