• Main Changes
• Detailed Changes
• Non-Changes

A new version of the Regulations and Guidelines is going into effect January 1, 2014.
The scramble program will be updated soon to accommodate these changes, and the results will be updated with format changes.

The current Regulations are always available from https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/

For an exact list of changes from 2013 to 2014, view differences on GitHub.

For a summarized list of changes, please visit the full announcement.

Main Changes

• Skewb has been added as an official event. ( #102 / 66d6da9)
  • Skewb is interesting and practical, and there is significant community interest.
• Regulations about permitted puzzles have been clarified: Thick tiles or painted/printed colors are no longer allowed instead of (thin) tiles/stickers. Stickers/tiles must be indistinguishable by feel for BLD. Permissible logos have been clarified. ( #13, #33 / cd138cd)
  • This allows competitors and Delegates to come to consistent decisions about what puzzles are allowed.
• For Rubik's Cube: Multiple Blindfolded, a single solved cube will be considered DNF. Existing results are still recognized/ranked. ( #105 / 73276cd)
  • This requires competitors to satisfy the intent of the event. In particular, it prevents competitors from attempting 2 with the intention of solving only 1.
• Rubik's Cube: Fewest Moves may now be held using a "Mean of 3" round format. ( #81 / dc182c8)
  • This reduces the role of luck in FMC for large competitions that can hold 3 attempts.
• For Rubik's Cube: Blindfolded "Best of 3" rounds, rankings and records of the mean will be recognized. This also applies to existing "Best of 3" results. ( #111 / 5660ed5)
  • There is significant interest in recognizing these results. Since it does not change the round format, it does not require competitors to change their competition strategy for placing in competition.
• The "Best of 3" round format has been removed as an option for events that have a "Mean of 3" format. ( #109 / 2685170)
  • Both formats take roughly the same resources, so the preferred format should be used. Almost all competitions followed this in 2012 and 2013.
• Competitors who "pre-sign" for future attempts will now receive DNS results. ( #63 / 692fec6)
  • This requires competitors to acknowledge every attempt, in the spirit of Regulation A7c.
• Qualification rounds have been removed. ( #49 / 49fa8c1)
  • Only two competitions have used qualification rounds since 2010. (at the discretion of the Delegate).
• Megaminx has been added to the list of puzzles that scramblers do not need to correct if they are scrambled incorrectly ( #61 / fcba232)
  • Rescrambling takes significant time, errors are more subtle and do not have a large effect on difficulty of the scramble.
• Organizers/Delegates must keep physical competition records at least one month. ( #78 / e12b7c7)
  • This sets a standard time frame for being able to check transcription mistakes.

Detailed Changes

• Various small simplifications and corrections.
• Specify scramble sequences and scramble filtering limits. ( #48 / 9f2d078)
• Clarify that an attempt begins when the competitor acknowledges readiness Regulation A3b2. This distinguishes the beginning of the attempt from the beginning of the solve (which takes place in Regulation A4b). ( #93, #104, #110 / 7ccdff4)
• Change event "competition format" to "round format". ( #55 / 68264a9)
• Clarify that the scramble program must be official at the time of the competition. ( #85 / b307a84)
• Clarify that use of the surface is allowed for OH. ( #10 / 9ca578f)
• Clarify what to do with incomplete/illegible results. ( #101 / 8956f30)
• Specify that scramble sequences must generate a random orientation for non-inspection (i.e. BLD) events. ( #74 / 913c5ca)
• Rename "Multiple Outer Slice Moves" to "Outer Block Moves" for consistency with "Outer Block Turn Metric". ( #9 / a1cfbd5)
• Clarify competitor rights and responsibilities for submitting the number of cubes they wish to attempt. ( #94 / 8246735)
• Clarify Square-1 misalignments ( #130 / 8060032)

Non-Changes

• Official clock notation will remain the same "new" notation from 2013. We are considering updating the scramble program to display both the "new" notation along with the "old" (pre-2013) one.
• No changes regarding the +2 time penalty for misalignments at the end of the attempt.