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quizbowl wrote:I always wondered - let's say you faced the contraption from one direction, let's say looking North to South, and wrote about it. If your partner built it from North to South, but the entire thing was meant to be facing South to North, would you lose points? The only thing I see here is that it would be rotated 180 degrees; is that a point deduction? And if so, would you lose points for each individual piece, or merely just a point for the overall rotation?

What you may want to do is come up with a relative north/south system: for my partner and I, no matter which direction we're actually facing, north is farthest from you, south is closest to you, east is to your right and west is to your left. That way we can use up and down as measurements of actual height off the table.

a realy good way to describe how to build something when the materials are legos is to use a coordinate plane
you work in layers from the bottom layer up
each lego little square is one coordinate point, so you list the coordinate point each piece belongs in

Use a common language, practice both, and know your partner. Our team came in second at nationals 2 years ago so I know what I'm saying is true.

Is the written part graded on it's quality of directions? I know that symbols other than the ones found on a keyboard are not allowed, but other than that, are there any "limitations"? I've done the event three times and have felt the need to describe things in an eloquent, fancy way, however I think that my partner (who is a really close friend) understands me better when I describe things in the funny/silly way I normally would. Is that allowed? Also, does neatness count? I always write in pen to prevent myself from spending too much time to erase mistakes, so I always end up having a ton of things crossed out on my paper. One more thing- how much does time contribute to the score? I know that time doesn't count for the writer, but for the doer, how much does time contribute to the final score? My partner and I are both perfectionists and like to take as much time as possible to make sure things are perfect, however we have not done very well in WIDI so far... From what my partner has told me, her final product looks pretty close to the original, but we still haven't done as well as we would like to.....

The only thing that is counted in terms of the writing is the violations listed in the rules. Other than that, be as non-eloquent and illegible as you want (though make sure it's readable). Time is usually used only as a tiebreaker, so if a whole bunch of teams get it perfect, the builder that finishes first usually wins.

There should never be any real "eloquence" in your writing. The point of the event is to be able to communicate in the most efficient way possible, and any excess words detract from that goal. I think that anyone who has competed in WIDI will agree that time is always the factor that determines your success and that any sort of flowery language will take much longer to write than simplified instructions. That being said, WIDI is easily the flukiest event in science olympiad and it"s rare (in my experience) to see teams have consistent success.

hmcginny wrote: That being said, WIDI is easily the flukiest event in science olympiad and it"s rare (in my experience) to see teams have consistent success.

Heh, yeah. This past year was my second year doing it, and I've had decent places... until state this year when I'm pretty sure me and my partner were DQ'd with no idea why. Regardless, in terms of eloquence? You learn to not do it pretty fast after failing to finish writing at competitions. It's better to have extra time and write redundant instructions in a different way than you did before than to take time to be extremely precise, imo.

Haha, at regionals I spent 15 minutes writing, about 3 minutes checking over my work, 4 minutes undoing the structure and rebuilding it based on my instructions then the rest of the time playing with the legos

I don't think you're actually supposed to touch the structure >.>

Eh, most of the time they tell you not to, or someone asks about it... At my regionals last year we were allowed to move it, but not this year.