At the surface layer, speedcubing is solving a Rubik’s cube very fast. Many people think to do this, you need to be extremely smart, skilled, and dextrous. This is not the case; it’s actually a mix of pattern recognition, memory, and practice. Mainly practice. In this post I’ll tell you about how speedcubing works, a little bit of its history, and my latest competition.
The Rubik’s cube was invented by Erno Rubik born July 13, 1944 in Hungary. During his time as a professor at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design in Budapest, Hungary, he developed a prototype cube as an aid to teach group theory, as the cube did, and still does have over 43 quintillion possible states. “In late 1977 Konsumex, Hungary’s state trading company, began marketing it. By 1980 Rubik’s Cube was marketed throughout the world, and over 100 million authorized units, with an estimated 50 million unauthorized imitations, were sold” (source).
Erno Rubik (source)
Now that this seemingly simple, but actually very complex toy was available worldwide, many people had one, but few could solve it. It took Erno Rubik a month to solve for the first time! But over time, methods were developed, and guides published, and eventually the first cubing competition was held on March 1981 and on June 5, 1982 by Guinness World Records, and the first world championship was held in Budapest, Hungary where American Minh Thai won with a single solve time of 22.95 seconds and this record is generally considered as the First World Record of the Rubik’s Cube (Source).
Unfortunately, the next competition was not held until 2003, in Canada, after the founding of the WCA (world cubing association), and then the world record solve continued being broken until present day, with Max Park’s 3.13 solve at Pride at Long Beach 2023. But the Rubik’s Cube, known as the 3×3 in the cubing community, while being very reliable, was not very fast, this has lead to many other speed cubes being created, as well as many other events such as the 4×4 – 7×7, Skewb, Clock, 3×3 One-Handed, Megaminx, and Square-1.
I have competed in four competitions, but this is about the most recent: Richmond Rumble 2024. It went rather well, with the first event being 3×3; My best time was a 21.87, with an average of 24.90, which were both personal records (best time in competition)
Here was my best solve. I also did well in 2×2, with a 6.78 single, and and 7.77 average. Here was my best solve:
I did not make cutoff for 4×4, as it was very short. My best time was 1:49.86. I had a 43.17 single, and 56.72 adverage for 3×3 One-Handed. For the next cubing blog about my competition next month, I will go into more detail about how the competition works, and the methods used to solve the various cubes!
I hope you enjoyed.
