Incident: The judge lifted the cover early and the competitor requested an extra attempt

A competitor called the WCA Delegate asking for an extra attempt, claiming that the judge lifted the cover without him indicating that he was ready. The WCA Delegate granted an extra attempt with the reasoning that no delegates were available at the moment the incident happened (one was competing, one was supervising the scrambling table, and one was outside the room). It was initially thought that the competitor only asked for an extra attempt after the solve was completed.

The WCA Delegates described their reasoning to the WRC. Initially, the WRC decided to revert the decision of the WCA Delegates and use the original attempt. The WRC based their decision on the following:

• Regulation 11e: "... The competitor should appeal verbally or in writing to the judge and WCA Delegate at the time of the incident...".
• Guideline 11e+++: The WRC did not deem the circumstances exceptional enough based on the description of the WCA Delegates.
• Similar incident.

The WRC does not consider the Delegates being temporarily unavailable as an extreme circumstance that would result in an extra attempt. It would be near impossible for a Delegate to reach a competitor within their inspection period. As the incident happened at the very beginning of the inspection, the competitor should have stopped their inspection right away and waited for one of the Delegates to be available to request an extra attempt.

By following through with the solve, the competitor had the opportunity to decide whether or not they wanted an extra attempt based on their result on the original scramble. This is an unfair advantage that providing an extra attempt in this scenario provides, and this is exactly the reason for 11e+++.

This decision was appealed to the WCA Board. While processing the appeal, new evidence became available - it was found that the competitor did appeal to the judge when the cover was lifted early. The WCA Board decided to overturn the WRC decision, reinstating the extra attempt. The statement from the WCA Board can be found here.