This article is the final part of 3 part series analysing the new Play-off rule. If you have not read the earlier parts, I recommend you start with part 1 about the individual category. Part 2 talks about pairs and teams.

In the last two parts of this analysis I have looked in to what kind of results the new Play-off rule could produce. But with a big change like this the ultimate question is: is the new rule better than what we had before?

There obviously is no right answer to the question “is the new rule better than the old one”. There can be many justified opinions leaning both ways. I know there are many who think there should not be any kind of country rule to begin with. But you may be interested in my oppinion of the matter.

I personally think that the Play-off rule is better than the old rule but it is not without some downsides. Lets look at both it’s benefits and downsides.

Benefits

The main benefits of the Play-off rule are that it is more predictable, fair and balanced than the old rule. Let’s look into each of these aspects.

Predictability

The first big benefit of the Play-off rule is the flipped order in which time based/direct and country rule qualifiers are determined. With the old rule who qualified based on the country rule was determined firs and who qualified based on their time after. This created a lot of uncertainty amonst the competitors as it was hard to predict what placement would guarantee you qualified. With the Play-off rule everyone knows that if you are in the top 85 in the individual or pairs category or in the top 25 in teams, you have qualified and the Play-off rule won’t change that.

For people who are not direct qualifiers in their group there is more uncertainty as the Play-off rule qualifiers will officially be determined only after all the groups in first round have finished. But you can actually relatively easily follow if you are likely to qualify this way or not. To do if you should:

1. Know how you placed in your group.
2. Follow if anyone from your country qualifies directly. If they do, your country will not benefit from the Play-off rule and you cannot qualify.
3. If there are no direct qualifiers, see how others have placed. If someone has placed higher than you in their group, you will not benefit from the Play-off rule.
4. If no-one has placed above you, you will be the person from your country advancing with the Play-off rule.

It is good to note that in both individual and pairs categories there is just a 1,5 hours break between the final group in first round and the first group in semifinals. Because of this you should keep an eye on the results all the way through if you might be benefitting from the Play-off rule. If you would be competing in the first semifinal, there is very limited time to figure out if you are competing or not.

Fairness

Sometime last winter, before the new Play-off rule was published, I asked in my Instagram stories what would make the country rule feel fair for people in the community. This was in no way scientific sample but around 100 people answered my questions and it can give an idea of the sentiment in the community. From my small questionair two clear preferences emerged:

1. Country rule should be only used in the first round of competition (62% of 112 votes)
2. The number of qualification spots that can be determined with a country rule should be somewhere between 5% and 10% (28% and 53% of 83 votes)

The Play-off rule fits both of these preferences:

1. The rule is only used in the first round of competition in each category, not in the semifinals for inidivial and pairs categories.
2. In individual and pairs categories 5,5% of qualification spots (if we count that there would be 90 qualifiers without a country rule) have been reserved for Play-off qualifiers. In teams it is even lower with 4,8% of spots.

The final determination of how fair this new rule feels for competitiors and viewers can only be assessed after the competition, but with the data available, it seems more likely than before.

Balance

What I think makes this rule more balanced than the old one is the fact that no country can benefit from the rule more than once per category. And if a country already has direct qualifiers, it won’t benefit from it at all.

Because the old rule was applied separately for each group, this mean that many countries could benefit* from it several times or despite already having direct qualifiers in other groups. Below you can see the breakdown of how many times countries benefited more than once or also had direct qualifiers in different rounds.

Individual category:

• In first round
  • 14 countries with direct qualifiers benefited from the country rule
  • 5 countries benefited more than once
• In semifinal
  • 10 countries with direct qualifiers benefited from the country rule
  • 8 countries benefited more than once

Pairs category:

• In first round
  • 21 countries with direct qualifiers benefited from the country rule
  • 11 countries benefited more than once
• In semifinal
  • 3 countries with direct qualifiers benefited from the country rule
  • 1 country benefited more than once

In teams category all who qualified were direct qualifiers in 2024.

(* In this context benefitting means that a country got through representatives who would not have qualified if qualification was purely based on time. If a competitor placed in the top 35/50/60/90 of the group (depending on rules of the round) they were considerd a direct qualifier and not counted as benefitting from the country rule.)

Downsides

What are the downsides of the new Play-off rule? There is no one right answer to this question either but I can see mainly three possible downsides.

Not all spots get filled

The first and most notable downside is that it is possible and even likely that not all spots available in semifinals will be filled in individual and pairs categories. In my analysis individual category had 15 spots unfilled, and pairs category had 7. To some this may feel unfair, especially if they happen to place just below the cutoff for qualifying directly. And that is a valid feeling.

On the other hand writing a rule with this basic logic but including a solution to this issue would make the already complicated rule even more complicated.

Finding out if you qualified

The second downside is that competitors who end up qualifying with this rule need to wait fairly long (in individual category some even until the next day) to find out that they have qualified. This does create uncertainty and might lead to mixups where people are not aware that they have qualified.

This issue is unfortunately boosted by the competition schedule as there is just 1,5 hours between the last qualifying group and first semifinal in both individual and pairs categories. That means that the competitors from groups A and B who have waited the longest have the shortest time to learn that they have qualified as they would compete in semifinal 1.

In 2024 there were big issues with delays in publishing the competition results as well as the website crashing. If there are similar issues this year, it will make it even harder for people to learn in time they would be eligible to participate.

It is not purely ranking based

The third downside is a downside that will be there with any country rule: some competitors who would have qualified in a purely speed based ranking, will not qualify. As long as the WJPC wants to boost country representation in the competition, this is something that cannot be avoided. This rule manages the issue better than the previous rule, but it still exists.

There might be also other downsides that are not as obvious in advance but may rise during or after the competition. If they do, I will look into them after the championship.

Conclusions

The World Jigsaw Puzzle Federation clearly has an intent to boost country representation in the competition by creating a rule in that effect. The Play-off rule is the newest variation of this and very interesting one at that.

No variation of the country rule will ever be perfect. The Play-off rule still has it’s downsides. But I personally appreciate that the WJPF is working on improving how they implement the intent of oosting country representation.

The true effects of the Play-off rule – both in actual results and the reaction of the competitors and spectators – are yet to be seen but we will find them out soon. I will revisit the Play-off rule after the championship to see how it actually played out, and I will also ask for the opinions from the community.

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Note about inconsistensies in the rules

After publishing the first two parts of the analysis a fellow speed puzzler pointed out an inconsistency in the rules in both individual and pairs categories. In both categories competitors from two qualifying round groups are combined in each semifinal. This means that in both cagetories we have:

• 85 direct qualifiers per qualifying round group
• 170 direct qualifiers advancing to each semifinal

However, when we look at the rules for second round/semifinals, they mention a different number of direct qualifiers in each categoru (bold emphasis added by me):

• Individual: “maximum of 180 participants per group (165 by direct qualification and max 15 by play-off)”
• Pairs: “maximum of 180 pairs per group (160 by direct qualification and 20 by country play-off)”

In a nutshell, one section of the rules dictates that there will be 170 direct qualifiers but a later section states that there would be 5 or 10 fewer direct qualifier in each.

Why do these inconsistencies exist

These inconsistensies are clear result of the changes done to the rules in August. In August the number of groups in qualifying round was reduced in every category and as a consequence of that the number of qualifiers was adjusted. Prior to these changes both categories had the following conditions:

• competitors from 3 qualifying round groups advancing to each semifinal
• 55 direct qualifiers from each group
• 165 direct qualifiers advancing to each semifinal

It seems that when the rules for the qualifying round were updated, the section for semifinals was not updated along with the other sections of the rules.

If you want to see the older version of the rules, the rules page has been saved multiple times to the Internet Archive.

(Note: there seems to have been an inconsistency in the rules for pairs category also before the changes in August.)

How does this affect things

I can’t say for sure but it is obvious that the number of direct qualifiers will be the number stated in the earlier section of the rules. The most likely scenario is that the actual limit for Play-off qualifiers in each semifinal is 10, not 15 or 20. Based on the analysis this luckily should not change much with the qualification.

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Thank you for reading the analysis. Creating it is very much a labor or love and I hope to help others to form more informed stances on this somewhat controversial practice in Worlds. If you would like to share your thoughts of the Play-off rule or the analysis you can comment below or message me on Instagram.

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Photo by Jason Stevens