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World Cube Association

Organization that regulates Rubik's Cube and other twisty puzzle competitions From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

World Cube Association
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The World Cube Association (WCA) is the worldwide non-profit organization that regulates and holds competitions for mechanical puzzles that are operated by twisting groups of pieces, commonly known as twisty puzzles (a subcategory of combination puzzles). The most famous of those puzzles is the Rubik's Cube. Since the start of the WCA there have been over 11,700 competitions. The WCA was founded by Ron van Bruchem of the Netherlands and Tyson Mao of the United States in 2004.[1] The goal of the World Cube Association is to have "more competitions in more countries with more people and more fun, under fair and equal conditions."[2] In 2017, they started work to become a non-profit organization and on November 20, 2017, the state of California accepted the initial registration of the World Cube Association.

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The organization is run by the board members. It assigns different teams and committees as well as delegates who can organize official competitions. The presence of a delegate is required to make the competition official. As of June 2024, over 260,000 people from around the world have participated in WCA competitions[3] and over 15,000 competitions have been held.[4]

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Board

Current WCA Board Members

As of 2025[2]The WCA Board is responsible for leading the organization as a whole, and fulfilling any duties not fulfilled by other Teams, Committees, and Councils
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Former WCA Board Members

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Structure of the WCA

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WCA Board of Directors

The WCA Board of Directors (or simply WCA Board) is the leadership team of the WCA and its highest authority. WCA Directors are Officers of the WCA and also have the role of Full Delegate. The WCA Board is responsible for the WCA organization as a whole. They discuss issues that affect the WCA and advise the committees. The WCA Board oversees that the applications to hold WCA Competitions meet fair conditions to ensure equality throughout the World, and finally it approves and announces the competitions accordingly. After competitions, they read reports from the WCA delegates about competitions to be up to date on the WCA activity worldwide and take part in the discussion of any incidents that occur.

The Board is also responsible for helping the WCA fulfill its mission of “more competitions in more countries with more people and more fun, under fair and equal conditions.”

WCA Teams and Committees

WCA Appeals Committee

The WCA Appeals Committee (WAC) is responsible for reviewing and resolving appeals regarding decisions made by other WCA Staff. The WAC provides an independent and impartial review process to ensure that decisions are fair, reasonable, and in accordance with WCA policies and regulations.

WCA Communication Team

The WCA Communication Team (WCT) is in charge of overseeing and supporting communications. This includes answering general requests that are submitted via the WCA website and maintaining the WCA's social media accounts. The team responds to multiple emails a day regarding starting cubing competitions in new areas, what to do for people's first competition, big media requests about competitive speedcubing, and many other issues. Many requests are also forwarded to the appropriate WCA Team or Delegate if they are regarding a particular competition or region.

WCA Competition Announcement Team

The WCA Competition Announcement Team (WCAT) is responsible for approving and announcing WCA Competitions. They review and announce competition submissions to the WCA.

WCA Executive Assistants Team

The WCA Executive Assistants Team (WEAT) assists the WCA Board of Directors with administrative tasks.

WCA Financial Committee

The WCA Financial Committee (WFC) is responsible for everything regarding finances within the WCA. As an Advisory Committee, they manage the finances and accounts of the WCA by an approved annual budget proposal, which is also their work to provide regularly. Similarly, the Financial Committee pays invoices and taxes that are directed to the WCA, after consultation and with permission of the WCA Board. Every quarter, they report and advise the WCA Board on all finances of the WCA to give them a summary of the scope of financial possibilities and options that the WCA has. The WCA Treasurer is a member of the Financial Committee.

WCA Integrity Committee

The WCA Integrity Committee (WIC) performs independent investigations regarding WCA community members and incidents during WCA Competitions or on official, online WCA platforms. These incidents are alleged violations of the Spirit, Code of Conduct, Code of Ethics and/or Regulations of the WCA.

They can be contacted by WCA officials or community members to be made aware of possible violations at WCA competitions. Initial contact with the team is usually through emails or directly from any competitor or Delegate. If the Team Leader agrees that this case falls under the WIC's jurisdiction, a WIC case is initiated. The team attempts to correspond with everyone involved to provide an independent report for the investigation. Once a decision is made, they inform all relevant persons of any actions and make a public announcement if necessary.

WCA Marketing Team

The WCA Marketing Team (WMT) is responsible for managing WCA relationships with external partners as well as working closely with the WCA Brand. They are currently seeking help with WCA Merchandise, Sponsorships, and Contracts.[30]

WCA Quality Assurance Committee

The WCA Quality Assurance Committee (WQAC) is responsible for quality improvement.

WCA Regulations Committee

The WCA Regulations Committee (WRC) was founded to support the WCA Board in maintaining the WCA Regulations in 2011. Over the years, their area of responsibility has been broadened, they currently handle all issues which are related to the application, improvement, and development of the WCA Regulations. They support Delegates on any kind of procedural matters happening at competitions and decide on unresolved and uncovered incidents. The WRC regularly publishes WCA internal reports to help all Delegates and improve their knowledge of the Regulations. This includes regulation changes based on feedback from the WCA staff and the community, while also taking into account their insights and reports of incidents that occur during WCA competitions. New versions of the Regulations are published yearly or bi-yearly. Another part of their work is to encourage members of the WCA community to create and maintain translations of the Regulations.

WCA Results Team

The WCA Results Team (WRT) is responsible for managing all data in the databases of the WCA, especially competition results and personal data.

The biggest regular task of the WCA Results Team is posting results of WCA competitions to the WCA website, once the Delegate of the competition has reported them. They check if the results were submitted correctly and if so, transfer them into the WCA results database. This work of the Results Team assures the data quality of the databases of the WCA. Each such posting procedure is ended by creating a public post on the WCA website, which are visible on the frontpage of the WCA website.

Apart from posting competition results, the WCA Results Team is also responsible for making corrections to competition results if necessary and they are in charge of administering all WCA profile pages. This includes changing user data, like dates of birth, according to verified requests and managing profile picture requests.

WCA Software Team

The WCA website is an open source project on GitHub.[31] The WCA Software Team (WST) is responsible for bringing continuous improvements to the website frequently, to allow all of the community members to easily access and enjoy WCA content. Recently internationalization was implemented, so now people can use the WCA website in their native language. Other important milestones are the development of the registration system, and especially payments. The team keeps an eye on the website all the time to ensure it is permanently available and they react quickly whenever something is wrong.

The Software Team develops new software for various tasks within the WCA whenever needed. Thus, they created an app simplifying translating the website, to engage more people translating into their language. On 21 August 2012 the WCA Workbook assistant has released,[32] which is used by all delegates to submit the competition results to the WCA Results Team. The Software Team also updates the official WCA Scrambler, TNoodle, which is currently on version 1.2.2 as of February 27, 2024, according to data provided by the WCA Regulations Committee if changes are needed. Additionally, they maintain and develop administrative tools for various Delegates, Committees, and board members on the WCA website.

WCA Archive Team

The WCA Archive Team (WAT) is an Advisory Committee of the WCA. This team has the role to oversee and support the development of an archive of the organization.

WCA Delegates

WCA Delegates are members of the WCA who are responsible for making sure that all WCA competitions are run according to the mission, regulations, and spirit of the WCA. This means that a WCA Delegate needs to be present at every competition for it to be considered official. The WCA has four different types of delegates: WCA Senior Delegates, WCA Delegates, WCA Junior Delegates, and WCA Trainee Delegates. Beyond the duties of a WCA Delegate, a WCA Senior Delegate is responsible for managing the delegates in their area and should also be contacted by the community for regional matters. They are available to mentor the delegates in their area – especially when new communities are being developed. New delegates are listed as WCA Trainee Delegates at first and need to show their ability to manage competitions successfully before being listed as a WCA Junior Delegate. WCA Trainee Delegates will delegate their first competitions alongside more experienced delegates to get the hang of all responsibilities connected to delegate a WCA competition. WCA Junior Delegates can be promoted to a WCA Delegate after at least 1 year of successful work as a WCA Junior Delegate.

All acknowledged WCA Delegates, Junior Delegates and Senior Delegates can be found on the WCA Website.[33]

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History

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Pre-history (1999-2003)

In 1999, the first modern age speedcubers found each other on the Internet via Rubik's Games, a computer game with an electronic version of the Rubik's Cube. Chris Hardwick from Raleigh, NC founded the Yahoo! Group "Speedsolvingrubikscube" and the Unofficial World Records, a place where cubers could post their personal best times. Ron van Bruchem started speedcubing.com together with his friend Ton Dennenbroek, an avid puzzle collector.

Founding (2003-2004)

Because the cubers were living all over the world, they wanted to organize a competition at which they could all meet. In 2003, under the guidance of Dan Gosbee, they organized the Rubik's Cube World Championship in Toronto. This first modern-age Rubik's Cube competition was a huge success, but there were many issues, largely due to the lack of any regulations. After the World Championship, van Bruchem and Tyson Mao started organizing competitions in the Netherlands and Germany, as well as at Caltech in the United States. In 2004, they started the World Cube Association, which today has held competitions in more than 100 countries.

After the founding of the WCA, most competitions in the United States happened in prestigious colleges, though many happened in smaller high schools, middle schools, hotels, malls, amusement parks and other venues internationally. Some of the first official events included most current ones (see Events). However, 6x6, 7x7, and Skewb weren't events when the organization was founded, whereas Magic, Master Magic, and 3x3 with Feet were but are no longer events.[34]

Events

Currently, the WCA offers competitions in 17 events. Not all of them are offered at every competition, but they are usually all offered at national, continental, and global championships. The events are:[35]

Additionally, some events have had their official WCA event status removed. They are:[34][36]

Some events also have held unofficial status at WCA events and no records were ever kept of them.[37]

  • 3x3x3 No Inspection
  • 3x3x3 Speed Blindfolded
  • 3x3x3 Three in a Row
  • 3x3x3 Team Solve
  • 3x3x3 Blindfolded Team Solve
  • Rainbow Cube
  • 2x2x2 Blindfolded
  • Clock Blindfolded
  • 3x3x3 Siamese Cube
  • Rubik's Snake
  • Mirror Blocks
  • Rubik's 360
  • 2x2x2 One-Handed
  • Magic One-Handed
  • Rubik's UFO[38]
  • Face-turning Octahedron (FTO)
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World Records

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The following are the official speedcubing world records approved by the WCA as of 26 July 2025.[39]

Note: For averages of 5 solves, the best time and the worst time are dropped, and the mean of the remaining 3 solves is taken. For events where only 3 solves are done, the mean of all 3 is taken.

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A scatter plot of Rubik's Cube world records (single and average) against time. This depicts the improvement made over the years, as well as highlights records that stayed unbroken for an unusual amount of time. This graph stops after Max Parks 3.13 second 3x3 single set on 11th June, 2023 which stayed unbroken for 616 days.
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World Championships

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Every two years starting from 2003, the WCA holds the Rubik's Cube World Championships. The Championship ultimately determines the world champion of the puzzle. Every official event is held at the Championship. The Rubik's Cube World Championship requires extremely careful planning by several volunteers, as well as a large financial commitment to reserve the venue and make necessary preparations.[2] The latest championship was held in Seattle, United States from 3 to 6 July 2025. The next Championship is scheduled to be held in Uppsala, Sweden from 22 to 25 July 2027. The 2021 World Championship was to be held in Almere, Amsterdam from 28 to 31 December 2021, already delayed[40] from its initial July dates due to the COVID-19 pandemic, before being ultimately cancelled by the association in August 2021.[41]

More information Championship, Year ...
  1. [N 1]
    The 1982 World Championship used a Best Of 3 method to determine the winner, so Minh Thai's winning time is actually a single time.
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See also

Notes

External links

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