Why are stickerless cubes allowed in wca comps? [ Pic below ]

[94d33m]

I can see its a blue orange piece from an angle which is not possible for stickered cube

 

[Silky]

It was decided that it didn't make enough of a difference, it's a miniscule at best. It's not like a pillowed cube where you can clearly see the other piece. Pillowed i believe where allowed for big cubes but I don't remember.

 

[Sub1Hour]

I can see its a blue orange piece from an angle which is not possible for stickered cube

View attachment 14098

If you are squinting hard enough to see that orange shine through then you are wasting more time trying to see the other side than it would take to shift the cube right by around 5 degrees. When you are turning as fast as you are in a speedsolve, it's hard to notice details like that. The same case could also be made for stickered puzzles since the stickers are higher than the piece so you could technically look at the side of a sticker to know what color the piece is.

 

[94d33m]

If you are squinting hard enough to see that orange shine through then you are wasting more time trying to see the other side than it would take to shift the cube right by around 5 degrees. When you are turning as fast as you are in a speedsolve, it's hard to notice details like that. The same case could also be made for stickered puzzles since the stickers are higher than the piece so you could technically look at the side of a sticker to know what color the piece is.

Yeah I will agree you on that, turning the cube is much faster than trying to directly see from an angle what that piece is

 

[Sub1Hour]

Pillowed i believe where allowed for big cubes but I don't remember.

Pillowed was originally only permitted for 7x7s because back in the day they couldn't make flat-faced ones since the mechanisms from back then required the puzzle to be pillowed, otherwise, edges and corners could fall out.

It's now legal for all puzzles now but it doesn't make sense to use them since pillowed cubes have terrible grip compared to flat-faced puzzles.

 

[xyzzy]

they couldn't make flat-faced ones since the mechanisms from back then required the puzzle to be pillowed

They could make cubic puzzles with the same mechanism (literally just extend the pieces until they fill up the bounding box); they just didn't care because they were too busy copying V-Cube's design.

I can see its a blue orange piece from an angle which is not possible for stickered cube

View attachment 14098

Good for you, because I can't see it over all the upsampling artifacts. (j/k)

It's true that the rounding of the edges of the cube allows one to see additional information, but ultimately the community consensus was that the legitimate advantages of stickerless puzzles (mainly not having to care about sticker maintenance) are more important than barely being able to see a glimpse of a colour in a solve sometimes, and that's why stickerless cubes are now competition-legal.

 

[qwr]

Here is all the main points https://github.com/thewca/wca-regulations/issues/177

Basically they're popular, the advantage isn't significant enough, and they are easier for maintenance.

I think top level cubers know where all their F2L edges are from inspection which is where seeing the back edges is most useful (in OLL and PLL you can't get any info from looking at the top of the U face). Idk about Roux.

Also it probably wouldn't be great if a beginner goes to a comp with a $4 stickerless cube that he's used for months (no stickers peeling) and he gets told he can't compete with it.

It's now legal for all puzzles now but it doesn't make sense to use them since pillowed cubes have terrible grip compared to flat-faced puzzles.

That means I can officially compete with my V-Cube 3!

 

[DNF_Cuber]

I mean it is really less significant than chipped/damaged stickers that need tons of maintenance