Your first competition, honestly described

You register online in advance, since competitions cap their entries and often fill up, and pay a small fee. On the day, you solve in groups. For most events you get five attempts. A judge sits opposite you, but starts and stops nothing: you run the timer yourself. The judge watches, and writes your times on an official scorecard.

Between your turns, you wait, watch, and meet people. Cubing competitions are quietly sociable in a way few sports are: the person your child is chatting to in the queue may be a national champion, and nobody finds this remarkable.

Two honest warnings. First: the hall will contain someone astonishing, possibly aged twelve, and your child will be slower than them. It does not matter; nobody is watching anyone else's mat. Second: half of all first-time competitors never enter a second competition. The ones who come back are mostly the ones who decided in advance that the first one was for finding out how it works, not for the times.

A few days later the results are official, and every competitor gets a page of their own: every solve, on the record. It updates for as long as they keep competing.