Imagine a competition where someone and his friend show up. They each can solve the cube in 9 minutes. If they have an average of 5, then they've consumed and hour and half of a stackmat station. You can a little bit get around this by saying the first round is best of 1, times of less than 5 minutes can continue to the next round, which is a combined average with the previous round. But this has the downside of wasting a round (9m-9o) to weed out these people. Also, 9p and 9g2 could potentially conflict. When you have 10 stations, it's not too big of a deal, but this might affect a small competition to the point where other side events could have to be cancelled.

Hi Bryan, [quote:29lusb9h]Imagine a competition where someone and his friend show up. They each can solve the cube in 9 minutes. If they have an average of 5, then they've consumed and hour and half of a stackmat station.[/quote:29lusb9h] I think 8d) and 8e) prevent this. 8d) Competitions may have time limits per round of an event, to make sure that the time schedule can be followed. 8e) If during a round a competitor does not solve within the time limit, then his solve may (courtesy of main judge) be stopped and disqualified by the judge. The main judge decides whether the competitor may continue the round, for example if the time was exceeded because of a puzzle defect. [quote:29lusb9h]Also, 9p and 9g2 could potentially conflict.[/quote:29lusb9h] I think they don't conflict. If all competitors in a combined final proceed to the final stage of that round, then basically it is not a combined final anymore but a (direct) final. Thanks, Ron

But how would 8d be enforced? Just tell everyone else they get DNS? 8e can be used a bit. I guess what I was thinking of is another clause that's similar to 8e, but states that a user could not proceed if their combined time from their previous solves exceeded X minutes or something. This way we can limit a competitor to 10 minutes total. Sure, we could also do this by stating that all solves must be under 2 minutes, but the disadvantage there is that if some new person gets a 2:01, they could in theory not even be allowed a second solve. This was the extremely slow solvers could be stopped (or perhaps given the option to complete the rest of their solves later, if there's time and it's obvious they won't be proceeding) and the only slightly slow to still do a few solves.

Hi Bryan, [quote:1wk19270]But how would 8d be enforced? Just tell everyone else they get DNS?[/quote:1wk19270] Before the competition the organisation team announces time limits per event. The standard time limits are 10 minutes (Stackmat time), but for example the team announces 6 minutes for 5x5 cubes. At 6 minutes during the solve the judge may end the solve. Then judge asks main judge whether competitor can have more attempts. If main judge thinks that the competitor cannot solve the puzzle within 6 minutes, then main judge decides that competitor will not have any more attempts in the round. So in your example instead of 5 times 9 minutes, the competitor only takes 1 time 6 minutes. Thanks, Ron

Ah...OK. I was reading the "time limits per round" to mean something like: "Qualification rounds go from 9-10:30, and stop at 10:30 sharp", which is why I was confused. But even with the pre-announcing, it's one of those things that still makes it difficult to predict. Because if you announce a 6 minute limit, you'll always get that guy that gets 5 5:30 solves. Oh well, I guess that's Murphy's Law.