WCA Inspection Rules Explained: 15 Seconds, +2 and DNF

You have been timing yourself at home for months. You pick up the cube, look at it for as long as you like, plan the whole cross, then start the timer. At your first competition the judge lifts the cover, a stopwatch starts, and suddenly there is a clock running before your solve has even begun. Inspection is the part of official cubing that home practice most often skips, and it is the part that costs new competitors the most avoidable penalties. Here is exactly how it works and how to train for it.

What is inspection in WCA cubing?

Inspection is the period before a timed solve when you may look at the scrambled puzzle and plan your first moves. In WCA competition it lasts up to 15 seconds. It starts when the judge uncovers the puzzle and ends when you start the solve. You may pick the cube up and rotate it, but you may not turn any layers.

For a 3x3, that means inspection is where you plan your cross, and if you are a little further along, your first F2L pair. Nothing you do in those 15 seconds counts toward your solve time, but everything you plan there shows up in it.

A few practical details:

• The judge controls the start. The puzzle sits under a cover. When you are ready, the judge removes it and starts the inspection stopwatch.
• Looking is allowed, turning is not. Picking the cube up and rotating the whole puzzle to see other faces is fine. Applying moves, even a single face turn, is not.
• You start the solve on the timer. With a stackmat-style timer, you place your hands on the pads and begin the solve by lifting them. Inspection ends at that moment.

How long is WCA inspection, and when do you get a +2?

WCA inspection is 15 seconds. If you start the solve after more than 15.00 seconds of inspection but no later than 17.00 seconds, you receive a +2 penalty: two seconds are added to your solve time. If you start after more than 17.00 seconds, the attempt is a DNF (did not finish).

The boundaries are worth seeing side by side:

The important detail is that 15.00 is still legal. The penalty starts after 15.00, not at it. That distinction is two hundredths of a second most of the time, but if you use a timer that rounds or uses the wrong boundary, your home penalties will not match what a judge would give you.

What are the "8 seconds" and "12 seconds" calls?

During inspection, the judge calls out "8 seconds" when eight seconds have passed and "12 seconds" when twelve have passed. These are warnings, not penalties. They exist so you know how much inspection time is left without looking away from the cube.

How to use them:

• At "8 seconds", you should already know where your cross pieces are and roughly how you will solve them. If you do not, stop trying to find the perfect cross and pick a workable one.
• At "12 seconds", put the cube down in your starting orientation and get your hands on the timer. Three seconds is plenty of margin. Waiting for 14 is how +2s happen.

Most new competitors do not run out of time because their planning is slow. They run out because they keep planning after they already have a good enough cross.

Does a +2 or DNF count in your average?

Yes. A +2 time counts as the penalized time in your ao5, and a DNF counts as the worst possible result. In an average of five, the best and worst results are dropped and the middle three are averaged, so a single DNF is usually dropped. Two DNFs make the whole average a DNF.

Here is a worked example of how an inspection penalty moves an ao5:

ao5 = (18.42 + 18.90 + 17.63) / 3 = 18.32

Without the +2 on solve 2, the counted middle three would be 16.90, 17.63 and 18.42, for an ao5 of 17.65. One slow start cost 0.67 seconds on the average, even though the solve itself was the second fastest of the five.

The same logic applies to ao12 (best and worst dropped, middle ten averaged). A mo3, the format used for some longer events, is a straight mean of three with nothing dropped, so a single DNF makes the mo3 a DNF.

Can you touch the cube during inspection?

You can pick up the cube and rotate it as a whole to look at every side. You cannot apply moves, meaning you cannot turn any face or slice, even partially to check a piece. When inspection is over, you put the puzzle down and start the solve from the timer.

Things that are fine during inspection:

• Picking the cube up and turning the whole puzzle to see the bottom and back
• Tracing your planned moves with your eyes
• Setting the cube down in the orientation you want to start from

Things to avoid:

• Turning a face "just to check" where an edge is
• Starting to execute your cross before you have started the timer
• Holding the cube in a way that might count as starting the solve before your hands are on the timer

If you are unsure about any detail at a competition, ask the judge or the delegate before your attempt. They would much rather answer a question than hand out a penalty.

Do all WCA events use inspection?

Most do, but not all. Standard sighted events like 3x3, 2x2, 4x4, Pyraminx and Skewb use 15-second inspection. Blindfolded events work differently: memorization is part of the timed attempt, so there is no separate inspection window. Fewest Moves is a written event with its own time limit, not a timed solve.

If you are practicing only 3x3 for now, you can treat 15-second inspection as the default for everything you do.

How do you practice with inspection at home?

Turn inspection on in your timer and leave it on for every timed solve. Use a timer that applies +2 over 15.00 and DNF over 17.00, so your home results carry the same penalties a judge would give. Then train a short, repeatable inspection routine until finishing in 8–10 seconds feels normal.

A simple routine for a cross-first solver:

1. 0–3 seconds: Find the four cross edges. Do not plan moves yet, just locate them.
2. 3–8 seconds: Plan the cross. Aim for a solution in eight moves or fewer.
3. 8–11 seconds: If the cross is set, look for where the first F2L pair's pieces are. If not, finish the cross plan and stop there.
4. 11–12 seconds: Set the cube down in your starting orientation and place your hands on the timer.

Practice drills that help:

• Cross-only sessions. Scramble, inspect, solve only the cross, check it. This isolates planning speed.
• Hard stop at 10. For a week, force yourself to start by 10 seconds. It feels rushed at first, then it becomes normal, and 15 seconds starts to feel generous.
• Use official scrambles. Bad or short scrambles make the cross artificially easy, which trains you for an inspection you will never see in competition.

Track your +2 count over a session. If it is above zero, the fix is almost always earlier commitment, not faster eyes.

Try Cubist

If you want your home practice to match what happens at a competition, Cubist's timer runs WCA-style 15-second inspection with the legal boundaries built in: +2 over 15.00 and DNF over 17.00, applied to the centisecond. Penalties flow straight into your ao5, ao12 and mo3, and every solve uses official scrambles, with formats for all 17 events. When you want to see how your times compare, there are global, regional and friends leaderboards in the same app.

Cubist teaches the solve, times it to WCA standards, and puts you on a global leaderboard — in one app.

• Download Cubist on the App Store
• Get Cubist on Google Play