According to Rules of the Road, a team needs to solve 2 challenges at a tournament:

  • one of the seven team challenges
  • an instant challenge (or IC)


All the teams solving a specific team challenge at their level (eg Elementary, Middle, Secondary) need to solve the same IC.


The tournament schedule is worked out with this in mind.  The team needs to be in their team challenge room at the time they are scheduled for team challenge and in their instant challenge room a the time they are scheduled to solve their IC.


Since the IC a challenge-level will solve is unknown to the team, in general, they do not know the IC room where they will solve their IC.  The team arrives at instant challenge before their performance time.  The Appraisers running instant challenge need to shepherd the teams to the right IC room at the right time.


As a result, each of the teams at the tournament goes through a process similar to this:


  1. they arrive at the Instant Challenge area 20-30 minutes before their scheduled time to check-in
  2. once checked-in, they go to a holding area where they wait their turn to enter their IC room
  3. an Appraiser collects the team and brings them to the correct IC Room
  4. the team solves the IC
  5. the team is escorted by an Appraiser to an area called Chill-out where they can do any post challenge processing
  6. the team id now done and can leave instant challenge


The purpose of IC Tracking is to help Appraisers shepherd teams through the IC process. It defines a series of steps that correspond the process above and allows you to move teams through these steps.  The available steps are:


Unknown => Checked-In => Holding => In-IC-room => Chill-out => Done


You don't have to use all the steps, but for the steps you do use, IC Tracking can identify where each team at your tournament is at the current time.


  • Unknown (required): indicates IC has not seen the team yet
  • Checked-In (optional): indicates the team has checked in
  • Holding (optional): indicates the team is in the holding area
  • In-IC-room (optional): indicates the team is in an IC room
  • Chill-out (optional): indicates the team is in the Chill-out area
  • Done (required): indicates the team has completed instant challenge


As the list above indicates, a number of the steps in the list are optional.  Work with the people running instant challenge at your tournament to see which steps will work best for your tournament.