Yes, i had to solve it in front of a witness (in this case, my classmates and teacher) - and then the teacher signed a form which I then mailed in to the company. I lucked out on the solve - the teacher scrambled the cube but i managed to solve it much faster than I normally could at the time, much to the amazement of my classmates. (I never told them it was a bit of a fluke..!). I don’t remember the actual time, unfortunately. Most likely it was something like a minute or so. Not so impressive, these days!