WDC action on a misscrambling incident
Dear speedcubing community,
The WCA Disciplinary Committee (WDC) has recently concluded an investigation regarding a series of misscrambles which occurred at Singapore Championship 2023. Due to the high profile nature of this incident, and the public attention that it has received, the WDC would like to publish some details publicly.
The WDC opened an investigation into this matter after being contacted by the Delegates of the competition, following several high-level cubers achieving extremely good times on incorrect scrambles. The Delegates were able to match these scrambles as coming from the same individual, whom they also reported was ignoring requests to not scramble, and were able to create a list of other attempts that may have been potentially affected by this individual. After using video evidence provided by several competitors, the WDC was able to check several of these attempts.
After reviewing these attempts, the WDC has come to the conclusion that the individual responsible for these misscrambles displayed extreme negligence in regard to ensuring that the scrambles were correct, and also ignored the requests of the delegates during the competition. The WDC was not able to identify any malicious intent from this individual, but regardless of intent the WDC finds it extremely concerning that such widespread misscrambling occurred.
Due to the reasons above, the WDC has issued a 6 month ban from competing for this individual.
The WDC would like to remind everyone of the importance of ensuring that everyone receives correct scrambles (with the exceptions of 4g1) as well as following the requests of WCA Delegates at competitions. While we realize many competition duties such as scrambling are carried out by volunteers, the WCA also recognizes that scramble accuracy is an integral part of ensuring fair and equal conditions at all WCA competitions.
Best regards
Nicholas McKee
On Behalf of the WCA Disciplinary Committee