Proposal: Allowing audio equipment during official attempts

[Ronxu]

I sometimes have trouble dealing with pressure as well. Can I have an extra attempt if my hands start shaking?

 

[obelisk477]

This is why we don't allow listening to music during solves

 

[Matt11111]

This is why we don't allow listening to music during solves

(Clicks link) Oh yeah. Fair point.

 

[Daniel Lin]

If the competitor can't hear 8 seconds or 12 seconds then that's his own fault, and he can't blame the judge for it.

Even if people were to cheat by using headphones/earphones to keep algorithms, they probably wouldn't get fast times. Say my favorite song is the OLL parity song, repeated over and over again, and I play it during my solve. If I didn't know the "lyrics" to it, I'd have to wait for the beginning of the song before I could start executing the algorithm. Cheating is definitely possible, but I think only really slow beginners would attempt it.

My first thought while reading this was those 2 guys from these forums who did awesome teamBLD UWRs (they were able to sub-10 teamBLD solves IIRC so it was quite effective) and had some kind of an efficient code for that (don't remember their names sorry). The code included different triggers and names for OLL cases and stuff like that.

And then I thought of the following situation:
Person A and B both know that code (or any other similar code).
Person A finishes his last solve and gets a PLL skip on that solve.
Person A goes to another room (he can say that he is going in to a toilet or whatever) and quickly reconstructs his last solve with PLL skip
Person A then connects to the headphones of person B (who still hasn't done his 5th solve) and is now quickly and efficiently able to tell what person B needs to do in order to get a PLL skip on that scramble.

May be a little far fetched but that is what I first thought.

Yeah but cheating can still happen even without headphones/earphones
Person A could just directly say the solution/teamBLD codes to Person B, while theya re both waiting, and probably no one would notice. especially for 2x2 or skewb, it's very easy to cheat, and you don't even need audio equipment
Same with BLD, say Person A and Person B use the same orientation and lettering scheme. Person A just finishes his solve, and while they are both waiting, whispers "FUWGBJXWFP IKWQ" to Person B. Now when it's Person B's turn he completely skips memo and gets a sub 20 WR.

unless the judge listens to it through 1 ear bud and the competitor gets the other (which would be very funny but effective, however this is ridiculous to look at and judges would hesitate because of sanitary reasons)

lol that's hilarious

 

[Matt11111]

What if they were in, say, a Google Hangout on their phone, and their friend in said hangout was playing music from across the venue? Then the solver could angle the phone in such a way that their friend could see the cube and tell them a useful alg. This is less of a reason to not allow music and more of a reason to not allow earbuds to be used.

 

[XTowncuber]

If you are using headphones to dictate algs then you suck so bad that I don't care if you cheat.

As it stands now, competitors can still pretty easily share solutions with each other in the competitor area without using communication devices (See Rami's 0.58). We're operating on a trust system anyway.

IMO it should be allowed. Judges should be allowed to check what the competitor is listening to if they want. But don't refute my points please I definitely don't care enough to argue about it.

 

[tseitsei]

Yeah but cheating can still happen even without headphones/earphones
Between solves it's always loud, so Person A could just directly say the solution to Person B, and probably no one would notice.
Same with BLD, say Person A and Person B use the same orientation and lettering scheme. Person A just finishes his solve, and while they are both waiting, whispers "FUWGBJXWFP IKWQ" to Person B. Now when it's Person B's turn he completely skips memo and gets a sub 20 WR. Cheating is possible even without using earphones.

Cheating can always happen but there is no reason to make it easier.
And BLD is totally irrelevant here since this wasn't even suggested to be allowed for BLD events.

Also I just don't see why we should allow using headphones.
Nerves is not a good answer. Because then I think I should be allowed to do official solves in my own apartment since that's where I normally solve and don't get nervous there. Also I should get more attempts because then I would be less nervous about messing up the solve.

 

[WACWCA]

This is why we don't allow listening to music during solves

I was just going to say that

 

[Daniel Lin]

Cheating can always happen but there is no reason to make it easier.
And BLD is totally irrelevant here since this wasn't even suggested to be allowed for BLD events.

I was just showing how easy it is to cheat even without using headphones, and as Drew Brads said we're operating on a trust system anyway

This is why we don't allow listening to music during solves

I seriously don't get how this would help you cheat. Maybe it could help you solve in 2 minutes instead of 5 minutes on a 3x3, but you're not going to get much farther than that

 

[Dene]

Some of you seem to have forgotten that there are two aspects to our competitions:

1. Being able to solve a cube
2. Solving it fast

Because of reason 1 this should never be allowed.

 

[PenguinsDontFly]

Some of you seem to have forgotten that there are two aspects to our competitions:

1. Being able to solve a cube
2. Solving it fast

Because of reason 1 this should never be allowed.

Allowing headphones would make many people better at your #2.

 

[tseitsei]

Allowing headphones would make many people better at your #2.

Allowing more attempts in comps if you accidentally fail or longer inspection would make many people better at #2.

Allowing "cheat sheets" or something like that makes many people better at #1.

The meaning of the regulations is not to make solving easier but to make it equal and fair. To get better at either #1 or #2 you need to practise

 

[JanW]

I don't think there's any way to make sure people don't cheat unless the judge listens to it through 1 ear bud and the competitor gets the other (which would be very funny but effective, however this is ridiculous to look at and judges would hesitate because of sanitary reasons).

Not effective at all. You can have completely different audio in left and right channel of a stereo track. I'm sure there is also some app out there which would allow you to pan your music player to one earbud and the incoming call from your friend to the other.

 

[mark49152]

Or algorithms or solutions could be encoded to musical sounds using a scheme known only to the competitor and their accomplice who is controlling it from an app in the next room. The judge would never know the difference.

Or the really determined cheat could write an app and run it on the smartphone that they use as a camera for the solve, to encode the back view of the cube into musical sounds in real time. So what sounds like rubbish 80s techno to the the judge is actually telling the competitor which F2L pair to do next!

 

[Umm Roux?]

Cheating could occur easily without headphones, just let them do it. It's not allowed in most sports because doing something such as synchronized swimming with earbuds is not advised.

 

[tseitsei]

Cheating could occur easily without headphones, just let them do it. It's not allowed in most sports because doing something such as synchronized swimming with earbuds is not advised.

In bowling, snooker, shooting and several other sports you could (and I bet some competitors would like to) use headphones but it is not allowed.
So why should cubing be an exception?

 

[Umm Roux?]

In bowling, snooker, shooting and several other sports you could (and I bet some competitors would like to) use headphones but it is not allowed.
So why should cubing be an exception?

If someone decides to rob a bank, why shouldn't we?

 

[tseitsei]

If someone decides to rob a bank, why shouldn't we?

Yeah that is totally a good and relevant comparison, thank you for that. /sarcasm

You do understand that comparing cubing to other 'sports' is quite a bit more relevant than comparing cubing to robbing a bank right?

 

[Umm Roux?]

Sorry for the overboard comparison but if bowlers decide not to use headphones, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't. Also, what harm do headphones do?

 

[tseitsei]

Sorry for the overboard comparison but if bowlers decide not to use headphones, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't. Also, what harm do headphones do?

Someone could quite easily communicate with the solver during the solve without anyone noticing.