abunickabhi
Legend
Competition personal report: SICC 2025
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/SICC2025
Venue:
Previous Competitions in the same venue?
A series comp was held in the ground floor of the mall 1.5 months before this comp.
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/AshokaOneMallSatOpen2025
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/AshokaOneMallSunOpen2025
Type:
Vacated space, which was previously a gaming zone for the mall. This vacated space is temporary and the organizers were lucky to get two huge vacated rooms for keeping a WCA competition. It was a good decision to not hold the competition in atrium space of the mall as it can lead to a lot of disturbances. This was the first regional championship ever held in India and I hope more regional championships happen sooner or later, along with regular annual state championships.
Space/Size:
Enough space for competing and for seating of parents for 350+ participants in the main room. The space was managed luxuriously with enough space for setting up a cube store, outreach, registration desk, cube collection and overall roaming around inside the space.
Light:
The white light was perfect in the main room which no issues of differences in the intensity across 24 solving stations and uniform illumination over the entire space. There were some shadows cast due to the pillars in the middle of the space, but it was not too much of a problem. On the other hand, the blindsolving space had a lot of natural light from two big windows facing the main road, which led to artificial lights to never being used throughout the competition.
Temperature:
The central AC was active for all the 4 days of the competition in the main space and it had no settings to change its temperature. Some competitors complained that they felt cold at the venue. Luckily the ground floor had decathlon store from where many serious competitors bought hand warmers to solve the problem. On the other hand, the blindsolving space had central AC inactive for the 3 days which led to some discomfort while solving, but it was not too much to complain about. The blindsolving space and main space difference in temperature was noticeable during 3blind r1 and r2 when competitors had to compete in both spaces.
Accessibility:
The venue is situated Kukatpally area in a mall. It is near the main road and has a metro line running along the main road. Some competitors who had booked accommodation according to the previous venue in old Hyderabad, Hira Hall, were able to use the metro to come to the mall on time. Keeping competition in a mall gave good advantage as there was easy access to parking space, fast food and space to chill in between rounds.
Setup:
The solving area in the main space was divided into two sections, purple and golden. A total of 24 timers were used at all times and no displays. We thank SCB for the provision of a lot of timers and making sure the competition had good bandwidth to run bigger groups and also merge groups when the situation demanded so. There were no situations where the number of timers or the number of judges were less even for intense rounds like 3x3 r1 and 2x2 r1.
Solving Station
Golden colored area of competing, which had 12 tables and 12 timers
Scrambling area at the back of the main space, there were two scrambling area with good amount of space for runners to operate
Part of the solving area during a busy round
For the blindsolving space, 16 timers were used in one part of the space and another potential 9 timers were on the other side of a divider. The number of chairs in the blindsolving area were less, so a few chairs from the spectator area were taken to the blindsolving area on day 1.
A large area of the main hall was for spectators and parents to sit and wait
Blindsolving room and one of the solving station, the main hall can be seen in the background
Schedule:
The competition on time for most parts of the competition. The schedule was carefully crafted by Gaurav with a lot of thinking and planning on what could potentially delay and go wrong on the comp day. Handling volunteers in two spaces, and also making sure the pacing of all the rounds was handled well by Srivishnu and Gaurav. The DC team were briefed of the immediate plans at the right moments which led to perfect pacing in volunteering. On day 1, the competition ran a bit late but after Vivek anna pitched in with his leadership and the DC team focused on the difficult to scramble events like sq-1, the competition ended on time. Holding staff rounds in early morning and on Day 0 made things very easy for the core team, to be available mentally to handle variable competition flow for the rest of the time, especially in the initial rounds.
Judging system:
Fixed seating was used across all rounds including staff rounds. This led to lesser chaos as there were no name callouts which led to more focused and silent solving area. I like the philosophy of SCB to have A-B system for competitor-judge pair which leads to less chaos in transitioning between groups and also guarantees the availability of volunteers for two groups at least. Having fixed seating for 5 solves or 3 solves can slow down a competition a bit, but optimization in all other aspects makes up for this loss. Also having judges taking up running role also saves time. The scramblers are also kept in excess for verifying each other's scrambles and making the runner to scrambler exchanges less chaotic by managing the scrambling area. I believe the smoothness of this competition can be studied by other organizers and they can borrow resources like bigger venue and more timers and make good competitions happen!
Prizes:
I had praised the quality of medals in the last year's state championship TCC 2024 and this year was no exception. The sum of ranks trophies, and medals were very good quality. I hope this quality prizes are repeated in other regional championships and state championships happening in India in the future. The cubeology coupons were good addition to the rest of the prizes. It would have been good if a cube manufacturer would have sponsored this competition, like MoYu and QiYi.
Medals and prizes of good quality
Prize distribution was well conducted with prizes for age-wise, female cubers, state winners and volunteers
My personal gains:
More than the 2 prizes, sum of rank 3 and the PRs, I enjoyed a lot connecting with 175 cubers and their parents. I liked the inclusiveness of the organizing team, DC and SCB. It is always good to be in attendance of Hyderabad comps and the yearly major comps, HCO 2023, TCC 2024 and now SICC 2025. I am fine with regional championship repeated the next year by the younger DC team. I hope this happens and would love if the competition runs with such perfection without the OG team. It will insure the speedcubing scene in India and make sure organizing large scale competitions happen in major cities without reinventing the wheel. I have treated this competition as Nationals, and it is sad that most COVID we only had one nationals in 2023, compared to the 6 continuous Nationals we had pre-covid. None of the organizing teams pre-covid, DJ team, Aashrit, IIT Delhi team, PCMC team, IIT Bombay team, SNU team is active or available to re-organize or guide organizers in their cities to hold nationals again. Post covid nats organizer Avenues team also has not re-organized at any scale.
Even after organizing 8 comps in my BTech and MTech colleges where venue and volunteers were sorted out, I feel non-atrium mall venues are ideal for giving the best user experience. It is an immense logistics issue to make mall comps work and hats off to Gaurav to resolve the issues with the mall people and the organizing team. Banquet halls come as a close second for organizing large scale competitions.
My personal wish to make a competition in India where there are 4 rounds of every event, and two rounds of bigblind. A maximum of 178 solves were possible in this comp and it would be good to have a 4 day structure that enables a maximum of ~220 solves. I also wish that 3 attempts of multi-blind should be there in future 3-day comps.
Overall feedback:
The organizers did a good job with good communication and management. There were some anxious moments when the competitors reached late for their rounds and were disqualified. I agree with the organizers and the delegates to take strict action and follow the schedule perfectly. The energy levels and commitment of the DC team was amazing. It is always a pleasure to attend Deccan comps and they have one of the best teams in India, both pre-covid and post-covid. Keeping cash prize and appreciating the volunteers is a noble step from the organizers. I remeber in VMCO 2022 when Pavan anna gave good looking trophies to all volunteers. It is important to appreciate the efforts of the active speedcubers of the community when make the competitions run smoothly in their region. Vivek anna has also emphasised this point a lot of times that good volunteering on the comp day goes hand in hand with the pre-comp planning and all the checklist that the organizers follow for a seemless competition experience. It was good to see pockets of cubers + organizers coming together, with Raipur team, SCB, BSA, Speedcubing Delhi coming together and performing as a bigger team, aiding to the DC team's manpower and experience.
The data entry was done perfectly by Shravan, Dattu, Ojas and other members of DC team. Dhiraj, Harsha and DC team were put for scrambling for all 4 days without any signs of slowing down or taking a break. Sukesh, Saiyam, Gaurav are excellent delegates and it was a pleasure to assist them as a former trainee and a senior cuber to help in whatever capacity in volunteering. It was unfortunate that many delegates cancelled their attendance which made Gaurav overloaded with the logistics for most of the comp. He ran on very less sleep throughout the 4 days and a week before doing crucial pre-comp work that he has optimized so well. It would be great if the current DC team learns the pre-comp routine and also other organizers from other regions in India take cue from the good work ethic that DC has set in place. I personally enjoy south Indian comps a lot, and look forward to attending more and more of them because of the close knit nature and helping nature of the speedcubers to make the competition a memorable experience with no volunteering inadequacy. Not holding FMC was a wise decision judging the interest of the region and also the limits of the packed schedule. Although I wish future state and regional championships have FMC included as well.
The competitors provided excellent results with NRs in 4blind, 5blind, 6x6 and near NR misses in clock and 5blind. There was NR podiums in all blind events, big cubes and very competitive podium in sprint events. Giving out state champion for Telangana and Karnataka was a good idea. I hope in the next edition of regional championships, other states like AP, TN and Kerela also have enough competitors (>15) to make 16 certificates handed out to cubers from these regions/states as well.
A very happy married life to Pavan Anna who is the pillar of Indian cubing for 15 years and the founder of Deccan cubing. It was unfortunate that his wedding dates and the competition dates clashed which led to Sai and Pavan missing out the entire competition. The young DC team managed things well. A bit of leadership skills was learnt by everyone in the absence of the giants, Pavan, Sai and Vivek. Looking forward to upcoming competitions in Hyderabad and working again with the warm and caring DC team.
Regional multi-state championship competitions roadmap:
I hope this competition serves as a good template for large scale competitions; competitions successfully held in a mall and future regional champs. Unfortunately, Ashoka One mall will not be available again as this space might be used by the mall for commercial purposes. The participation of 175 cubers is dismal and sad. A lot more competitors should have registered for this comp, considering its hype and the 4 months prior public announcement this comp had. First timers were just 30, and the cubers from Hyderabad were so less, which suggests that the community is stagnant and overall on a decline with more cubers quitting or missing out large competitions. I feel other regional championships like west, north, north-east would have even lesser participation. The reg fees were not too high to make this competition unaffordable, the weekend chosen was perfect and the marketing and social media sharing was on par considering this was WCA competition with no budget for advertising. India has 100+ comps a year which is very good cubing scene, but there is potential for a lot more. I do think India speedcubing should invest some efforts for very large, scaled competitions.
The future of Indian cubing is bright with a lot of young cubers like Varnika!
Disclaimers:
This report is made from the view of a participant. I wanted to log my experience and share with relevant groups so that higher quality competitions are enabled and newer organizers get constructive feedback to work on. This text should not be taken as a reference or a validation source by anyone for any purposes. It has been written in a linear way with a little thought put into it. I do not want to influence the community in any way with the sentences written in this report.
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/SICC2025
Venue:
Previous Competitions in the same venue?
A series comp was held in the ground floor of the mall 1.5 months before this comp.
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/AshokaOneMallSatOpen2025
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/AshokaOneMallSunOpen2025
Type:
Vacated space, which was previously a gaming zone for the mall. This vacated space is temporary and the organizers were lucky to get two huge vacated rooms for keeping a WCA competition. It was a good decision to not hold the competition in atrium space of the mall as it can lead to a lot of disturbances. This was the first regional championship ever held in India and I hope more regional championships happen sooner or later, along with regular annual state championships.
Space/Size:
Enough space for competing and for seating of parents for 350+ participants in the main room. The space was managed luxuriously with enough space for setting up a cube store, outreach, registration desk, cube collection and overall roaming around inside the space.
Light:
The white light was perfect in the main room which no issues of differences in the intensity across 24 solving stations and uniform illumination over the entire space. There were some shadows cast due to the pillars in the middle of the space, but it was not too much of a problem. On the other hand, the blindsolving space had a lot of natural light from two big windows facing the main road, which led to artificial lights to never being used throughout the competition.
Temperature:
The central AC was active for all the 4 days of the competition in the main space and it had no settings to change its temperature. Some competitors complained that they felt cold at the venue. Luckily the ground floor had decathlon store from where many serious competitors bought hand warmers to solve the problem. On the other hand, the blindsolving space had central AC inactive for the 3 days which led to some discomfort while solving, but it was not too much to complain about. The blindsolving space and main space difference in temperature was noticeable during 3blind r1 and r2 when competitors had to compete in both spaces.
Accessibility:
The venue is situated Kukatpally area in a mall. It is near the main road and has a metro line running along the main road. Some competitors who had booked accommodation according to the previous venue in old Hyderabad, Hira Hall, were able to use the metro to come to the mall on time. Keeping competition in a mall gave good advantage as there was easy access to parking space, fast food and space to chill in between rounds.
Setup:
The solving area in the main space was divided into two sections, purple and golden. A total of 24 timers were used at all times and no displays. We thank SCB for the provision of a lot of timers and making sure the competition had good bandwidth to run bigger groups and also merge groups when the situation demanded so. There were no situations where the number of timers or the number of judges were less even for intense rounds like 3x3 r1 and 2x2 r1.
Solving Station
Golden colored area of competing, which had 12 tables and 12 timers
Scrambling area at the back of the main space, there were two scrambling area with good amount of space for runners to operate
Part of the solving area during a busy round
For the blindsolving space, 16 timers were used in one part of the space and another potential 9 timers were on the other side of a divider. The number of chairs in the blindsolving area were less, so a few chairs from the spectator area were taken to the blindsolving area on day 1.
A large area of the main hall was for spectators and parents to sit and wait
Blindsolving room and one of the solving station, the main hall can be seen in the background
Schedule:
The competition on time for most parts of the competition. The schedule was carefully crafted by Gaurav with a lot of thinking and planning on what could potentially delay and go wrong on the comp day. Handling volunteers in two spaces, and also making sure the pacing of all the rounds was handled well by Srivishnu and Gaurav. The DC team were briefed of the immediate plans at the right moments which led to perfect pacing in volunteering. On day 1, the competition ran a bit late but after Vivek anna pitched in with his leadership and the DC team focused on the difficult to scramble events like sq-1, the competition ended on time. Holding staff rounds in early morning and on Day 0 made things very easy for the core team, to be available mentally to handle variable competition flow for the rest of the time, especially in the initial rounds.
Judging system:
Fixed seating was used across all rounds including staff rounds. This led to lesser chaos as there were no name callouts which led to more focused and silent solving area. I like the philosophy of SCB to have A-B system for competitor-judge pair which leads to less chaos in transitioning between groups and also guarantees the availability of volunteers for two groups at least. Having fixed seating for 5 solves or 3 solves can slow down a competition a bit, but optimization in all other aspects makes up for this loss. Also having judges taking up running role also saves time. The scramblers are also kept in excess for verifying each other's scrambles and making the runner to scrambler exchanges less chaotic by managing the scrambling area. I believe the smoothness of this competition can be studied by other organizers and they can borrow resources like bigger venue and more timers and make good competitions happen!
Prizes:
I had praised the quality of medals in the last year's state championship TCC 2024 and this year was no exception. The sum of ranks trophies, and medals were very good quality. I hope this quality prizes are repeated in other regional championships and state championships happening in India in the future. The cubeology coupons were good addition to the rest of the prizes. It would have been good if a cube manufacturer would have sponsored this competition, like MoYu and QiYi.
Medals and prizes of good quality
Prize distribution was well conducted with prizes for age-wise, female cubers, state winners and volunteers
My personal gains:
More than the 2 prizes, sum of rank 3 and the PRs, I enjoyed a lot connecting with 175 cubers and their parents. I liked the inclusiveness of the organizing team, DC and SCB. It is always good to be in attendance of Hyderabad comps and the yearly major comps, HCO 2023, TCC 2024 and now SICC 2025. I am fine with regional championship repeated the next year by the younger DC team. I hope this happens and would love if the competition runs with such perfection without the OG team. It will insure the speedcubing scene in India and make sure organizing large scale competitions happen in major cities without reinventing the wheel. I have treated this competition as Nationals, and it is sad that most COVID we only had one nationals in 2023, compared to the 6 continuous Nationals we had pre-covid. None of the organizing teams pre-covid, DJ team, Aashrit, IIT Delhi team, PCMC team, IIT Bombay team, SNU team is active or available to re-organize or guide organizers in their cities to hold nationals again. Post covid nats organizer Avenues team also has not re-organized at any scale.
Even after organizing 8 comps in my BTech and MTech colleges where venue and volunteers were sorted out, I feel non-atrium mall venues are ideal for giving the best user experience. It is an immense logistics issue to make mall comps work and hats off to Gaurav to resolve the issues with the mall people and the organizing team. Banquet halls come as a close second for organizing large scale competitions.
My personal wish to make a competition in India where there are 4 rounds of every event, and two rounds of bigblind. A maximum of 178 solves were possible in this comp and it would be good to have a 4 day structure that enables a maximum of ~220 solves. I also wish that 3 attempts of multi-blind should be there in future 3-day comps.
Overall feedback:
The organizers did a good job with good communication and management. There were some anxious moments when the competitors reached late for their rounds and were disqualified. I agree with the organizers and the delegates to take strict action and follow the schedule perfectly. The energy levels and commitment of the DC team was amazing. It is always a pleasure to attend Deccan comps and they have one of the best teams in India, both pre-covid and post-covid. Keeping cash prize and appreciating the volunteers is a noble step from the organizers. I remeber in VMCO 2022 when Pavan anna gave good looking trophies to all volunteers. It is important to appreciate the efforts of the active speedcubers of the community when make the competitions run smoothly in their region. Vivek anna has also emphasised this point a lot of times that good volunteering on the comp day goes hand in hand with the pre-comp planning and all the checklist that the organizers follow for a seemless competition experience. It was good to see pockets of cubers + organizers coming together, with Raipur team, SCB, BSA, Speedcubing Delhi coming together and performing as a bigger team, aiding to the DC team's manpower and experience.
The data entry was done perfectly by Shravan, Dattu, Ojas and other members of DC team. Dhiraj, Harsha and DC team were put for scrambling for all 4 days without any signs of slowing down or taking a break. Sukesh, Saiyam, Gaurav are excellent delegates and it was a pleasure to assist them as a former trainee and a senior cuber to help in whatever capacity in volunteering. It was unfortunate that many delegates cancelled their attendance which made Gaurav overloaded with the logistics for most of the comp. He ran on very less sleep throughout the 4 days and a week before doing crucial pre-comp work that he has optimized so well. It would be great if the current DC team learns the pre-comp routine and also other organizers from other regions in India take cue from the good work ethic that DC has set in place. I personally enjoy south Indian comps a lot, and look forward to attending more and more of them because of the close knit nature and helping nature of the speedcubers to make the competition a memorable experience with no volunteering inadequacy. Not holding FMC was a wise decision judging the interest of the region and also the limits of the packed schedule. Although I wish future state and regional championships have FMC included as well.
The competitors provided excellent results with NRs in 4blind, 5blind, 6x6 and near NR misses in clock and 5blind. There was NR podiums in all blind events, big cubes and very competitive podium in sprint events. Giving out state champion for Telangana and Karnataka was a good idea. I hope in the next edition of regional championships, other states like AP, TN and Kerela also have enough competitors (>15) to make 16 certificates handed out to cubers from these regions/states as well.
A very happy married life to Pavan Anna who is the pillar of Indian cubing for 15 years and the founder of Deccan cubing. It was unfortunate that his wedding dates and the competition dates clashed which led to Sai and Pavan missing out the entire competition. The young DC team managed things well. A bit of leadership skills was learnt by everyone in the absence of the giants, Pavan, Sai and Vivek. Looking forward to upcoming competitions in Hyderabad and working again with the warm and caring DC team.
Regional multi-state championship competitions roadmap:
I hope this competition serves as a good template for large scale competitions; competitions successfully held in a mall and future regional champs. Unfortunately, Ashoka One mall will not be available again as this space might be used by the mall for commercial purposes. The participation of 175 cubers is dismal and sad. A lot more competitors should have registered for this comp, considering its hype and the 4 months prior public announcement this comp had. First timers were just 30, and the cubers from Hyderabad were so less, which suggests that the community is stagnant and overall on a decline with more cubers quitting or missing out large competitions. I feel other regional championships like west, north, north-east would have even lesser participation. The reg fees were not too high to make this competition unaffordable, the weekend chosen was perfect and the marketing and social media sharing was on par considering this was WCA competition with no budget for advertising. India has 100+ comps a year which is very good cubing scene, but there is potential for a lot more. I do think India speedcubing should invest some efforts for very large, scaled competitions.
The future of Indian cubing is bright with a lot of young cubers like Varnika!
Disclaimers:
This report is made from the view of a participant. I wanted to log my experience and share with relevant groups so that higher quality competitions are enabled and newer organizers get constructive feedback to work on. This text should not be taken as a reference or a validation source by anyone for any purposes. It has been written in a linear way with a little thought put into it. I do not want to influence the community in any way with the sentences written in this report.
Last edited:
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