To reduce the risk of unauthorised access to scrambles, I suggest that the WCA delegate should bring the scrambles to the competition. Furthermore, I suggest that the WCA Board, or someone appointed by the Board, generates the scrambles and provides the WCA delegate with them. Pdf-files would be fine. As a spin-off, all scrambles would be in the hands of the WCA for future reference, and they might be included in the WCA database after the competition so everyone may have access to them. /Anders

Excellent idea. I think that it has been discussed before to make it mandatory to publish scrambles after a competition, so having it done by the WCA sounds like a great idea to me.

As you probably know, I'm a WCA deleguate... But I'm a fast cuber too. And I really prefer to generate the scramble the day of the competition (as I always did until now). That's not for me, but for others. If I get a record or something good, I don't want anybody to have 1/100 of a doubt.

That's really not a bad idea, especially if you are lucky enough to be a world record candidate. Competition scrambles in the United States are currently generated by Leyan Lo for West Coast competitions, Bob Burton for East Coast competitions, and one of the two for anything in between. It's been working pretty well this way. Bob will take no insult to the fact that he will probably not set another world record, and so his being a WCA Delegate and competitor instills enough trust to ensure the integrity of the scrambles. The same goes for Leyan Lo, who is of decent speed, but no longer world class in speed solve or blindfold solving. Would the idea be to have specific people delegated as scramble generators? We can simply make these the WCA Delegates? Scrambles could be generated and mailed to the competition in a sealed envelope not to be opened until the start of the competition?

I don't see any reason why the delegate couldn't generate them on their own. It would be nice if Cube Explorer, and the other scramblers, could be told, "Generate me 10 unique sets of 3x3x3, 4 sets of 2x2x2, 2 sets of 4x4x4", and just have them in a single file that I could then print and seal. That file can be included with the results. Another thing I do on my scrambles is to generate a few extras on each sheet for timer malfunctions, but there have been so few, that I'm thinking next time I would generate individual make-up scrambles and open them when needed. I'm not sure we'd need to use physical mail, but I think the delegate could just generate them on their own. Plus, I know which events I could potentially add, so while I may generate some Square-1 scrambles, I would know not to generate any feet scrambles. That's another advantage of not mailing them.

@BryanLogan Don't you mix the roles of the WCA Delegate and the Organiser? The WCA Delegate should not add any event; it is the organiser's task.

[quote="anders":31u4q22q]@BryanLogan Don't you mix the roles of the WCA Delegate and the Organiser? The WCA Delegate should not add any event; it is the organiser's task.[/quote:31u4q22q] OK, for my competitions, communication between the organizer and the WCA delegate occurs constantly. So if the organizer even thinks about adding an event, it's the like delegate already knows and can just generate the scrambles, instead of having to contact Bob or Leyan to generate some.

We normally generate the scrambles at the beginning of a round. This is the most secure way to know noone knows the scrambles upfront. Most of the time I oversee the generation of the scrambles from a distance. Just to be sure the scrambles are new and random. After the printing I immediately refresh/remove the window with the scrambles. For some competitions (that I did not attend) I actually received the scrambles by e-mail days before the competition! This gives me such a bad feeling. These scrambles could go anywhere, intentionally or unintentionally. Ron