Hi WCA Community,

Below you can find a summary of some of the notable cases the WCA Integrity Committee has worked on, as well as some general WIC updates from the past three months.

In the last quarter, the WCA Integrity Committee opened 17 cases and closed 10. This resulted in 6 bans and 3 warnings, while 1 case ended with no action.

Below, you can find summaries of cases we have published public reports for:

• The WIC concluded a months-long investigation into community issues in a country, in collaboration with other teams. This resulted in the demotions of multiple WCA delegates and an organizer receiving a significant sanction. Further details can be found in this forum post, linked here.
• A competitor was noted to have achieved high-level FMC results which arouse the suspicion of some top competitors. The competitor subsequently confessed to the public and to the WIC via email that they had cheated their results. The competitor had these results disqualified by competition delegates, and after a brief investigation received a ban. More information can be found in this report, linked here.
• A competitor was noted to have achieved notable Skewb results, which included a continental record single, in 2025. After a group of top competitors reported these concerns to the WIC and after a months long investigation, we concluded the results were not humanly possible to achieve and involved some sort of regulation violation, whether accidental or intentional. Due to this, the WIC elected to disqualify both results, retroactively reverting a continental record in Skewb. More information can be found at this report, linked here.

Here were other cases the WIC worked on during this time:

• The WIC dealt with multiple cases this quarter involving early timer stops:

1. A competitor was reported to be engaging in deliberate early timer stops at a competition. When contacted, the competitor was extremely cooperative and admitted to other occurrences that were not observed/already disqualified by the competition delegates. Given their relative inexperience competing and their honesty, they were issued only a brief ban and solves were disqualified.
2. A similar case occurred at another competition. Given their young age and the fact that this occurred only over a small amount of rounds, the WIC elected to issue a warning and disqualified the relevant solves. Although we understand that these two cases are relatively similar, the age of the competitor was a large factor into why a ban was not issued in the above case.
3. The WIC would like to note we have already seen multiple cases with early timer stops being reported this year. While this problem will improve with the eventual introduction of 4-pad mode, we would like to ask readers who serve as competition judges to be vigilant and attentive while watching competitor’s solves to ensure they are properly stopping the timer.

• Competitors at a competition were observed solving patterns depicting symbols with hateful connotations onto their cubes inside of the venue. The competitors, when contacted, accepted responsibility and apologized for their actions. Warnings were issued to the competitors involved.
• Two competitors were found to be colluding with one another to give each other advantages over other competitors, including one competitor being directly observed deliberately misscrambling the other competitor’s puzzles. Both of these competitors were issued bans, with results disqualified.
• A competitor reported to the WIC that they were experiencing bullying and harassment at a competition. Although most of this behavior occurred in areas outside of the scope of the WIC, some of this behavior was present and observed at competitions. The competitor engaging in this behavior was issued a warning.
• A competitor was removed from a competition by venue management for inappropriate behavior, and their behavior from this competition was reported to the WIC by multiple individuals. The WIC confirmed the existence of this behavior as significant and occurring at at least one other competition after requesting comment from multiple competitors and delegates. The competitor was issued a competing and attendance ban.

General WIC updates:

• Shain Papalotl Longbehn (2020LONG05) recently stepped down from their positions as WIC Senior Member. We are immensely grateful for all the work Shain has done over the past four years as a WIC member, and we would like to make special mention of his outstanding contribution as WIC Leader and WDC Leader.
• Lars Johan Folde (2018FOLD01) was recently appointed as Senior Member of the WCA Integrity Committee. We congratulate him and wish him the best of luck in his new role.
• The WIC has recently created a new subteam, the safeguarding subteam, which has commenced work. This subteam will allow for a small group of specialists to handle concerns regarding competitor safeguarding, and for these cases to be handled on a need to know basis. While signposting to this new group will be improved soon, you may contact this safeguarding group at safeguarding@worldcubeassociation.org with any questions or concerns that you may have regarding child and at-risk competitor’s safety and wellbeing at WCA-recognized events.

Do you have questions for the WCA Integrity Committee? Feel free to send us an email. Our inboxes are always open!