Towards "Anything Goes" (WCA Puzzle Policy)

[SpicyOranges]

Would transparent cubes be allowed?

 

[Sebastien]

yes.

 

[Renslay]

Transparent cubes actually provide a huge advantage during Roux Step 4c). Then I wouldn't need to learn BU-prediction.

 

[ExplodingPie]

Wouldn't this be a nuisance for people with custom color schemes like me, especially the top cubers? They would be pushed to used stickerless cubes to get an advantage, but the color scheme will change, which can be a problem.

 

[Yuxuibbs]

I think it allows unfair advantages when people decide to abuse it (like transparent cubes being useful for roux and having giant tiles so you can see more colors and recognize cases faster).

Is there a way to re word 3d to allow the fangshi illusion and other cubes? like all edge pieces and corner pieces must be similar in terms of design or something?
Will the black lingpo and fangshi 2x2 be allowed since the internals are primary but the caps are black?

 

[Ross The Boss]

Wouldn't this be a nuisance for people with custom color schemes like me, especially the top cubers? They would be pushed to used stickerless cubes to get an advantage, but the color scheme will change, which can be a problem.

sticklers provides no real advantage. you would have to change your recognition/look ahead/turn style to make any use of it and these changes would probably end up slowing you down anyway.

 

[yockee]

Personally, I think you should be allowed to use whatever cube works best for you. Since its different for everyone, there really aren't cubes with advantages overall.

 

[googlebleh]

Personally, I think you should be allowed to use whatever cube works best for you. Since its different for everyone, there really aren't cubes with advantages overall.

http://youtu.be/dBJ9hYa-i3w?t=1m
Save solved state. Hit reset button. 1s solve :tu

There should be some restrictions on what cube you can use, but I agree that we have restricted this section of the regulations a bit too much lately.

 

[Dene]

Very surprised that there has been no push back from this. When banning two toned fangshi cubes was proposed last time, there was an uproar. Are people actually reading the proposed regulations and thinking of the potential consequences?

I highly doubt it, which is why I don't think a thread of this format is a good idea.

People are coming along and going "oh look stickerless is going to be legal now yay!" and not putting any more thought into it than that. This is of course completely useless (and I'm glad Lucas removed the poll, because of this).

I think the delegate's discretion should be used. Ridiculous tiles should be banned, but tiles like the ones on some megaminxes should be.



Same point that I made before. Being able to see all stickers at once will eventually be used by somebody.

There are obvious points that should be detailed in the regulations, but the rest should be down to the delegate's discretion.

So really, you actually completely disagree with this proposal. Anyway, like Lucas said, "delegates discretion" is no longer gonna swing around here; we need something more concrete.

 

[Kit Clement]

Transparent cubes actually provide a huge advantage during Roux Step 4c). Then I wouldn't need to learn BU-prediction.

I also think that transparent cubes cross a line far greater than stickerless cubes do. If you get a plastic clear enough, it's really not too different than solving this:

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/Ku9Wokolhio/hqdefault.jpg

And in addition to this, what if the undersides of stickers had different colors to give more information? A color for each F2L pair? A color for the last layer? I know we're potentially allowing additional information that stickerless cubes provide, but this really could go too far. I'm no expert in Roux, but Renslay's post worries me as well.

 

[Erik]

I don't have much time atm to read all the details, but I speed-read across the main points quickly.

It is nice to see that it actually helps to give feedback to the WRC on a forum like this. A number of people (including myself) have already put a lot of efford in trying to change the general conservative attitude of the regulations in respect to tiles, plastic and logo's. It seems the WRC is finally opening their eyes and see for themselves that theoretical unsignificant advantages are no reason to ban a significant amount of cubes.

As you might know I was already working on a proposal that would allow all types of stickers, plastic, logo's etc with the support of a significant amount of cubers. I will go through the details of the current proposal later on and might decide to pause working on it until things have cleared up on what will happen next.

 

[Carrot]

FINALLY!!! I'll be able to use my beloved pillowed pyraminx :3

I support this

 

[Sa967St]

It seems the WRC is finally opening their eyes and see for themselves that theoretical unsignificant advantages are no reason to ban a significant amount of cubes.

It was the WCA Board, not the WRC.

Anyway, I think they were always well aware that pillowed cubes and stickerless cubes don't provide a significant advantage over regular cubes -- it was just that "puzzles that provide more information" was an easy line to draw because there needs to be some clear way to distinguish competition legal puzzles. The changes are being brought up now because with the recent discussions about tile thickness, they have a good opportunity to redraw the line to better reflect puzzles that should be *fair* to use.

 

[Erik]

It was the WCA Board, not the WRC.

Really? I don't want to start arguing here, but I can give you numerous posts from WRC members vigorously defending the current regulations. The proposals I saw on github didn't seem to be very pro-anything goes either, up till now...

 

[ChickenWrap]

I think pillowed cubes should be allowed. The new pillowed Vcube 6 is great, and how is it any different than allowing a pillowed 7x7? I know the 7x7 was legal at the time since it was the only 7x7 available, but that shouldn't change anything...

 

[Lucas Garron]

Really? I don't want to start arguing here, but I can give you numerous posts from WRC members vigorously defending the current regulations. The proposals I saw on github didn't seem to be very pro-anything goes either, up till now...

I will still gladly defend the current puzzle regulations as reasonable. I disagree with some of them, but I think they are overall consistent and fair.
(I don't appreciate the implication that the Board/WRC were ignorant and are now "opening their eyes". I'd prefer to stay constructive.)


Since I was responsible for leading the process and actually putting the changes together, I guess most of the responsibility for the 2014 changes lie with me.
A very common theme in 2014 was the inconsistency of Delegate rulings in the face of many puzzles coming out, and the need to make a lot of decisions for new puzzles on a case-by-case basis (e.g. ridged Megaminxes, which actually had a Board announcement to make things clear).

While there was some desire to allow more puzzles, it was commonly accepted that we drew a line. The closest thing we had to a policy was Regulation 3h:

Modifications that enhance the basic concept of a puzzle are not permitted. Modified versions of puzzles are permitted only if the modification does not make any additional information available to the competitor (e.g. identity of pieces), compared to an unmodified version of the same puzzle.

Delegates had different interpretations of this, so I tried to make sure that we find an intersection of Delegate views on puzzles/plastic/stickers/tiles. My main goal was to end up with something consistent and practical that meets the intention expressed in 3h, while still allowing most puzzles in use. This involved disallowing a small selection of puzzles to make things consistent (although a few puzzles changed from sometimes-disallowed to explicitly allowed, like 2x2x2s with logos).
Apart from the 1.2mm vs. 1mm gap for some Megaminxes, I think that the 2014 Regulations definitely met the goal.



Anything different requires a conscious intent to *change* the policy, which always requires some detailed work. Given that a lot of cubers strongly feel about this, we're now spending the time trying to develop something that is more generous -- this thread is about finding a practical way to do that.

However, this really does take work, and I'm disappointed that so many people are expressing their "2 cents" instead of working on the actual changes that need to be made to the Regulations. This should be a community effort, but no one *actually* started doing anything before Sébastien put this draft proposal together.
And still no one has offered any concrete suggestions about how to deal with colored plastic.

 

[LarsN]

And still no one has offered any concrete suggestions about how to deal with colored plastic.

In my opinion Sebastiens suggested draft deals nicely with colored plastic:

- 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.

Maybe add "uniform and solid colour" to avoid clear plastic cubes, which I feel may give an unfair advantage. I know this is an attempt to have "anything goes" but clear plastic is taking it too far.

 

[Lucas Garron]

In my opinion Sebastiens suggested draft deals nicely with colored plastic:

- 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.

Maybe add "uniform and solid colour" to avoid clear plastic cubes, which I feel may give an unfair advantage. I know this is an attempt to have "anything goes" but clear plastic is taking it too far.

Clear plastic isn't the problem here. Kit has already brought up in this thread that this doesn't allow cubes with colored centers or 2-color-plastic FangShi cubes (see exhibits 3 and 4 in this thread).

Since these were allowed in 2013, I think most people would prefer that these should be included under "anything goes".

 

[LarsN]

Suggestions:

- The design of the puzzle may not provide visual information other than the face colour. (exception: logo)

exhibit 3: gives information that the centerpiece is a centerpiece, but that information was already given by the centerpiece being in the center. So it would be allowed by above wording.
exhibit 4: no problem here

- The design of the puzzle may not provide information of piece postion or orientation through touch.

This is to prevent having elevated cross pieces or similar.

The wording may be flawed, but it's simple. It doesn't prevent clear plastic though.

 

[Erik]

I will still gladly defend the current puzzle regulations as reasonable. I disagree with some of them, but I think they are overall consistent and fair.
(I don't appreciate the implication that the Board/WRC were ignorant and are now "opening their eyes". I'd prefer to stay constructive.)

First of all: now I understand Sarah's post even less.

I'm sorry if you felt attacked. My post was actually a compliment about the open-mindedness to concider a drastic change in the direction the Board/WRC is going (of which there were barely any signs before)... No I did not imply the Board/WRC was ignorant, but yes I do think the policy was horrible and yes of course I would like to help to stay constructive as I have been.

Anything different requires a conscious intent to *change* the policy, which always requires some detailed work. Given that a lot of cubers strongly feel about this, we're now spending the time trying to develop something that is more generous -- this thread is about finding a practical way to do that.

However, this really does take work, and I'm disappointed that so many people are expressing their "2 cents" instead of working on the actual changes that need to be made to the Regulations. This should be a community effort, but no one *actually* started doing anything before Sébastien put this draft proposal together.
And still no one has offered any concrete suggestions about how to deal with colored plastic.

A number of cubers did start working on more than "giving 2 cents". Like I said we were working a proposal ourselves. This simply takes a lot of time. We really needed to have the support of a lot of cubers since a proposal from just myself would probably be thrown in the bin without much comment. Sébastien is in a much better position to get something done in a significantly shorter amount of time. Also, I know at least 2 people applied to be part of the WRC and help you guys out. So please refrain from making false statements that nobody did anything. This does not improve the 'relationship' and any constructive discussions between the community and the WRC I think.

On a side note: maybe your expectations of the form of the input the community should give you are just different. I think it's quite clear which direction the community wanted to go. Is it really our responsibility to provide the exact changes of all regulations? That'd be like politicians expecting the citizens to come up with law-changes, although the question they should be asking is "what do you want?". (yes this is more about the discussions there were after publishing the 2014 regulations)

-----------------
As you wanted some suggestions on the plastic:
There are roughly 2 options you can go with. Either just allow everything (inlcuding transparent cubes, fangshi's and maybe even pieces recognizable with touch), or you have to make some form of restriction. Personally I don't see what would be the problem in just allowing anything (after all everyone has the same 'rights' of puzzle-usage), but I guess you still want to draw some lines. I think the "Border-Case Puzzle Brainstorm thread" is a great way to find out which forms we agree are ok and which are not. After we agree on that, we can analyse what restrictions are necessary to implement and think of ways how to implement it in the regulations. (I intentionally bolded "after" since I think it's kinda pointless to start throwing around regulation changes in this thread before we reach a rough consensus on what we actually want to do)

Yes some forms in the brainstorm thread might provide advantages over the cubes we use today (though I only see a usable advantage in transparent cubes), but so what? A transparent cube is still a Rubik's cube. It are still 20 pieces with a marking on it which you have to puzzle together.