About 5 years ago, when my oldest son was 10, he received his first Rubik’s Cube. It was a stocking stuffer and fit perfectly into the toe of the giant red felt sock that hung above the fireplace. He fiddled with it for about 2 years, until he finally learned to solve it. Then this past February, inspired by a YouTube video of the world’s fastest solve and the complete set of cubes at his school library, my son took up the sport of Speed Cubing. Why do I call it a sport? Because it requires the same muscle memory, agility, and focus of most Olympic sports. Okay, so unlike most sports, you can do this sitting down, but all I have to say is “LUGE”!
For the past 9 months my son has practiced and practiced and practiced. An hour doesn’t go by without a cube in his hand. And he has all different types and sizes. He has the standard 3×3, of course, in all different colors and brands. Apparently Rubik’s patent expired so now anyone can manufacture them. But he also has the 2×2, the 4×4, the 5×5, the 7×7 and the freakiest looking of all, the 11×11. But on top of this, he also has the Pyraminx, which looks like a Rubix Cube only it’s in the shape of a pyramid. And he has the Megaminx, an alien looking 12 sided puzzle that makes you dizzy just looking at it. My son, however, can solve them all. It’s a feat that amazes my husband and me to the point that we’re considering having a DNA test done. How is it possible that our two brains combined were able to make a brain that could do that? The math doesn’t add up.
This past Saturday our son finally decided to enter his first Speed Cubing competition. It was a regional competition held in the lovely town of Palmdale, California, a sub-suburb of Los Angeles. Palmdale, it should be noted, gained national notoriety because of the severity of damage the recession did to it’s then booming housing business. Nowadays, it is a bit of a ghost town with empty shops and foreclosed homes everywhere. However, it did draw quite a large group of mathematically inclined teenage boys. From 8am until 5pm this past Saturday the town was over run with Speed Cubing brainiacs from as far as China and Mexico.
As I walked into the event I turned to my son and said, “Oh my God! It’s a room full of YOU!” All around me were kids with their heads bent down spinning their various types of cubes at blurring speeds. It was a little surreal, I must admit, but it was also a little reassuring. My son is not the only kid obsessed with his algorithms and learning his PLL and OLL, whatever those are. (If you have a Speed Cubing kid you know exactly what I’m talking about.)
I did my usual play-by-play posts on Facebook throughout the day. I was sure my friends back in town were on pins and needles waiting for the latest updates. What was his 5×5 solve time? Did his cube pop? Was he going to compete in the “feet” category? (By the way, that’s where they solve it with their feet. No joke!) in the end he placed in about in the middle of the pack. His 3×3 solve was a fraction of a second over 20 seconds. He was thrilled with his time, however he needed a 14 second solve to get into the finals.
If you’ve never seen a Speed Cuber solve the puzzle, then enjoy some of the videos we’ve included. It really is amazing to watch. The fastest time we saw at the event was 7.89 seconds to solve the 3×3. But the most amazing category is the 3×3 blindfolded solve. The competitors study the cube for about a minute, memorizing the location of every piece, before covering their eyes and solving the cube. You have to see it to believe it.
The Current World Record Holder for the 3×3 – Mats Valk
The Current World Record Holder for the 3×3 Blindfolded – Marcin Zalewski
We overheard one of the kids at the competition say to his mom, “Finally, a place where I don’t have to be athletic to win.” These kids are not the star athletes, they are not the fastest or the strongest. But they are no less amazing. It’s too bad we don’t celebrate these types of gifts the way we celebrate athleticism. After all, it’s definitely our brain power not our speed that will lead us more quickly into the future.
For more information on Speed Cubing, visit the World Cube Association or Cubing USA.
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