World Cube Association Competition regulations, history of changes

April 9, 2008: Final version for 2008, with the following changes:
Main changes:

• All puzzle and sticker brands are allowed. WCA is brand neutral. [fairness]
• Procedure for adding and removing events. Needed to handle new events. [fun]
• Solved State: misalignment may now be halfway to the next face, but only one group of adjacent slices. Easier for judging resp. fairer for competitors. [fairness, clarity]
• New starting procedure: puzzle is not covered anymore after inspection. Reduces interaction between judge and competitor. Reduces chance of judging errors in the procedure. [fairness, organisation]
• Multiple Blindfolded solving: order of results has changed to number of solved puzzles minus number of unsolved puzzles. Time per cube is 10 minutes (was 15 minutes for first 6 cubes). [compromise]
• Blindfolded solving: a sheet of paper (or similar object) is kept between face of competitor and puzzle. [cheating prevention]
• Scrambling: Cube Explorer must be used for Rubik's Cube scramble sequences with better randomness of positions [fairness], and Stefan Pochmann's scrambler for Megaminx scramble sequences [organisation].
• Definition of a competitors area where competitors must wait. [smoother procedures, cheating prevention]
• Definition of qualification rounds. Needed to handle large numbers of competitors for an event. [organisation]
• No B Finals anymore. Instead of B final it is better to have more competitors proceed to the next round. [clarity]
• For one-handed solving it is now allowed to use both hands during inspection. Two handed inspection does not influence the result. [fairness]
• More responsibilities to WCA delegate, fewer to organisation team. WCA delegate is more qualified for this. [fairness]
• For blindfolded solving the competitor must remove the cover from the puzzle. Formerly the judge did that. [organisation]
• Added a penalty for Rubik's Magic. [similarity to other puzzles]
• Only Generation 2 and higher timers are allowed. [standardisation]
• Some optional regulations to manage large competitions. [organisation]

Detailed changes:

• Art. 1b2 added. There must be a copy of the regulations available at the competition. [fairness]
• Art. 1c5 added. Results must be sent by WCA delegate. [fun]
• Art. 1f1, 4b, changed. Changed 'Scramble' to 'Scramble sequence'. [terminology]
• Art. 1g3, textual change. [grammar]
• Art. 1h/1h1, rewritten. [clarity]
• Art. 2c/2d, changed. Added date of birth to registration information. Membership registration. [organisation]
• Art. 2e1a, new. Definition of countries. Non political definition. [fairness]
• Art. 2k6, new. Suspension of competitors. [fairness]
• Art. 2t, new. Moved from 10a and changed slightly. Competitors should be familiar with the WCA regulations. [clarity]
• Art. 3m, changed. Removed the examples. [redundancy]
• Art. 3m, new. All puzzle and sticker brands are allowed. WCA is brand neutral. [fairness]
• Art. 4d, textual changes. [clarity]
• Art. 4f, changed. Scrambling for Rubik's Cube with better distribution of position [fairness] and Megaminx easier scrambling. [organisation]
• Art. 6b1, added. In some competitions the ceremony was held in another location, late at night. [fairness]
• Art. 7h, added. [smoother procedures, cheating prevention]
• Art. 8a7, changed. At least Generation 2 timers are required. [standardisation]
• Art. 9f6, changed. Maximum 'best of' is 'best of 3'. [fairness]
• Art. 9g3, added. Combined Round is counted as one round. Needed because there is a maximum number of rounds per event. [clarity]
• Art. 9k, changed. There is always a limit of competitors that can be handled by the organisation team. [organisation]
• Art. 9o1/9o2, added. [fairness]
• Art. 9q, removed. Instead of B final it is better to have more competitors proceed to the next round. [clarity]
• Art. 9r, added. Needed to handle large numbers of competitors for an event. [organisation]
• Art. 10a. See 2a5.
• Art. 10e. changed acceptable misalignment (was: next piece, now: halfway to next face) and reduced allowed number of parallel moves to 1 (example: UD on Rubik's Cube would be considered 1 penalty, now it is considered DNF).
• Art. 10f. new pictures. [clarity]
• Art. 10g. changed. clarified the text about elevation of Magic tiles. [clarity]
• Art. 10g1. Added a penalty for Rubik's Magic. [similarity to other puzzles]
• Art. 11c, removed. [redundancy]
• Art. A1b, added text to have stopwatch in addition to Stackmat. [clarity]
• Art. A2e, changed "hand or object" to "an object". [fairness]
• Art. A3a1, changed 15 seconds to maximum of 15 seconds. [clarity]
• Art. A3b1, changed OK to READY. Already common habit. [clarity]
• Art. A3b1, changed 'reasonable period' to 'one minute'. [clarity]
• Art. A3d2, changed STOP to GO. [already common habit]
• Art. A3d2, changed 15 to 13. New starting procedure, it takes around 2 seconds to start the timer. [organisation]
• Art. A3d3, removed the time of inspection. [new starting procedure]
• Art. A3d4, removed. New starting procedure. [redundancy]
• Art. A3e, removed. New starting procedure. [redundancy]
• Art. A3e1, removed. New starting procedure. [redundancy]
• Art. A4a, removed. New starting procedure. [redundancy]
• Art. A4d, removed. New starting procedure. [redundancy]
• Art. A4d1, renamed to A4d added text about checking the green light of the timer. New starting procedure. [clarity]
• Art. A4d2, renamed to A4d1 and textual changes. New starting procedure. [clarity]
• Art. A4d3, renamed to A4d2 and textual changes. New starting procedure. [clarity]
• Art. A4e, textual change. [grammar]
• Art. A5b, added 'other than the surface'. [clarity]
• Art. A6e, textual clarification, because manipulating has several meanings. [clarity]
• Art. A6g, textual clarification, because manipulating has several meanings. [clarity]
• Art. A6h, textual clarification, because manipulating has several meanings. [clarity]
• Art. B1b, removed. [redundancy]
• Art. B1c, removed. [redundancy]
• Art. B1e, removed, prevent problems in case competitors solve faster than expected. [clarity]
• Art. B2, copied part of Inspection phase for normal solving. Needed because the phase Starting The Solve for normal solving has changed. [clarity]
• Art. B2, rewritten [clarity]
• Art. B2d, competitor must remove cover from puzzle. [organisation]
• Art. B3a, removed. [redundancy]
• Art. B3a, added. It was unclear whether the competitor could hold the cube while donning the blindfold. [clarity]
• Art. B4b, textual clarification, because manipulating has several meanings. [clarity]
• Art. B4d, textual clarification, because manipulating has several meanings. [clarity]
• Art. B5c, textual clarification, because manipulating has several meanings. [clarity]
• Art. C1, changed. Using two hands during inspection is allowed. Two handed inspection does not influence the result. [fairness]
• Art. C1b1, changed. Use of the surface during the repairing of a puzzle defect. [fairness]
• Art. C1c, changed. Added 'During the solve'. [clarity]
• Art. D2, removed. [redundancy]
• Art. E2a, print of scramble should also include a picture of scrambled state. [fairness]
• Art. H1, change of the format of the results. [fairness]
• Art. H1, change of the maximum time per cube. [organisation]
• Art. H1a, the selected number of puzzles must be kept secret. [fairness]
• Art. H1b1, added. It was not written clearly what should happen if competitors take more time than allowed. [clarity]

February 1, 2007: Final version for 2007, with the following changes:

• Overall, added Penalties where a judge must give penalties.
• Overall, added Content section with links to the articles.
• Art. 1, rewritten to make the tasks of the officials clearer.
• Art. 1h, in case there are not enough judges/scramblers, then a second option is added where competing is done in groups, with groups scrambling/judging the other groups.
• Art. 1i, the WCA delegate and main judge (per event) must be announced to the competitors. To make sure everyone knows who are responsible.
• Art. 2a4, new: WCA board may ban persons. In that case a person cannot compete in a competition.
• Art. 2d, added that name/country/events/results can be published without consent of the competitor.
• Art. 2j/2k, disqualification for the rest of the competition is now a task of the leader of the organisation team, used to be a main judge's task.
• Art. 2l-2r, changed main judge to leader of the organisation team.
• Art. 2k2, changed 'judges' to 'officials'.
• Art. 2s, new: For competitors with hearing disabilities, judges may replace the vocal instructions with hand signals.
• Art. 2t, new: For competitors with physical disabilities, judges may give help with starting and stopping the timer.
• Art. 3a, added definition of cube puzzles.
• Art. 3d, removed "generally available". Some puzzles may not be generally available in all countries.
• Art. 3j, small textual change to make the text easier.
• Art. 4b, added that the scrambles must be kept secret.
• Art. 4d, changed 'or blue or darkest face' to 'darkest connecting face'.
• Art. 5b2, removed 'courtesy of the judge' from the part about intentionally making the puzzle easier to solve.
• Art. 6d, organisation teams of competitions should have (at least) certificates for all category winners.
• Art. 8a5, competitions must now have at least 12 competitors to be accepted as official.
• Art. 8a9 (former), removed the article: "There must be an audience other than the competitors." Competitions should be open to the public, but you can never guarantee that there will be an audience.
• Art. 8f, new: If the WCA regulations are not followed correctly during a competition, then the WCA board may declare the competition, specific events or specific solves unofficial.
• Art. 9, rewritten articles to describe the official events.
• Art. 9a/d, added 3x3x3 Cube Multiple Blindfolded as an official event.
• Art. 9a/d, removed Siamese Cube, Rainbow Cube from the events. Not enough interest from the community for these events. For future versions we have to come to a method of deciding which events should be official.
• Art. 9e, other events may be held during a competition, but will be unofficial and therefore not part of the official results of the competition.
• Art. 9f, extended to describe how the results are compared.
• Art. 9f2, added that times over 10 minutes are measured in seconds.
• Art. 9g, described combined rounds.
• Art. 9i1, new: Regional records are recognised for best national/continental/world results.
• Art. 9i2, new: Regional records are recognised at the end of a round. If a record is broken twice or more in a round, only the latter is recognised.
• Art. 9i3, new: If the regulatons for an event are changed, then the old regional records stand until they are broken under the new regulations.
• Art. 11, new article about incidents. Copied most of the content from former other articles. New content: no photograph or video analysis allowed.
• Art. 11f, new: The main judge, organisation team and WCA delegate must not support their decisions with video or photograph analysis.
• Art. A to G: added article numbers. Some small rewrites of the text to make the regulations fit better to the articles.
• Art. A1a): explicitly added that all solves must be under 10 minutes (which is the time limit for StackMat). Some events can have a stopwatch time though that exceeds 10 minutes.
• Art. A3): before inspection and before solving the judge must call OK, and then competitor must call OK before judge uncovers puzzle.
• Art. A3): Old situation: 2 seconds overtime (penalty), 5 seconds overtime (disqualification). New situation: 1 seconds overtime (penalty), 3 seconds overtime (disqualification).
• Art. A7 (Administration): judge must sign score sheet, competitor must sign score sheet if result is DNF or if a penalty is given.
• Art. A7 (Administration): judge calls OK (correct solve), PENALTY (penalty), NO FINISH (DNF).
• Art. A7b1, added how penalty must be written. [clarity]
• Art. B4b, removed the interaction between judge and competitor after donning the blindfold. [simplicity]
• Art. H, new article for new official event: Multiple Blindfolded.

July 20, 2006: Final version for 2006 v2, with the following changes:

• Overall: The use of the words 'must', 'must not', 'should', 'should not' and 'may' now complies to RFC 2119.
• Overall: Removed the No Inspection event.
• Overall: Removed trademark of Rubik where the trademark was not needed.
• Art. 1g: Simpler text. Added an extra attempt in case of problems with the judging.
• Art. 2e1: New. Competitors may represent the country that they have the nationality of.
• Art. 2e2: New. Competitors with more than one nationality may change representing a country in their first competition of a calendar year.
• Art. 2f: Small textual change to make the regulations simpler.
• Art. 2k: Changed 'any' to 'a' twice.
• Art. 3f: Changed the size of Rubik's Game Cube to 1.5 mm (which is the thickness of Mefferts tiles).
• Art. 3j: No elevated pieces allowed. Possible abuse for blindfolded solving.
• Art. 3l: New. Puzzles must have at most one logo.
• Art. 4e: Removed. No possibility anymore to ask during registration for a different color to scramble.
• Art. 5a: Removed the text about defects making it harder to solve.
• Art. 5b4: Removed the text that internal markings were allowed.
• Art. 5b5: Non functional part can be more than one part.
• Art. 5c/d: Puzzle defects do not give a right to an extra attempt.
• Art. 7e: Removed the word 'reasonable' for noise level.
• Art. 8a6: Competitions should be announced at least a month before the competition starts.
• Art. 8a8: Changed 'open' to 'accessible'.
• Art. 9j: New. Events must have at most four rounds.
• Art. 9k: New. Events with up to 100 competitors must have at most three rounds.
• Art. 9l: New. Events with up to 16 competitors must have at most two rounds.
• Art. 9m: New. For each round of an event, at least one competitor must not proceed to the next round.
• Art. 9n: New. Events may have a B final, open to competitors who did not make it to the final. B finals may be limited to competitors who made it to the semi final.
• Art. 10i: New. Explanation of DNS and DNF.
• Inspection: If the pieces of the puzzle are not fully aligned, then the competitor may fix it, only to align the faces (for cubes the manipulation must not exceed limits given in article 10f).
• Scrambling: Added that the judge should do a quick inspection whether the puzzle is thoroughly scrambled.
• During the solve: This applies also to the inspection phase.
• Ending the solve: Rewritten. No need to stop with fingers anymore. 2 second penalties instead of disqualification for some violations.
• Ending the solve (Blindfolded): Rewritten to make it clearer. No additions or changes.
• Overall: Changed 'cube' to 'cube puzzle' where necessary.
• Overall: Changed 'metrics' to 'metric'.
• One-handed solving: removed the word 'unintentionally'.
• Fewest moves solving: unlimited stickers allowed. Small textual changes.

June 11, 2006: Final version for 2006, with the following changes:

• Overall: Added the Czech translation.
• Overall: Removed the beta of the Korean translation.
• Overall: Added the Pyraminx scrambling program by Syoji Takamatsu.

January 13, 2006: Final version for 2006, with the following changes:

• Overall: Added the WCA logo.
• Overall: Changed the style sheet so that the regulations are better printable.
• Overall: Changed preinspection to inspection.
• Overall: All lines in the articles 1-10 have an article number.
• Art. 1e: Clarification about judges and scramblers competing in a round.
• Art. 5: No extra attempts anymore for puzzle defects in 'Average of 5' rounds.
• Art. 5: Textual changes for clarification.
• Art. 8: WCA delegates must approve all events and formats of the competition before the competition starts. This is to prevent special events without the normal competition pressure.
• Art. 8d/e: Changed 'event' in 'round of an event'. The main judge decides whether the competitor can continue the round. Special case is when competitor had a puzzle defect.
• Art. 9: Added preferred formats for all events.
• Art. 9: Rubik's 3x3x3 Cube One-handed, Rubik's 4x4x4 Cube, Rubik's 5x5x5 Cube now are also 'Average of 5' format.
• Art. 9: Events may be held only once per competition.
• Art. 9: If an event is held, then all competitors of the competition may participate in that event. Removed the minimum number of 2 competitors per event.
• Art. 9i: All competitors must compete in each round during the same time frame. This is added because in the past some competitors had to compete at another moment because of personal circumstances, which did not give the same conditions for all competitors. In similar cases in the future, it may be up to the competition organiser to organise a round in a suitable time frame for all competitors.
• Art. 10: New article, moved from the procedure part. Some slight textual changes are added for clarification. Some new pictures.
• Art. 10e/f: New description on misaligned slices, hopefully this will be clearer to all readers. In general you could say: "if one or more parallel slices are misaligned, then it is a 2 second penalty.".
• Art. A: No explicit mention anymore of the judge having to check the scramble. This is both impractical and double work. Of course the judge should do a quick visual check whether the puzzle is scrambled at all.
• Art. C: Textual change: of course the puzzle may touch the surface before and after inspection phase.
• Art. C: Addition about moving after the puzzle has fallen.
• Art. D: Explicit mention of sitting on surface or sitting in a chair.
• Art. E: Extra stickers are allowed for Fewest Moves.
• Art. G: New article: Rubik's 3x3x3 Cube No inspection.
• Art. H: New article: Rubik's Magic (and similar puzzles).

Changes that were not accepted:

• Article 10: No penalties anymore, either solved or not solved. This may be a change for the 2007 version.
• Article A: Minimum distance of 5 centimeter from puzzle to hands when starting the solve. In future we may start drawing a puzzle area on Stackmats.

September 23, 2005: Events without preinspection will be ranked in a separate category. Pyraminx also Average of 5.

September 15, 2005: Update of the scramble program. For 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 we now use multislice moves, which makes scrambling easier.

September 5, 2005: 2005 version with the following changes:

• Overall: Changed text to UK English and sizes to international scales.
• Overall: Changed 'tournament' to 'competition' because tournament has an annotation of 'head-to-head'.
• Art. 1: WCA board members and delegates follow same regulations as officials and competitors.
• Art. 2: No sound equipment may be used.
• Art. 2: Added some text about the time period available for disputes.
• Art. 2: Small other textual changes.
• Art. 2: No additional lighting allowed.
• Art. 2: Foot-wear instead of shoes. Removed the ambiguity for Solving with feet.
• Art. 3: Organisation team does not need to provide puzzles anymore. Competitors can borrow puzzles.
• Art. 3: Examples of enhancing the basic concept of puzzles.
• Art. 3: Additional text about stickers, tiles and colours.
• Art. 4: Proposal for colours for scrambling.
• Art. 4: In preliminary rounds not necessarily the same scrambles for all, to prevent cheating in larger competitions.
• Art. 5: In case of a non functional puzzle defect, there may not be an ambiguous puzzle state (example: all cube center pieces fallen off).
• Art. 5: Puzzle defects must always be declared before timer is stopped.
• Art. 5: Added text for puzzle defects during blindfolded events.
• Art. 6: Winners are preferably prepared to talk to media.
• Art. 7: Remark about the temperature in the competition area.
• Art. 7: Competition area smoke-free. Preferably have reasonable noise level.
• Art. 7: No objects under the timer to improve picking up the puzzle.
• Art. 7: Changed the text about solving while sitting.
• Art. 7: Solving With Feet: Timer on the floor, solving while sitting.
• Art. 8: Added the article.
• Art. 8: Slightly softened the time limit text.
• Art. 9: Added the article.
• Art. A: More precise description of how to start and stop the timer.
• Art. A: Competitor may not reset the timer.
• Art. A: Magic may elevate two tiles from flat.
• Art. A: Events without preinspection are ranked the same as events with preinspection.
• Art. A: Competitor may not manipulate the puzzle, after stopping the timer, until the judge has inspected the cube.
• Art. A: Competitor must immediately check the written down result on the competition sheet.
• Art. A: Added pictures for 2x2x2 and 5x5x5 solved and not solved position.
• Art. B: Use of StackMat or stopwatch. For stopwatch the procedure is described more extensively.
• Art. C: Preinspection also one-handed.
• Art. D: Use of StackMat or stopwatch. See also Article B. Solving with bare feet.
• Art. D: Solving with bare feet.
• Art. E: Fewest moves now has a time limit of 60 minutes.
• Art. F: Clock in standing position.

Changes that were not accepted:

• Different penalties for different puzzles.
• No covering of the puzzles anymore after preinspection.
• No change of metric for fewest moves.
• No change in 'mean of 3'. Some people wanted a change to prevent the DNF's that we saw in recent competitions. WCA board thinks we should stay strict. We expect competitors to take fewer risks if we stay strict. And 'average of 5' for the bigger puzzles is very hard to fit in the time schedule.

November 7, 2004: Second version with some small corrections and references to the scramble programs.

August 5, 2004: First version by Tyson Mao and Ron van Bruchem.