The paper offers a conception of criminal attempts, grounded upon an analytically oriented theory of norms that identifies the wrongfulness-deficit of the behaviour imputable to the agent as its differentiating mark. Such ‘offense-imperfection’ is explained as a lack of full performative congruence between the objective configuration of the agent’s behaviour and its declarative value. This is then related to the debate regarding the problem of so called ‘outcome luck’. The argument so displayed makes recognizable the centrality of the concept of dolus for the clarification of the concept of attempt, as well as the sufficiency of dolus eventualis as the relevant ‘fault’ criterion.