Towards "Anything Goes" (WCA Puzzle Policy)

[Lucas Garron]

For a long time, the de facto policy has been to be fairly conservative about what puzzles are allowed, to prevent competitors from introducing puzzles with new (possibly unfair) advantages. The 2014 Regulations were meant to clarify and simplify things. There has been a lot of community discussion about this, particularly on speedsolving.com. While it would be easy to address the the major concern (tile thickness) with a simple change, the WCA is taking this as an opportunity to rethink the overall policy on puzzles.

Sébastien has worked to combine the input of the community and WCA delegates in a draft proposal that attempts to allow as many reasonable puzzles as possible.
The current proposed changes can be viewed here.

The main points from the proposal are:

- As before, Regulation 3m is the most important regulation of Article 3: if a puzzle fulfills all other regulations, the puzzle can be used in competition.
- Some vague/impracticable terms like "basic concept of a puzzle" or "make any additional information available" have been removed without replacement. As a direct result (3m), puzzles that have not been allowed for a long time would be allowed in the future, i.e. "pillowed" cubes or "stickerless" cubes.
- Justification: Simplification and consistency. While those puzzles do undeniably provide a *theoretical* advantage because of making more information visible, a *practical* advantage is very questionable and at most marginal and thus negligible.
- A thickness limit for tiles is no longer defined.
- Justification: Simplification and consistency. While thick tiles do undeniably provide a *theoretical* advantage because of making more information visible, a *practical* advantage is very questionable and at most marginal and thus negligible.
- "either" in 3d, "with uniform texture" in 3d2, 3d4 and "self-applied markings" in 3j have been added to cope with corner cases and possible abuse of the newly provided freedom.

However, the proposal needs some work in order to be as clear as possible. For example, it needs to be how plastic color and sticker color interact (if I have a cube with colored stickers, may it have white pieces and black centers? White pieces except black LL? Stickers colored in the same pattern as the plastic?). It should be clear how to evaluate the legality of future puzzles without "delegate discretion".

If you care about this issue, please help us figure out something practical and fair. In particular, it would be good to know if there are things that the proposal hasn't thought to address.

 

[blade740]

I strongly support this proposal.

 

[brian724080]

Sounds awesome. Just because there is a slight advantage, doesn't mean that you'll use it. It's not practical to get fast via these methods anyway.

 

[kcl]

This is a huge leap forward. Definitely an excellent idea.

Honestly, if you really wanted to cheat with a stickerless cube, it would waste too much time to make you fast anyway.

 

[Jaysammey777]

I'm not sure I found this anywhere else in the regulations, but wouldn't Taking out "the basic concept of the puzzle" make it to where additional moves can be made? I may be wrong, and his could be addressed elsewhere in the regs.

Edit: I do like this proposal. It appeals to the general public.

 

[Sebastien]

3a3 addresses that as before.

 

[qqwref]

Yes, I definitely like this idea. Especially in the case of mass-produced puzzles, as long as someone's cube is the same puzzle as everyone else's, there is no *unfair* advantage. We should still keep the following (at least):
- no new moves are possible
- all normal moves are possible
- all moves must be done manually by the solver
- puzzle does not display any information other than the position of the pieces and possibly a static logo
- each face of the puzzle has one color that is clearly distinct from that of the other faces
- for BLD: it must not be easy to quickly distinguish between two pieces of the same type by touch alone
most of which is of course covered in 3a3.

 

[Lucas Garron]

Sounds awesome. Just because there is a slight advantage, doesn't mean that you'll use it. It's not practical to get fast via these methods anyway.

That's the main philosophical decision here. I personally disagree with it a little, but it's better to have *some* sort of clean philosophy/policy.

Edit: I do like this proposal. It appeals to the general public.

That's sort of the wrong reason, though. It's not really about making a popular change as much as the *right* change.
But since a lot of people just want to use their puzzles (think WCA motto) and there is no major intent to turn this sort of thing to an unfair advantage at the moment, people's preferences should figure heavily.

 

[Mollerz]

I feel like this is the right change definitely. It felt too specific beforehand, but this allows everyone to use said "advantage" that was previously stopped beforehand.

 

[Tim Major]

Might order one of these in a couple of months: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FCaoQkb4fI

I like the idea of these regulations, but at the same time it may be going too far in the opposite direction. Still, more happy than unhappy with this.

 

[TheNextFeliks]

I like this as long as with qqwref's suggestion.

 

[Kit Clement]

Something people should note about these changes:

- 3d4) The body of a puzzle having coloured stickers, coloured tiles or painted colours to define the colours of its faces is required to have a uniform colour.

This regulation bans all two-toned fangshi puzzles. This is not an intention of the WCA, but instead a consequence of the new regulations not addressing similar pieces (old 3j). This was removed because it technically bans cubes that have pieces with asymmetrical seams (weilong, huanying), which was inconsistent with the actual practice of the WCA. There doesn't seem to be a clear way to fix this, but if you have an idea that is simple and accommodates for both asymmetrical pieces and two toned puzzles, you should propose it.

 

[Paradox Cubing]

When will this actually come into effect?

 

[Sa967St]

I worry that in the future we may encounter new puzzles that are legal under these new conditions that provide a more than marginal advantage.

However, I feel this a step in the right direction toward puzzle fairness, since "basic concept of the puzzle" and "additional information" are indeed questionable in meaning, and appear to be the phrases that prevented puzzles like stickerless puzzles from being competition legal.

I support this proposal.

 

[Aceofspades2345]

This would be tremendous. If stickerless/pillowed cubes do offer an advantage, then this would be available to everyone, and therefore not an issue. I know you don't want to dilute the purity of the event, but this just seems much the better decision.

 

[Bob]

I am happy.

 

[Florin]

I would really like to use an stickerless cube, I never thought that they would give an advantage, in speed solves. As someone said, everyone could use stickerless cubes, so, if they really think that they have a disadvantage by having a stickered or tiled cube, they could buy a stickerless one instead.
I don't really care about pillowed cubes, but those should be allowed too. Those cubes aren't even very good, for example the Vcube 3 pillowed, compared to Moyu WeiLong, Gans 3 etc. They really don't give an advantage.

 

[moralsh]

I Like this because I don't think the puzzle makers where thinking of unfair advantages on speedsolving when they made the puzzles, let's hope that they continue with the same mentality and they don't try to find the boundaries of the regulations like in Formula 1.

I don't think I'll use pillowed cubes in the future, but I'm certainly going to use stickerless cubes Because I like them and still use them a lot while practicing.

Way to go WRC & WCA!

 

[Dene]

I Like this because I don't think the puzzle makers where thinking of unfair advantages on speedsolving when they made the puzzles, let's hope that they continue with the same mentality and they don't try to find the boundaries of the regulations like in Formula 1.

I don't think I'll use pillowed cubes in the future, but I'm certainly going to use stickerless cubes Because I like them and still use them a lot while practicing.

Way to go WRC & WCA!

This is merely a proposal. This is by no means even close to what the final product will be.

 

[ThomasJE]

Why?

Being able to see all last layer stickers can and probably will be used as an unfair advantage by some people.