New 2015 WCA Regulations (Effective July 1, 2015)

[Kit Clement]

Then why have it? That's like putting in a law just to say "Oh, we'll never arrest anyone for it." It's almost like a "pick and choose" usage of a regulation which I think is awful.

Who's to say that something is intentional or not? With the whole "FMC using a mean" thing now, I wouldn't blame anyone for trying to write down whatever solution comes to their head. I average low 30s for FMC, but if there's 10 minutes left and I don't have anything, I can write down a CFOP solution just so I have something to turn in and not get a DNF mean. Does that mean I'm "wasting time" or intentionally getting a bad result? I feel like this is such a huge ambiguity/gray area for my own comfort.

There are many regulations that have already used delegate discretion, doing this is nothing new. I agree that there are definitely gray areas in anything that you could apply this to, and it's not meant to be applied to those gray areas -- it's meant for people who are blatantly and maliciously wasting time. Too many times we try talking to competitors about their behavior and it doesn't stop because we actually cannot stop them.

This should not change how competitors approach their attempts -- we're not policing you to make sure you are going to be performing to the best of your abilities. We're not going to disqualify you for taking a few seconds to roll your eyes and stare at the timer on the 5th and worst solve of your average, or not giving your best effort after your cube pops, etc.

 

[qqwref]

For the "intentionally poor results" change, I think a good, concise viewpoint is "is the competitor wasting resources?" (at the discretion of the Delegate).
This covers 80 move solutions or extra-long solves if it would waste solution checking/judge time in a large round, while still allowing shenanigans if things are more lax.

I'm not asking what goes against the regulation, but whether it makes sense to DNF things that go against the regulation, i.e. things that waste some time. A lot of the time-wasting scenarios people listed are really not big deals and should not be punished most of the time. But it sounds like anyone who is not completely sure they will solve the puzzle, or anyone caught slacking off while the timer is running, or anyone submitting a FMC result that the judges think is not good enough for them, will be DNF'd, with the occasional exception.

According to what Kit said, it seems like the intention is to only mention a maximum punishment so that in the worst case delegates have the power to do what they need to; however, it reads as if any insufficiently serious competitor will have their solves revoked, and that if the delegate feels like it they can waive that punishment. I don't think that's the right way to word things considering that we want to promote (reasonable amounts of) fun; perhaps it would be better to just leave it at "Punishment: at the discretion of the delegate" and thus imply that competitors will only lose solves if the delegate thinks their behavior merited it.

Too many times we try talking to competitors about their behavior and it doesn't stop because we actually cannot stop them.

Then what you really need is a regulation saying "A delegate [or organizer? or main judge?] may disqualify a solve or disqualify a competitor from an event at their discretion."

This should not change how competitors approach their attempts -- we're not policing you to make sure you are going to be performing to the best of your abilities. We're not going to disqualify you for taking a few seconds to roll your eyes and stare at the timer on the 5th and worst solve of your average, or not giving your best effort after your cube pops, etc.

To be honest, the regulation makes it sound like you will do exactly that. I know better because I've been to plenty of competitions, but what about new cubers?

 

[Kit Clement]

Then what you really need is a regulation saying "A delegate [or organizer? or main judge?] may disqualify a solve or disqualify a competitor from an event at their discretion."

I see that as worse than what we have, just because it gives delegates power to disqualify for no reason.

We are working on a clarification that should hopefully give context for the use of this regulation: https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/issues/272

 

[FatBoyXPC]

Well, it's not like that ever goes wrong..

This is a horrible argument. This is similar to saying "Screw it, let's just drop all the regulations because some people bypass them anyway." Delegates are a trusted position, just as every other position of some sort of authority. If that person can't be trusted, they'll lose that position. Does it suck when those people abuse their power/position? Absolutely. Does it get dealt with? Absolutely.

 

[EMI]

One of these questions should be:

Which of the following is the best choice if you want to experience a world record and abide with the regulations?

a. Pressure the competitor by saying, "Can I record you?" and putting your camera on their solving table, thus making it obvious to them that an easy scramble is coming.
b. Don't tell the competitor anything at all.
c. Reveal the easy scramble to the competitor beforehand so that they can practice the scramble to get a fast time.
d. Tell the competitor that there exists and easy scramble, but don't tell him/her the scramble.

That's actually a good point. Nobody things about situations like your answer a), but imo it is important to actively think about this as a competitor.
A maybe more common situation are "podium finals", e.g., finals where only two solvers are competing at the same time. It's of course important that, as one of the finalists, you don't watch the other solver doing his/her solve, if you didn't have the same scramble yet. Just having read the regulations once, one might not even have thought about that, and without any bad intentions will watch every solve of the other competitor. I believe this kind of stuff is only roughly covered in the regs.
At the same time, you don't really have to know *all* the regulations exactly - for example some of the +2 regulations - as you can always ask the delegate if unsure.

Maybe some kind of easy-to-read additional WCA paper would help, which just covers many examples of cases similar to yours, and how to handle them properly. Reading all the regulations is like reading a lot of complicated mathematical definitions. Without some additional examples / exercises, you won't "understand" them / be able to apply them, and you won't remember them well either. But if you get some examples together with explanations of how to handle them, it appears more intuitive and understandable, and will hopefully make you think about details. (That's actually how you should learn stuff in general imo.)

td;lr I agree with the quiz idea.

 

[KDCuber]

what about transparent stickerless cubes?

 

[Please Dont Ask]

Not many people like the/a shade(s) of stickerless cubes.
So what happens if I sticker only one side of the cube?
Would it be legal?

 

[guysensei1]

Not many people like the/a shade(s) of stickerless cubes.
So what happens if I sticker only one side of the cube?
Would it be legal?

Probably not for BLD. Not sure about sighted events

 

[Dene]

No, because
3d) Puzzles must have coloured parts, which must be one of the following: coloured stickers, coloured tiles, coloured plastic, or painted/printed colours. All coloured parts of a puzzle must be made of a similar material. [italics added]

 

[AlexMaass]

https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/commit/a4e289cfe828e24aa946c5ca18a2c942adf1149c

Doesn't this ban all clocks?

 

[joshsailscga]

https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/commit/a4e289cfe828e24aa946c5ca18a2c942adf1149c

Doesn't this ban all clocks?

What do you mean?

 

[PenguinsDontFly]

What do you mean?

the regulations say that all puzzles with transparent parts are illegal. clocks have transparent faces so you can solve it.

 

[CubeWizard23]

Yay my stickerless mega is legal!!

 

[qqwref]

Yeah, Alex is right, Clock should be added as an explicit exemption to that regulation.

 

[Kit Clement]

https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/commit/a4e289cfe828e24aa946c5ca18a2c942adf1149c

Doesn't this ban all clocks?

Because this is a subregulation, it does not.

3h2) Puzzles whose coloured plastic is visible inside the puzzle (e.g. "stickerless" puzzles) are permitted. This does not include the following puzzles:
3h2a) Puzzles with transparent parts are not permitted. Exception: An overlay sticker (see Regulation 3l).

As clocks do not have "coloured plastic" as defined in the regulations, the subregulation does not apply. Otherwise, the current regulation would ban all clocks anyway: 3h2) Puzzles whose coloured parts are visible inside the puzzle are not permitted.

 

[AlexMaass]

As clocks do not have "coloured plastic" as defined in the regulations, the subregulation does not apply. Otherwise, the current regulation would ban all clocks anyway: 3h2) Puzzles whose coloured parts are visible inside the puzzle are not permitted.

Clocks could possibly be considered to have colored parts though, one side of the puzzles have darker clocks/circles than the other.

 

[Kit Clement]

Clocks could possibly be considered to have colored parts though, one side of the puzzles have darker clocks/circles than the other.

Coloured plastic is defined for the purpose of determining the solved state, which does not apply to clock. If the individual clocks were considered coloured plastic in this sense, then virtually all clocks would be illegal because similar parts would have a different color between the faces.

Really, the regulations have a long history of shrugging off determining the legality of non-"twisty" puzzles, and that can be fixed, but not in two days.

 

[AlexMaass]

Coloured plastic is defined for the purpose of determining the solved state, which does not apply to clock. If the individual clocks were considered coloured plastic in this sense, then virtually all clocks would be illegal because similar parts would have a different color between the faces.

Really, the regulations have a long history of shrugging off determining the legality of non-"twisty" puzzles, and that can be fixed, but not in two days.

Oh. seems okay then, but it could be argued that the colored arrows on the clock is used for determining the solved state, I don't think this matters that much if you plan to shrug this off.

 

[SpeedCubeReview]

So I bought two sticker less Hualongs since the regulations were released to try it out. One was the bright shades and I expected to do worse because of the pink in place of red. My ao100 was about the same and I broke my ao5.... Looks like I'll be using this for awhile.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[CubeWizard23]

Clock is a very different type of puzzle. not even exactly twisty so the same regs aren't going to apply