Fewest-moves competitions are not attractive because: - There's nothing to see. - The audience fells asleep after 2 minutes. - Results come late, and they're only numbers on a paper. - Competitors cube alone. - It's not a show. - I like them as a competitor only. Otherwise, they're sooo booooring! That's why the following format could be very interesting: - 2 competitors at a time on the scene with a judge (8 competitors and 4 judges is possible to speed up qualification rounds). - They're given the same scramble. - They must solve their cube in a minimum of moves. (1) Judge tells competitor 1 "OK". (2) Competitor 1 has T seconds to make a move. A face turn that can be clearly seen by the judge. (3) Judge tells competitor 2 "OK". (4) Competitor 2 has T seconds to make a move. (5) If a competitor has solved the cube, he wins. If both have, it's a draw. Otherwise, go to (1). When a competitor takes a long to decide, it's an advantage for the opponent too. Strategy?.. The principle of elimination would make the event attractive. There are some rough edges like penalties (when time goes out, or if the judge things a competitors performed 2 moves instead of 1) and scrambles (when identical scrambles, should we ask for competitor 2 to start with a different first move for example?), but I think it could work. For it to be a success, we would need 2 things: - People interested in fewest-moves solving (not just speed demons and blind guys). - Enough time in some competitions (but I think that's not the problem given the time allowed to multi-bld events!). With T=15s, and given that the last moves are much faster, a solve would last about 10 minutes. With 16 competitors and 4 rounds (16, 8, 4, 2), we could have a nice knock-out competition in less than 1 hour, a competition on scene B that does not require stackmats. Variants can be imagined, like having 3 competitors instead of 2. Or qualification after 2 wins to leverage the luck factor. Or a lot more competitors together and keep the best half each round. Etc.

Nice idea but i guess this will take way too long to complete if there are many contestants. And how to set up the knockout format if the number of participants is not a power of 2? Walkovers in first round? Hmmm ... I do agree that fewest moves is boring to watch. But with all respeect so can also be said about standard chess, unless you are a true fan and have some knowledge of chess -Per

Have the same contest as before, but when the competitors are done, have all of them come to a table and have a judge say "Turn", wait 5 seconds, "Turn", wait 5 seconds, etc until someone holds up their solved cube. Once that's done, a judge comes over to verify their solution and length (to make sure they didn't sneak in two moves), and declare the winner.

this sounds like it should be fun. its like speed fewest moves. i think maybe we can incorporate a chess timer into this as well. that way you can have a given amount of time in order to finish the solve. maybe 10 minutes. thats one move every 10 secs and an average solve of 60 moves.

If you have a number of competitors that is not a power of 2, you could seed competitors who are already ranked and give them a BYE. So if you have 14 competitors, and 3 are already ranked, the 2 that are ranked the highest will get to skip the first round. Alternatively, you could have some sort of qualification round, but I don't know how that would work. Sincerely, Edward