Wait what?
You have to get times officially before competing now?
OK so first off, this only effects the following events: Clock, Megaminx, Square-1, 6x6x6, 7x7x7
Other events will operate as normal in terms of cutoffs.
Harsh cut offs/qual times... By fast people... For fast people.
Just out of curiosity, what made you guys choose this approach over a hard cut?
OK so as you are all pretty aware, the UK cubing scene has started to grow quite a bit. When we started looking at the schedule for this competition, we realised that we would probably not be able to hold all the events we wanted to without really harsh cutoffs, this was still when it was UKO.
However based on the fact that this is the biggest UK competition of the year, and also how we don't really do national champions, like most other countries, we decided to move to a Championship.
This competition is basically the apex of the competitive cubing year for the UK, and as such, we wanted to hold as many events as possible. Because of that, we decided that for the less popular side events (the 5 listed above), we would use qualification times, so that the event can take place, and that it allows for people to have a shot at national champion.
While we realise that not everyone will be happy with the qualification time system, this is a fairly standard approach for larger competitions, and it has been announced in advance, to give people the opportunity to obtain these times before the competition.
Also, the cutoffs are pretty standard for UK comps, and in fact are the same or higher compared to last years UKO.
While you may judge this as harsh, this is needed for us to run the competition with all the events we want, in the time we have with the amount of people we predict.
TL;DR: More people = Less time -> Qual times = More time + Having the event