Welcome to the Online Weekly FTO Competition!

A friendly unofficial online competition for a new popular puzzle event: the Face-Turning Octahedron!
This page will give details about the competition format itself, the rules, and how scoring works.

Anyone in the world is open to participate, no matter your skill level, solving method, or experience with the puzzle
(but you must be able to time your solves within the stackmat limit of ten minutes).
The current format consists of two rounds: a first round and a final round. The top eight competitiors from
the first round advance to the final round.

This competition is currently closed. It may return in the future, but will most likely be presented in a new format.
Thank you all so much to those who participated and supported the event, couldn't have done it alone!

The competition will take place each week on Sunday, throughout the months of 2020, at 10:00 AM PST (1:00 PM EST, 6:00PM GMT) unless stated otherwise.
The first round will be open for one hour; all solves must be timed and submitted before the round ends. A link to submit your results
will be made available on the scrambles sheet once a round opens.
The final round of the competition will run for one hour at 12:00 PM PDT after the first round closes.

REGULATIONS

Solves will be followed/conducted as per WCA regulation for official events. Either a stackmat or keyboard timer are acceptable.
15 seconds of inspection are timed before starting the solve (using another timer source). Legal timer starts/stops apply for stackmat
and keyboard starts/stops must be done without holding the puzzle (penalty: +2 seconds). Any other penalties to a solve are identical
to those in the WCA regulations. Examples of certain incidents which may come up during a solve specific to FTO:

-The threshold for moves is at 60 degrees of a layer rotation. Penalty: +2 seconds for being one move away from solved, DNF for being two or more moves away from solved.

-If a single corner is accidentally twisted 90 degrees, it will be apparent and hence should be fixed immediately when it happens.

-If the puzzle is later found to be unsolvable, but can be made solvable by twisting a single corner piece 180 degrees, this may be fixed as many times as it happens but must not be done intentionally.

-If a single triangle piece is not fully placed after the timing of the solve has ended (i.e. it has popped out of the puzzle), there is NO penalty (it has only one colored face).

SCRAMBLES

Once a round opens, scrambles will appear on the sheet named "Scrambles." The scrambling notation is the same as that of
qqtimer/csTimer but with Ben's notation (image/link provided in the sheet) and are each 30 moves long by default. The scrambles
must be followed by all competitors; ensure you scramble correctly. If you achieve a suspiciously fast result you may be asked to show
video evidence or explain part of your solution(s) to ensure the scramble follows it.

Important: if you are a first time competitor in the competition and do not currently show up on the FTO rankings leaderboard,
you are required to submit video evidence of at least one of your solves in the round. You will not show up on the results page otherwise.

Once a round is over, each competitor's average of five solves (calculated as per WCA standard) and best single solve will be displayed.
The placing of competitors will be determined by their resulting averages.

Competitors also have the chance to earn points throughout the month! The new points system works as follows:
-Improving your first round average compared to your results in the previous competition (excluding monthly changes) earns 1 point each.
-Improving your final round average compared to your first round average in the same competition earns 1 point.
-A first place podium in a week's competition earns 4 points, second place earns 2, and third place earns 1 point.
Points will be tracked and displayed throughout the month after each subsequent competition (points are cumulative). After the month, the
three competitors with the most points will represent the final podium of that month.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the competition, please email benpuzzles@gmail.com