Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Scramble Checkers / Require scramblers to sign score cards #214

Closed
sarahstrong314 opened this issue Sep 20, 2014 · 54 comments
Closed

Scramble Checkers / Require scramblers to sign score cards #214

sarahstrong314 opened this issue Sep 20, 2014 · 54 comments

Comments

@sarahstrong314
Copy link
Contributor

This idea was brought up by Raymond Gaslow (Torch) in this thread on Speedsolving.com.

It's a simple idea that would help prevent misscrambles by giving scramblers an incentive to scramble correctly, as well as an opportunity to double check that they're on the correct scramble.

It would also allow delegates and organizers to know which scrambler scrambled each attempt.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Sep 21, 2014

I've discussed this with people in the past, and considered it to be too cumbersome (makes it harder to fined willing scramblers, may not catch all errors – in particular, scrambling the wrong attempt).

But all these cases of people unfairly losing their records make it clear that we need to force some international standard. We currently don't have a way to handle these mistakes, but they are basically 100% preventable if you put resources into it. We should be doing things right. If that means taking more time and doing fewer events, perhaps so be it.

Until Delegates can prove that that they can eliminate this issue through other organizational means, I think it's reasonable to require a scramble checker, or strong requirements like having the scramblers sign off on score cards (assuming the latter is sufficient).

Could someone collect a list of notable cases to lend weight to adding stronger requirements?

@sarahstrong314
Copy link
Contributor Author

I don't see how this is any different than how judges have to sign each attempt. I've never encountered anyone who didn't want to judge just because they were afraid that their signatures would hold them accountable for any mistakes.

Besides, if someone doesn't want to scramble just because they would be held accountable for each of the attempts they scramble for, should that person really be scrambling?

I agree that this doesn't prevent every kind of mistake, but it would help encourage scramblers to check more thoroughly. I actually think this would help prevent scrambling the wrong attempt since the scramblers would most likely look at the score card twice: once before scrambling and once afterwards when signing.

@Laura-O
Copy link
Member

Laura-O commented Sep 21, 2014

There is one thing I miss in the whole discussion:
If we let the scramblers sign on the scoresheets, we know who scrambled the
cube. But what does that mean? What happens when someone loses a record due
to a wrong scrambled cube? Is there a penalty for the scrambler?

If so, this would definitely discourage people to scramble. If not, I am
not sure if this will really help. I also don't think judges do their job
better because they have to sign the scoresheets. It's just the normal
procedure they have to follow. So I assume this would be the same with
scramblers.

Am Sonntag, 21. September 2014 schrieb Lucas Garron :

I've discussed this with people in the past, and considered it to be too
cumbersome (makes it harder to fined willing scramblers, may not catch all
errors – in particular, scrambling the wrong attempt).

But all these cases of people unfairly losing their records make it clear
that we need to force some international standard. We currently don't
have a way to handle these mistakes
#121, but they are
basically 100% preventable if you put resources into it. We should be doing
things right. If that means taking more time and doing fewer events,
perhaps so be it.

Until Delegates can prove that that they can eliminate this issue through
other organizational means, I think it's reasonable to require a scramble
checker, or strong requirements like having the scramblers sign off on
score cards (assuming the latter is sufficient).

Could someone collect a list of notable cases to lend weight to adding
stronger requirements?


Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#214 (comment)
.

@sarahstrong314
Copy link
Contributor Author

Judges don't get punished for making mistakes, so I don't think scramblers should be either. If the scrambler makes an honest mistake such as not noticing a corner is twisted, I don't think it makes sense to take any action, let alone punish anyone. If the scrambler continuously makes the same mistake such as scrambling with the wrong orientation, this would allow organizers to give a friendly reminder of what the proper orientations are. If the scrambler is careless and keeps putting down miscrambled cubes knowing they're scrambled wrong, then the organizers would know not to trust this scrambler. Requiring a signature would reduce the third kind of scrambler, though.

On a different note, one additional thing the signatures would be good for would be preventing incidents where someone cheats by putting an already scrambled cube on their scorecard.

@lgarron lgarron changed the title Require scramblers to sign score cards Scramble Checkers / Require scramblers to sign score cards Nov 26, 2014
@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Nov 26, 2014

I sent this email to the Delegates list two days ago:

In order to help reduce the need for unfortunate rulings on mis-scrambles, I would like to request that Delegates implement scramble checkers (#214) at WCA competitions

A scramble checker is someone who sits next to scramblers, and:

  1. Does not perform any scrambles.
  2. Carefully checks that each scramble a) is the scramble for the correct attempt, and b) completely matches the scramble image.

In order to test how practical and effective this is, I'd like to request Delegates to try as many of the following bullet points as possible:
Use a scramble checker for all rounds, not just final rounds (to test practicality).
If there are people available, use a secondary scramble checker to double-check (to see how effective the first scramble checker is). Make sure that the main scramble checker takes it as seriously as if (s)he were the only one.
Use the same scramble checker (and secondary scramble checker) for an entire group (to try to detect systematic tendencies to perform certain mis-scrambles).
Explicitly caution the scramble checker to check all corners.
At some competitions, consider creating a small incentive for finding the score checker finding mis-scrambles (to see how many mistakes we can catch if we're looking for them as hard as possible).
Ask scramble checkers to keep a detailed record of all incorrect scrambles. Record the round, group, and attempt number, whether the same mis-scramble was repeated, and if possible, find out what the mistake was (e.g. corner twist, wrong attempt, 4 edges and 4 corners wrong == wrong/missing turn).
Try to have the scramble checker mark the score card after checking a scramble (to see if this is not too much of a logistical burden).
If you used scramble checkers, please create a separate "Scramble Checking" section for it in the Delegate report (in order to make it easy to collect for information across reports).
It would be great to have as much data as possible.

I would love to see that this can solve the majority of our mis-scrambling problem, but I don't want us to mandate anything unless we find that it works well. Since this doesn't require a Regulation change, I hope that some of you can find a way to put this into practice immediately.

I'm hoping this can solve several problems without sacrificing fairness.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Dec 10, 2014

Incidents:

Sydney Spring 2014:

Cubers receiving the same scramble

Unfortunately, this happened on multiple instances throughout the day. When I went to investigate, it turned out there were a lot of younger members scrambling. Whilst I appreciate their enthusiasm, they were not double-checking to see which scramble aligned to which solve. After this happened about 3 times, I then selected a few more experienced scramblers (i.e., experienced competitors) to do the scrambling for rounds or events they were not participating in.

Kjeller Open 2014:

So Jonathan Hamstad (2011HAMS01) solved the first cube in the 3x3 final in 6.506 seconds (OLL-skip), which is very good, and new Norwegian record. You can see the solve here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeDNnzZ_d6c . Later the organizers asked me to publish the scrambles, and I did. I then asked Jonathan for a reconstruction just to see this awesome solve. He answered that he could not do that, because the scramble was not right. I watched the video again, and he was indeed right, the scramble was wrong. This was two days ago, 5 days after the actual competition.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Dec 19, 2014

PoliMi Italian Open 2014: two repeated scrambles.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Dec 19, 2014

Maranhão Open 2014

I advised scramblers all the time to check very carefully each scramble and it seems to work fine, we had no problem with corner twists or miscrambles. But we still had problems with repeated scrambles. Next time I will advise also about checking always the correct scramble number. I think the double cheking in the scrambles do not spend too much time and is worth it.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Dec 19, 2014

Niddrie 2014

  1. The same competitor received the same scramble twice in a later round and reminded Tim to get experienced scramblers. This could have been avoided with a scramble checker, although I still don't think using experienced competitors is the solution to the problem. (I don't want to dob anyone in, but earlier in the competition an experienced competitor did the same thing while scrambling). Accidents will happen, and attention to detail is the only way to reduce them (without using additional labour).

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Dec 19, 2014

The last three examples are all from the last week. Obviously, whatever Delegates/organizers are doing doesn't work. Could we try pushing scramble checkers harder?

@lgarron lgarron added this to the 2015 milestone Dec 21, 2014
@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 4, 2015

Genius Kid India Open 2014

  1. There were 3 incidents of same scrambles. There was no way of having a scramble checker with the number of reliable people we had (Sorry Lucas). All incidents were made by the same scrambler because of the same reason- he trusted the judge to tell the correct scramble number instead of reading the scorecard himself for which solve was next. So errors were made, but under control.

(Also, that comp had many other staff errors.)

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 5, 2015

Austin Cubing Limits 2015

Scrambling mistakes -- I emphasized very heavily to the scramblers that they must check every single one, but we still had 3 or 4 reports of repeat scrambles. A few people, including myself, were given the wrong cubes when competing. These mix-ups were corrected and the cubes were rescrambled when needed. In the future I'll keep a closer eye on who is allowed to scramble -- I've noticed at a few competitions the same 1 or 2 people always seem to be mixing up scrambles and misplacing scorecards.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 6, 2015

CUCEI Championship 2014

We assigned a staff member to be a scramble checker. At first it was very difficult, the scramble checker was slow and this delayed the competition.
So I put myself to be a scramble checker too and all went faster.
The most efficient way was to only check two adjacent faces and all cornerse, because check the whole cube was very slow. With some practice we could memorize this adjacent faces and the corners and all went very fast.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 6, 2015

Hsinchu Winter Open 2014

To examine which is the better way for checking scramble

system, I did a little experiment on this and the following competition (the report will be finished these days, I’m still working on it). We used a signing system for scrambler this time, and here is the procedure.

We asked the scramblers to sign their name on the left hand side on the score card after they scrambled and checked the cube. This make scramblers to pay attention on scrambling and show responsibility on being a scrambler.

The results are pretty good, I didn’t find any repeated scrambles and wrong scrambles. Some scramblers found them did wrong scrambles before them handing the cube, like they did the third SC rather than the second SC, I asked them to re-
scramble the cube, since it is the main reason for repeated scramble. It took us some more time for scrambling puzzles, but I think the time is relative less than using the scramble checker system (this will be described in the next report).

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 6, 2015

Huddinge Cube Day 2014

A trustworthy and experienced competitor recognised a repeated scramble on his fifth solve in 2x2x2. I gave him an extra scramble. Most probably, he already got the fifth scramble for his fourth solve, but I did not investigate this further.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 6, 2015

Kaohsiung Open 2014

We set two unexperienced cubers who didn’t participate for being scramble checkers since we thought this is an easy thing to do rather than scrambling and judging. We had two ipad for them to check the scrambles, in order to reduce the fee for printing colored scramblers. The setting is down below, we made them sit next to the scramblers, after the puzzles were scrambled, and they were handed to checkers. After checking the puzzle, the checker will cover the puzzle with covers, and then judges would know that this puzzle was ready to go. The difficult we faced was that some of the puzzles were not easy to recognize (such as pyraminx, the stickers were maybe not the WCA pattern since shengshou pyraminx sticks their stickers in the opposite way). And since I asked them to check all faces pretty carefully, they needed about 20~30 seconds to check the whole puzzle. I think if we are going to use the scramble checker, we need to re-estimate the schedule before the competition. The results were good, only two scramble issues occurred (both were repeated scrambles), but I’m not satisfied with this results, I thought this system should solve all scramble issues, but the result shows that if something is going to happen, it happens. I’ll prefer ask scramblers to sign their name in the next competition.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 7, 2015

Guangzhou New Year's Cube Day 2015

  1. I re-designed the record sheet we used (picture shown below), and I asked all the scramblers to sign or initial names onto the record sheet before they scrambled. (It is different from Hung’s competition in Taiwan, where the scramblers were asked to sign afterwards.) I think this procedure can reduce their mistake possibility, because while they were signing, they were fully aware of the number of attempt and kept it in mind. Eventually, we did not face any repeated scrambles.

unnamed

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 8, 2015

Oxford Winter 2014

After the 3x3 final had completed, we were talking about the scrambles and Rob had mentioned he received a 1-move cross on the second scramble. We all did not have that so I showed him the scramble and he confirmed he did not receive that. I awarded an extra scramble. This was our only scramble mistake and the reason was because 3x3 final was the last event of the day, and we were lacking people to scramble, so we unfortunately had a couple of inexperienced scramblers helping us. I reminded them that they needed to check the scrambles but unfortunately it got through somehow. Once we realised the error I notified the scrambler of the importance of checking.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 11, 2015

Ekb Open 2015

At the morning of Sunday we had multiblind. There were 3 competitors: two of them tried to solve 3 cubes and I tried 19. Unfortunately, except us there was only one competitor who could scramble, and he appeared to be not very attentive. After memorizing 14 cubes I found scramble duplicate. Then I stopped my attempt and decided to do extra. Since we planned to start next event in 20 minutes, I tried lesser amount of cubes, generating a new set of scrambles for them.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 12, 2015

Uppsala Open 2015

  • Two cases of repeated scrambles were discovered.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 21, 2015

SESC Santa Amaro 2015

I advised scramblers all the time to check very carefully each scramble, which seemed to work fine as we did not identify any problem with corner twists or miscrambles. But we still had problems with repeated scrambles twice.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 31, 2015

Another Fantastic Michigan Competition 2015 report by Kit Clement:

AJ Blair claimed to receive the same scramble twice in the BLD final. Worst of all, I was the scrambler -- I guess it was a long and tiring day for me. To be safe, I gave him an extra as replacement.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 31, 2015

Frankfurt Cube Days 2015

Given the current discussions about misscrambles, I made sure to have experienced scramblers at any time. Still, there was exactly one scrambling issue during the competition, when a competitor got the 1st scramble again for his 2nd attempt in the second round of 2x2x2. Apparently, that competitor was the first one to do his second attempt in this group and the two scramblers must have rushed too much when trying to launch the group, not noticing there was already one cube brought back after a solve. Of course I asked them to pay more attention, even though I think this happening once at a competition is an understandable human error.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 31, 2015

Olek Gritsenko's report for Ekb Open 2015:

At the morning of Sunday we had multiblind. There were 3 competitors: two of them tried to solve 3 cubes and I tried 19. Unfortunately, except us there was only one competitor who could scramble, and he appeared to be not very attentive. After memorizing 14 cubes I found scramble duplicate. Then I stopped my attempt and decided to do extra. Since we planned to start next event in 20 minutes, I tried lesser amount of cubes, generating a new set of scrambles for them. Another competitor who is very experienced had ended his attempt at this moment, and he scrambled for me. He and the third competitor didn't complain about scramble duplicates in their attempts.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 31, 2015

Finally some good news, in Michael Young's Delegate report for Nub Open 2015:

We implemented signing (we didn't have the staff for scramble checking), which was pretty effective, I think - I definitely caught myself once accidentally giving Matt Bahr scramble 4 instead of scramble 3 in 4x4. (I decided to tell the judge that this was technically the fourth scramble, so please put the score in the fourth line, which worked out.) It took us a while to make into a habit, but after about 5 scrambles of conscious effort, it became automatic. It definitely slowed down the competition a small amount (eg, a scramble for 3x3 might take 12 seconds rather than 10 seconds), but I think it's worth the time.

@timhabermaas
Copy link

There was at least one other scrambling incident at Frankfurt Cube Days. A competitor received the fifth scramble for his forth attempt and therefore complained about a duplicated scramble during his (actual) fifth attempt.

I believe most of these incidents will go unnoticed by the delegate since judge and scrambler are usually capable of resolving these mistakes on their own.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Mar 30, 2015

Report for MathSoc Open 2015 by Akash Rupela:

The biggest incident , During multi BLD attempt 2, the organiser said that he would scramble and that I should solve ( normally i scramble and dont take part because its the first event of day where barely any scrambler is available and I dont trust other people to scramble quickly and prevent delay during multi) . 30 minutes after Shivam Bansal (2011BANS02)'s attempt started, he called me and showed me that 2 of his cubes were scrambled the same. I immediately took the cube and gave the 13th scramble(he was doing 12) but I am sure it did waste about a minute for Shivam. He did not say he wanted to do a resolve when i asked. I think his result should not be converted to DNF since all he recieved was disadvantage and genuine external assistance. I told the organiser that he should relax a bit as he seemed too tired from day 1.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Mar 30, 2015

Report for Dvina 3.0 2015 by Ilya Tereshko:

We used laptop instead of paper for scrambling. At the end of the first day I forgot switch a group of Pyraminx and competitors of second group made 2-3 attempts before I got it.
Scrambler was as a competitor in first group and noticed the same easy scramble and gave me know about it. I switched scrambles and restart this group.
Some competitors of second group were unhappy, because they got nice singles. I apologized and they forgave me :-)

(i.e. we need to make sure that scramblers are always using the correct scramble group.)

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Mar 30, 2015

There was an extremely bad (and possibly intentional) incident at Phalsbourg Open 2015

In particular, out of the 10 scrambles received by the top two competitors (five each), it appears that 7 were incorrect.
The WDC was assigned to investigate; I don't have the results on hand.

Edit (2015-04-18): WDC Announcement

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Mar 30, 2015

Report for River Hill Winter 2015 by Felix Lee:

The second round of 3x3 was started with scrambles from heat 5 of 3x3 first round. Evan noticed this partway through the solves. We couldn't only give resolves to the people who were in heat 5 since other competitors were potentially helping during that time, so we had to restart the entire round. The proper scrambles generated for this round were used since they had not yet been opened and nobody had seen them prior.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Mar 30, 2015

Delegate report for Murcia 2015 by Luis:

Nothing special. Just to point something out, I'll mention that, like always, I was very selective with scramblers and became specially insistent with scramble checking. We only had one case of repeated scramble.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Mar 30, 2015

Williams Winter 2015 delegate report by Tim Reynolds:

There was one major incident. During the 3x3 finals, we had 4 competitors solving at a time. They stayed on stage for all 5 solves, and then we brought up the next 4 competitors. First competitors 9-12 went, then 5-8, then 1-4. On the third solve of the last group, Kevin Costello III got a 7.7x solve. Everyone cheered, but he immediately turned to me and said he had gotten the same scramble in the OH final. I had forgotten to switch the scrambles after the last event, and none of the first 8 competitors (including me) had noticed. So I announced that we were starting the finals over with the correct scrambles.

Unfortunately one of the competitors had already left. Fortunately, he had not competed in the OH finals, and so he had not already used these scrambles. I decided that the fairest thing was to keep his results, as he had received no advantage and was unaware of the error when he left. I didn't think it would be fair to him to disqualify his results.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Mar 30, 2015

Delegate Report for Guangzhou More Fun Site 2015 by Ming Zheng:

No repeated scrambles reported, since my staff members are quite familiar with the pre-signing system before scrambling.

(By the way, I'm no longer reporting every incident in this thread. Just ones that I think are more notable. This means there may be even more than this thread suggests.)

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Mar 30, 2015

Atlantic Open 2015 Delegate Report by Micah Stairs:

While I had originally intended to try using scramble checkers, I didn't have enough extra people to actually implement it (since we had so many new competitors, we did not have the largest pool of judges to work with). At the beginning of the day, I stressed to the scramblers (which was a team of 8 of the competitors) the importance of ensuring that the scrambles are done properly. So what happened is that everyone always checked their scrambles, and when two scramblers were at one table, they would sometimes check each other's scrambles. We did not have any scrambling issues whatsoever. There were of course many times that a puzzle needed to be solved and re-scrambled when mistakes were made, but we did not have any repeated scrambles or other such problems.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Apr 11, 2015

Delegate Report - Florida Spring 2015 by James LaChance:

3x3 Round 2. [redacted] had been judging all day, except for her group of 3x3. She had asked if she could scramble just for a change of pace (understandably so). The first half of the competitors were already done with solves 2-3 (and 1 competitor had 4 solves done) when she informed me that she had been giving everybody scramble 1, even for their 2nd and 3rd solves. I knew this wasn't the case, as I was in this group, and my 2nd solve was different than the first. She insisted she did. I told her this couldn't be possible as long as she was checking the scrambles properly. She claimed she couldn't have been checking them properly, but again insisted that she was only looking at scramble 1 the entire time. One competitors times did gradually get lower (they had 3 solves done), but several competitors claimed they didn't get the same scramble. This is an ultimate showcase of why scramble checkers are not only helpful, but necessary. I ended up making new scorecards, letting everybody keep their first result, and used a new scrambler from there on using the same scramble set. After talking with Kit Clement, he said I probably should have let them use one of the extra scrambles for their first solve. I agree that this would have been a much better choice. I still have the first set of scorecards for the round in case they need referenced. Please let me know if I made the right call, or if anything needs to change.

lgarron added a commit that referenced this issue May 18, 2015
lgarron added a commit that referenced this issue May 18, 2015
lgarron added a commit that referenced this issue May 18, 2015
@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jun 1, 2015

Another incident with very bad scrambles from the SLS Zawiercie 2015 Report by Piotr Kózka:

During the end of the round, a lot of competitors, including the fast and experienced ones, came to me and said, that their cubes were misscrambled. Some of them had wrong scrambles in all 5 solves. And they also told me, that some of the correct scrambles were much easier than the ones they got.
We have a lot of good skewb solvers in Poland, many of them at a comparable 5.xx - 6.xx seconds level, and the number of misscrambled cubes could have an impact on the places giving a promotion to the final round.
In my opinion it would be unfair to leave it that way and I decided to run the second round of skewb again. This time I divided the competitors into two groups, ensuring that in both of them there are experienced cubers. This time it went very smooth and without any problems. And we were only 15 minutes behind the schedule after the event.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jul 3, 2015

Tuks Winter 2015 Delegate Report by Donovan Hale:

There were no repeated scrambles since we used a scramble checker. The scramble station was partitioned off well, so we could lay the scrambled cubes out nicely and check for mistakes easily. A few mistakes were picked up and those puzzles were re-scrambled before being taken out to the stations.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jul 3, 2015

Cube for Cambodia 2015 (Melbourne) Delegates Report by Dene Beardsley:

As stated above we used scramble checkers throughout the day. A few of our more experienced competitors didn't take to it too well, but we basically had to tell them to suck it up. Tim tried to compile some data throughout the day on the number of mis-scrambles caught by the checker, but because he didn't tell anyone what he was up a lot of the numbers are rough estimates:
Pyra round 1: 12/300 = 4% mis-scrambled
5x5 round 1: 3/80 = 3.75%
4x4 round 1: 3/129 = 2.3%
3x3 round 1: 6/435 = 1.4%
Skb round 1: 1/148 = 0.7%
2x2 round 1: 1/385 = 0.3%
2x2 round 2: 2/120 = 1.7%
Overall, not a lot of mis-scrambles, but potentially a few issues avoided. We didn't hear of any issues throughout the day of repeat scrambles or mis-scrambles going out to competitors.

More details from Tim McMahon:

It's good to find that the number of miscrambles was low (0.3-4%). The scramble checkers for some of the second rounds and finals didn't record the number of miscrambles. Hopefully there were none, but I'm pretty sure that there were some given the number of miscrambles that were observed in earlier rounds.

I'd recommend having twice as many "trustworthy" scramble checkers as scramblers to avoid impacting the schedule. Some scramblers saw the scramble checker role as redundant, took it as a personal insult that anyone would check their work, and went as far as deliberately miscrambling during 2x2 Round 2 to see whether the checker would pick it up. One also tried to bypass the checker by placing scrambled puzzles back in a cover for a Runner to pick up.

Some scramblers insisted on lining up all the puzzles with the same scramble and checking them all at the same time. This worked well for the 1st scramble. It became problematic and annoying when scramblers insisted and whinged about the time spent checking 2-3 scrambled puzzles individually for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th scrambles instead of all at the same time. Competitors were up to different scrambles and I had to check the scorecard to make sure that the scrambler didn't accidentally perform the wrong scramble and then try to convince me to hide the mistake by grouping them together (e.g. Feliks is on the 2nd scramble, Dene is on 3rd, Ethan is on 2nd, but all are scrambled with the 2nd scramble because the scrambler wasn't paying attention and accidentally scrambled Dene's with the 2nd scramble again). There's room for improvement with the scramble checker role (e.g. practicing checking to build up the competency, as opposed to just placing a puzzle in a cover and assuming it looks correct after a quick glance).

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jul 22, 2015

From the Tuks Winter 2015 Delegate Report by Donovan Hale

There were no repeated scrambles since we used a scramble checker. The scramble station was partitioned off well, so we could lay the scrambled cubes out nicely and check for mistakes easily. A few mistakes were picked up and those puzzles were re-scrambled before being taken out to the stations.

@lgarron lgarron removed this from the 2015 milestone Jul 29, 2015
@Laura-O
Copy link
Member

Laura-O commented Jan 5, 2016

Something that hasn't been mentioned here is the use of a scrambler list, which is created before the competition and defines the scramblers for every single round and group.
Sébastien and me used such a list for several German competitions with a very positive outcome. As a result, other delegates have started to use scrambler lists as well.
Besides the fact that this assures that the scramblers are trustable, I also think it motivates many competitors. They see it as an honor to be on this list, so they want to do their job well.

So, as the use of scrambler checkers is not always assuring correctly scrambled cubes, this is another simple and easy to implement alternative.

@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Jan 5, 2016

This is the first I've heard of scrambler lists, but they sound like a good idea to me.

So, as the use of scrambler checkers is not always assuring correctly scrambled cubes, this is another simple and easy to implement alternative.

Can we unofficially gamify this and highlight people who've scrambled often without causing incidents?

@Laura-O
Copy link
Member

Laura-O commented Jan 6, 2016

Hm, sounds like a fun idea, but it's difficult to implement.
Making "no incidents" an indicator for good scramblers is probably unfair: doing 500 2x2 scrambles with one reported misscramble isn't worse than doing 20 5x5 scrambles without a misscramble.

@Claster
Copy link
Contributor

Claster commented Jan 6, 2016

This "scrambled without causing incidents" should read "scrambled without causing incidents that were caught", or even "scrambled without causing incidents that were caught during the competition" (as sometimes incidents arise after analyzing video footage at home). Now if you put it this way, it doesn't sound as cool achievement anymore :)

@Laura-O Laura-O added this to the Delegate/Organizer recommendations milestone Jun 26, 2016
@lgarron
Copy link
Member

lgarron commented Oct 19, 2016

Rubik's Cube Pune Open 2016 Delegate Report by Nikhil Mande:

A big incident here. The square-1 single national record was broken at this competition. The scrambler was a reliable person, and an ex-delegate who had shown up just for an hour to meet old friends. Because of this, I didn't bother checking whether the scramble was right or not. Later that night after the competition was over, I asked the competitor for the video which he gave me. The cubeshape was same, but the scramble wasn't. I also sent him the scramble to find out where the mistake might have been since I don't own a square-1 now. Within a couple of minutes, he pinged me back saying that somewhere in the scramble, a (0, -3) was done instead of a (0, 3). I'd be sad if the time is changed to a DNF. The actual scramble is below. (0, 2)/(-3, 0)/(0, 3)/(0, -3)/(-5, -2)/(2, 0)/(6, -3)/(-3, 0)/(-5, -3)/(0, -2)/(2, 0)/(-3,-2)/ Please give opinions on whether the time should stand or not.

I'm convinced that we need to institute mandatory scramble checking (or at least forcing the scrambler to sign off on the score card that they checked the scramble) until we get scramble accountability under control.
In this case, even a reliable person made a mistake, but it's a mistake that we could have guarded against.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Projects
No open projects
Development

No branches or pull requests

6 participants