Amidst a weekend of fighting game championships and other major tournaments, the world’s finest Rubik’s cubers have descended upon Paris for a record-breaking world championship.
The world championships fall under the WCA, or World Cube Association, regulations. All puzzles have to have colored parts and must be scrambled before competition using computer-generated random scramble sequences. The WCA actually provides an approved scramble program, and an on-site scrambler approves that it has been correctly randomized. Players get an opportunity to look over the puzzle and set out a plan, and then they’re off to the cube races.
Already this weekend, several world records have been broken. Feliks Zemdegs, a cube-solver from Australia who walked up to his 3x3x3 cube final with the Imperial March playing, set a new world record for the 6x6x6 cube at 1:20.036.
Zemdegs also set a new record for the 7x7x7, at 2:06.73.
When it came to the classic 3x3x3 cubes though, Zemdegs missed the podium after a few slow solutions. Max Park came out victorious, with an impressive 5.877 seconds alongside Patrick Ponce, who barely edged out his time with 5.477 seconds. (Average time across several cubes determines the winner.)
Though it was a fast time, Zemdegs still holds the world record for 3x3x3 cube solving at 4.73 seconds.
The average time across the 3x3x3 finals was 7.76, the amount of time it usually takes me to give up and throw the cube at the wall so I can glue it back together solved. Congrats to Max Park and the rest of the competitors in Paris.