Rubik cube record broken again: 11.13 seconds

I still remember reading the related entry in Guiness’ Book of World Records aeons ago, saying that “the first world championship was held in Budapest on June 5, 1982, and was won by Minh Thai, a Vietnamese student from Los Angeles with a time of 22.95 seconds.” I even saw a video of that guy in action.

Now, that’s been blown apart, it’s now a mind-blowing 11.13 seconds, set by 20 year old student, Leyan Lo at the Caltech Winter competition 2006.

But Shotaro “Macky” Makisumi is still the world champ and the most consistent, with an average of 14.91 seconds over 5 successive tries in the finals of the same tournament, with Leyan Lo second at 0.26 secs behind.

But one thing didnt seem to add up: all Macky got for his victory is a measly Rubik’s Snake puzzle?

I’ve seen Macky’s ex-world record solution video over 12+ seconds (before it was broken by that French guy with 11.75s) and that looked deceptively easy.

From the full results, I think I would place 60th. Not bad huh…

But…that would only happen donkey years ago, when I was still Rubik crazy. I even owned Rubik’s Magic Puzzle and Rubik’s Clock then – I remembered sneering because the packaging quoted a “world record solve time” and I consistently solved the Clock quicker than the time quoted (forgot how many seconds it was already).

The “animal” was apparently invented by Erno Rubik in 1974. The height of its craze was 1980-82. And I only tried solving it myself several years after that. At first, it took me 3 days. Then I managed to bring my time down to 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 3 minutes, stagnated at 90 seconds, then during my heydays clocked consistent 60+, with the best at 60 secs. Failing to better that after trying for several months, my cube was consigned to the store-room….of if you’d like, the proverbial “hanging up my cube.”

It is considered to be the best selling toy of all time, with 300 million (+ imitation ones) sold.

In fact, I was amazed that interest in the cube has not diminished even after more than 20 years. That is testament to its specialness.

Now, is it time to treat myself and spend >RM50 on an original 3x3x3 cube?

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