Every solve, on the clock

The average is the sport's own: five solves, throw away the best and the worst, keep the middle three. The two buttons above the clock choose how each solve starts: straight in, or the competition way, with fifteen seconds to look first. With inspection on, the eight-second and twelve-second calls are spoken out loud, exactly as a judge would call them, because your eyes are on the cube and not on the clock; the checkbox silences them. Overrunning costs what the official rules say it costs, two seconds past fifteen, no result past seventeen.

The 2×2, Pyraminx and Skewb scrambles are the real thing: random positions solved by a computer at build time and published as the inverse, every one checked by replaying it. Those three puzzles are small enough to solve exactly. The cubes and the Square-1 are not, so they get random turns instead: 25 moves for the 3×3, 40 for the 4×4, 60 for the 5×5, twelve slice-pairs for the Square-1, each one replayed and checked to have genuinely scrambled the puzzle, and all of them plenty for practice. During a solve both hands are on the cube, so stopping needs no aim: any key stops the clock, and on a touchscreen so does the box. Other keys worth knowing: 2 and D toggle penalties on the last solve, X deletes it.

Every session you time is kept and stays one click away, so you can look back at a month ago and see whether the work showed. Sessions can be named, and any you no longer want can go. If you already keep your times in csTimer, export them there and bring the file in: the sessions come across with their names, their penalties and their dates, and the file is read here on your own device rather than sent anywhere.

New to timing? Practise like the sport counts shows what to do with the numbers, and Start here is the honest guide to taking them to a competition.