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One-Answer WCA Competition and Regulations Question Thread

EvilGnome6

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Are there formulas for estimating how much time to allocate for an event based on the number of timers you have?

For example: If I have six timers and 30 competitors, how long will it take to do the 3x3 event? How long will it take to do the 4x4 event, etc.
 
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Are there formulas for estimating how much time to allocate for an event based on the number of timers you have?

For example: If I have six timers and 30 competitors, how long will it take to do the 3x3 event? How long will it take to do the 4x4 event, etc.

Depends on how fast your competitors are. Normally it would be around 20 seconds, plus up to 15 seconds for inspection, plus extra time like the people walking over to their station. You just have to figure it out. 1 minute per attempt * 30 competitors * 5 attempts per competitor / 6 = 25 minutes, and since that won't be exact, and there may be other delays, give it 30-40 minutes to be safe. (note that I haven't ever organized a competition and I'm just going from how competitions I've been to are organized.)
 

EvilGnome6

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Depends on how fast your competitors are. Normally it would be around 20 seconds, plus up to 15 seconds for inspection, plus extra time like the people walking over to their station. You just have to figure it out. 1 minute per attempt * 30 competitors * 5 attempts per competitor / 6 = 25 minutes, and since that won't be exact, and there may be other delays, give it 30-40 minutes to be safe. (note that I haven't ever organized a competition and I'm just going from how competitions I've been to are organized.)

Yeah, I can make those kinds of assumptions but I was hoping someone who has organized comps would chime in with how it works out in reality. :)
 

Dene

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Are there formulas for estimating how much time to allocate for an event based on the number of timers you have?

For example: If I have six timers and 30 competitors, how long will it take to do the 3x3 event? How long will it take to do the 4x4 event, etc.

I know Tim McMahon does something like this but I never bother with it when we write up our schedules. I just do it off intuition and experience. A lot of it depends on cutoffs and how efficient the staff are. If you are writing a schedule for the first time my best recommendation is to be conservative; it's ok to have extra time, but completely unacceptable to fall short!
 

G2013

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Can a competitor choose to change his/her judge in an X event?

If the answer is yes, can that competitor choose a specific judge, or is the judge chosen by someone else?

Thank you.
 

Ranzha

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Hi yall i took part in a competiton in may and the results still haven't been posted to WCA's site? kevin hays set the 7x7wr avg

Clock n stuff 2015

Thanks
-CubeWhiz

As soon as possible. It depends on when the delegate has the time to submit them.

Competition organiser here.
For the competition I co-organised last weekend (BASC 6 2015) the results are not submitted yet.
The reason for this is that at competitions I organise, I usually check the scorecards after the competition to verify that the results entered digitally (we do it with Cubecomps) match each scorecard. After this process, I let the Delegate know that the results in Cubecomps are correct, and then the Delegate submits the results.

I just finished checking the scorecards last evening, as it was most convenient then to finish a thorough check. This involves sorting the garbled mess of index cards by event and round, then in each round sorting by rank, and then holding each index card to verify that each attempt was submitted properly and that the competitor and judge signed for every attempt. This entire process took about 2 hours with 197 scorecards, and this competition was rather small for us (5 events, 67 competitors).
In contrast, our previous competition (BASC 5: Everything But 2x2 2015) had around 135 competitors with 560 scorecards, which took me more than 8 hours to sort and check (not counting checking FMC, which other people did pretty swiftly, and whose results I don't have).

tl;dr sometimes scorecards are checked for data entry errors before results are submitted, which adds to the time between the end of a competition and the time when results go up.

Are there formulas for estimating how much time to allocate for an event based on the number of timers you have?

For example: If I have six timers and 30 competitors, how long will it take to do the 3x3 event? How long will it take to do the 4x4 event, etc.
At BASC competitions, we make our schedules using (an adaptation of) the Expected Time Calculator that is hidden away on each CubingUSA competition's webpage.

Here's how it works:
For a particular event and round, let:
exp time = expected average time to complete one solve, timer start to timer stop.
lag = expected average time between timer stop to timer start again.
comp = number of competitors in that round.
stations = number of judging stations available.
solves = number of solves each competitor ideally gets. (e.g. solves = 5, for a round of 3x3 with format average of 5)

round time = (exp time + lag) * (comp) * (solves) / (stations).

For BASC, we set our expected time equal to 1.25 times the average attempt time from round 1 of our previous competition, and we set our lag to 80 seconds for all events except 6x6 and 7x7, which we set at 300 seconds (aka 5 minutes). These lag times are arbitrary and vary depending on how efficiently your staff (and as a result, your competition) operates.
 
Last edited:

Dene

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Can a competitor choose to change his/her judge in an X event?

If the answer is yes, can that competitor choose a specific judge, or is the judge chosen by someone else?

This isn't governed by regulations. The regulations neither allow nor disallow you to choose a judge, which means it's really up to the delegate to use their judgement. i.e. if you have a problem with a judge you should bring it up with the competition organiser first, then the delegate second if you aren't happy with the initial response.

If a competitor asked me if they could have a specific judge I would deny the request in most cases.
 

Jasala

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I am having an argument on YouTube with someone I will show the conversation:

Other Person: I'm more on Felix zemdegs side however in a competion each competitor receives the same scramble so... Felix could have done the same moves
Me: I am pretty sure each competitor gets a different scramble
Another Person: Yeah, I'm pretty sure they do. Look it up in the WCA Rules and regulations. (Nothing about it I could find) Do you know Rami Sbahi? His 0.58 2x2 solve was almost removed because a kid who did the same scramble told him earlier the scramble was easy and he was going to get WR. You are not allowed to discuss scrambles in a competition because the competitors have the same scramble, and could cheat.

So does each competitor receive the same scramble in a competition?
 

IanG

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Stickerless is allowed in competitions?

Just a quick questions. I'm fairly new to cubing so sorry if this is a dumb question but I was just reading the WCA rules and I saw that in rule 3h2+ it says "In the past, 'stickerless' puzzles were not allowed. Such puzzles are now allowed." I didn't know that they allowed them now because of the feature of being able to see colors from the front of the cube on the back. Can someone please confirm that this is true? Here's a link if you don't believe me. https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/guidelines.html#3h2+
 

youSurname

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Can I switch cubes in between an average? I have two that I really like so maybe switching for the last solve?
 
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