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In blitz, 5 minutes totally would work, in classical chess I have my doubts.

The Sinquefield Cup (the tournament where the drama started) added a 15 minute delay which would be much more noticeable and less forgiving.

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That's a question I was going to ask. Sure, not _every_ move is 5 min, but wouldn't a 5 min delay almost ensure any cheater would play mostly more than 5 min, each turn? (besides some simple moves, ofc)

Or is it that they only need to cheat at a few points where taking more than 5 min wouldn't be abnormal at all?

The latter. The article briefly points out that cheating on only a few moves can give one grandmaster a significant advantage, which makes cheating difficult to detect. In discussion of a previous article, some HN commenters suggested that even having a binary “be careful here” signal based on a chess engine could make a big difference.

So one could take on average ~5 min per move. On any moves they want help with, they could wait out the 5 min and have an accomplice send the signal?

Honestly, it does seem next to impossible to stop a dedicated cheater if any feedback makes it out of the room in a reasonable amount of time.

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