Yes, at 3 PM Eastern, 12 Pacific, Rubik’s will host a solving lesson on YouTube and they’re looking to draw the largest audience of Rubik’s Cube fans in history to learn the tricks of the trade and earn a world record along the way.
Of course, there’s probably no other puzzle or puzzly product that has as many Guinness World Records associated with it.
We’ve chronicled many of these in the past, covering everything from fastest solves to strangest solving conditions. We’ve seen various sized Cubes solved in seconds, blindfolded solves, and one-handed solves.
We’ve seem them solved upside-down, while juggling, while on a pogo stick, while underwater, while running a marathon, while on a bike, and even while skydiving.
There are records for the largest number solved while riding a unicycle and for the most people simultaneously solving them (over 3000!), and now, Rubik is inviting fans to participate in another puzzly adventure.
What a cool way to bring people together in a time where social distancing, Coronavirus concerns, social unrest, and more might be making people feel isolated.
And hey, if it succeeds, “Guinness World Record Holder” will look pretty good on your resume!
Will you be participating, fellow puzzlers? Or have you already mastered the Rubik’s Cube? Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!
Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!
Have you ever done a scavenger hunt, fellow puzzler? They can be a lot of fun.
Some simply challenge you to find a bunch of random items, while others create a laundry list of activities to complete. Over the last decade or so, businesses have even sprung up to fulfill any party, group, or even city that might require a scavenger hunt for an event.
Yes, you can easily gather a group of friends, hit up any city at a certain point in the year, and find a scavenger hunt event waiting for you. They often involve puzzles, trivia, and other obstacles to success, rather than just a list of tasks to accomplish.
I’ve served as tech support for several, as well as an organizer for themed scavenger hunts at various sci-fi, fantasy, and writing conventions. I was supposed to be running one this weekend; that event, like so many others, was cancelled due to preventative measures to contain COVID-19.
So, as you might expect, I’ve got scavenger hunts on the brain. And with ample time to ponder, I couldn’t help but wonder… how big could you go?
I mean, if we’re talking a city-wide competition, you’d probably need to complete a half-dozen or a dozen objectives, based on previous city-themed hunts I’ve seen.
But what if it was the biggest scavenger hunt in the world? How many would it be then?
If you said as many as you could from a list of 150, then you have some impressive and specific guessing skills.
On September 10, 2017, the city of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, hosted a mass scavenger hunt to celebrate the city’s 150th anniversary. (For comparison’s sake, the one listed on the website for this year involved twenty obstacles.)
Each of them pitched in on answering trivia, solving puzzles, exploring the city, and taking pictures of specific items or scenarios throughout the area.
It sounds like an absolute blast, one that Ottawa went all out for.
I wonder who will try to topple a record like that.
Well, if they do, I can’t wait to see it.
Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!
As I perused this year’s edition of the iconic record-keeping tome, there was a two-page spread dedicated to Rubik’s Cube world records alone. (There were numerous other puzzly records scattered throughout the book as well.)
So, since 2019 is drawing to a close in the next few weeks, why not dedicate one of the last blog posts of 2019 to the most up-to-date puzzly world records I can track down?
Shall we? Let’s shall.
Let’s start with a few Scrabble records.
On January 21, 2012, Singapore’s Toh Weibin amassed the highest score ever recorded in a Scrabble tournament at the Northern Ireland Scrabble Championship in Belfast, scoring 850 points.
January is apparently a good month for word-tile world records, as on January 5, 2015, Lakshan Wanniarachchi set a record for playing the most opponents in Scrabble simultaneously — 40! — in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He defeated 31 of the 40 players in order to qualify for the record.
(So, yeah, you might have more Words with Friends games going at once than Wanniarachchi did, but did you win that many? Probably not.)
Instead of multiple opponents, how about one opponent for 20 hours and 15 minutes?
That’s how long chess masters Ivan Nikolic and Goran Arsovic faced off in Belgrade on February 17, 1989, where they set a world record for the most moves played in a single chess game: 269.
We can stick around Europe for one more puzzly world record, this time in Wageningen, Netherlands, as the Ceres Student Association teamed with Hasbro to create a Monopoly board the size of three-and-a-half tennis courts. Yes, on November 30, 2016, they unveiled a 9,687-square-foot version of the famously frustrating game board.
9,687 square feet? That’s pretty big, I guess. Unless, of course, you’re talking about a world record set in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where everything is ludicrously oversized and lavish.
On July 7, 2018, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) unveiled the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle, a 65,896-square-foot puzzle that commemorated the late Sheikh Zayed.
And speaking of jigsaw puzzles, students at the University of Economics Ho Chi Mihn City in Vietnam set a record by completing the jigsaw puzzle with the most pieces — 551,232 pieces! — on September 24, 2011, breaking the record previously set in Singapore — 212,323 pieces — which had stood since 2002.
According to the Guinness article covering the event:
It took the students 17 hours to first break up the 3,132 sections, each containing 176 pieces, into which the jigsaw puzzle had been divided, and then re-assemble them to create the puzzle.
Seventeen hours of puzzling is ambitious, but what about 24 hours of puzzling?
That’s what Richard Bragg, Daniel Egnor, Amanda Harris, and Ana Ulin — aka Bloody Boris’s Burning Bluelight Brigade — tackled when they set the world record for most escape rooms attended in one day. On October 3, 2018, they visited 22 escape rooms in 24 hours in Moscow, Russia. The team’s success rate was just as impressive; the team escaped all but one of the rooms in the allotted time.
Now that’s an escapade.
Of course, we couldn’t have a world records puzzling post without talking about the Rubik’s Cube.
The official fastest time for solving a standard 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube is held by Feliks Zemdegs, who set an average time of 5.8 seconds in the 2017 Malaysian Cube Open. (In competition solving, the average time across three different solves comprises your official time.)
The unofficial record for the fastest 3x3x3 solve — meaning it was outside of tournament conditions — was set in China: 3.47 seconds by Du Yesheng.
But that’s only the official size. What about other Cubes? Let’s look at the fastest solves (that I can verify):
7x7x7: 1 min 47.89 sec by Max Park
6x6x6: 1 min 13.82 sec by Max Park
5x5x5: 37.28 sec by Max Park
4x4x4: 18.42 sec by Max Park (starting to see a pattern here…)
2x2x2 (average solve): 1.51 Lucas Etter
2x2x2 (single solve): .49 sec by Maciej Czapiewski
And, just to show off, Stanley Chapel holds the record for a blindfolded 4x4x4 solve: 1 minute, 29 seconds.
[A different blindfolded solver. Image courtesy of Le Rubik’s Cube.]
Of course, now that we’ve mentioned one weird way to solve a Cube, let’s explore a few others.
Feliks Zemdegs set another world record by solving a 3x3x3 one-handed in 6.88 seconds. On March 1, 2015, Bhargav Narasimhan solved five Rubik’s Cubes one-handed in a blistering 1 minute, 23.93 seconds.
Daniel Rose-Levine holds the record for solving a 3x3x3 with his feet: 16.96 seconds. Not to be outdone, Que Jianyu unscrambled a trio of Rubik’s Cubes with his hands and feet simultaneously in just 1 minute, 36.38 seconds, in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China. (For the record, he solved one in each hand and one with his feet).
He later hung from a pole to record the fastest time to solve a Rubik’s Cube upside-down: 15.84 seconds. (He also holds the record for solving three Cubes while juggling, doing so in 5 minutes, 2.43 seconds.)
Jack Cai solved one blindfolded in 16.22 seconds. On July 22, 2018, at the Delhi Monsoon Open in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India, Shivam Bansal shattered the field with the most Rubik’s Cubes solved while blindfolded: 48 out of 48 in under 1 hour.
George Turner holds the record for solving on a pogo stick: 24.13 seconds.
Krishnam Raju Gadiraju solved 2 Cubes simultaneously — underwater! — in 53.86 seconds. Kevin Hays achieved a world record for solving eight 3x3x3 Cubes underwater on August 19, 2015. He held his breath for 2 minutes and 4 seconds.
[Here’s a YouTube video of a different, but still impressive, underwater solve.]
Now let’s get truly ridiculous.
Phillip Kwa’han Espinoza holds the world record for most 3x3x3 Cubes solved while running a marathon. On November 14, 2015, he solved 839 Cubes over the course of 4 hours, 56 minutes, and 1 second during the 26.2 mile run in the REVEL Canyon City Marathon in Azusa, California, shattering the previous record of 175 Cubes.
26.2 miles is pretty good. But what about 12,000 feet?
That’s how high up Dan Knights was in June of 2003 when he jumped from a plane and solved a Rubik’s Cube in freefall while skydiving. He solved it in 34 seconds… which is good, because he only had 40 seconds before he’d have to deploy his parachute to safely execute a 12,000-foot fall.
To close things out today, let’s look at some Rubik’s records about quantity.
What about the most cubes solved:
one-handed while treading water in one hour? 137 by Shen Weifu
on a unicycle? 250 by Caleb McEvoy
on a bicycle? 1,010 by P K Arumugam
Finally, in January 27, 2018, the Kaligi Ranganathan Montford Group of Schools set a world record by bringing together the most people simultaneously solving Rubik’s Cubes — 3,997 — at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Chennai, India. The average time to solve for the assembled students? A few minutes.
Things are a bit quieter now. The show recently wrapped up its 35th season, a landmark few television shows ever reach. And integral to the show’s success is Alex Trebek, who has served as the show’s host since 1984.
Trebek is a certifiable pop culture icon these days. Not only is he a member of that elite pantheon of game show hosts that are instantly recognizable to virtually everyone, but he actually holds the Guinness World Record for hosting the most episodes of a game show. He was awarded with the honor on June 13, 2014, having hosted 6,829 episodes (up to that point).
My personal favorite Trebek moment is when he showed up unexpectedly in an episode of The X-Files, playing one of the mysterious Men in Black. It’s unclear if he was playing himself, though. As Agent Scully states, “Mulder didn’t say it was Alex Trebek, it was just someone who looked incredibly like him.”
Although he received devastating medical news earlier this year — a diagnosis of stage IV pancreatic cancer — he has said in recent interviews that he’s responding exceptionally well to treatment, giving his many fans and well-wishers hope that he will not only see out the end of his contract (currently set to end in 2022), but many more years of health and happiness.
It’s in that spirit that we write today’s blog post, as Season 35 concluded with one last surprise for Mr. Trebek, courtesy of the Jeopardy! All-Stars (Ken Jennings, Austin Rogers, Brad Rutter, and others):
It’s a wonderful gift to a television icon that millions have been welcoming into their homes for decades now. When it comes to figures in the world of puzzles and games, there are few as iconic as Alex Trebek.
Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!
Every time I think I’ve seen everything someone can do with a Rubik’s Cube, a month or two later, another amazing video appears on the Internet, proving me wrong.
As of last year, the record for a robot solving a Rubik’s Cube was .637 seconds. That robot, Sub1, has been the Guinness World Record holder ever since.
That’s a right, a pair of engineers — Ben Katz and Jared Di Carlo — have nearly halved that world record with what they call their “Rubik’s Contraption.” This cube-solving bot posts a solving speed of .38 seconds.
Their machine is so fast that they had to program it to only allow one motor to move at a time. You see, in previous runs, more than one motor would try to move, and the cube would be RIPPED APART.
This lightning-fast robot is still waiting review by the team from Guinness, so, for now, Sub1’s record stands.
But for how long?
Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!
I was perusing the latest edition of The Guinness Book of World Records, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a whole two-page spread devoted to puzzly world records!
There are lots of world records involving twisty puzzles. The most Rubik’s Cubes solved while riding a unicycle? 18. The most solved underwater? 5 cubes in 1 minute, 18 seconds.
What about the smallest Rubik’s Cube? It’s only 10 mm, and it can be turned and solved just like a regular-sized Rubik’s Cube.
You know, friend of the blog Hevesh5 has helped set a few world records, but that should come as no surprise, really. Domino records are being set and then shattered all the time. I recently stumbled across a video where a top domino artist and his team set the record for the most mini-dominoes toppled:
And for something a little grander in scale, check out this video of a curious domino world record: the longest human mattress domino toppling:
How about the largest domino ever toppled? Prudential Financial created a domino that was over 30 feet tall, 15 feet wide, and 4 feet thick, which they toppled as the last domino in a chain where each domino increased in size until the world-record domino fell.
And for an amazing endurance test, a team of 60 people maintained a domino circle that toppled for 35 minutes, 22 seconds, continuously replacing dominoes as they fell around and around and around again.
Here’s one for the Scrabble fans in the audience. The highest opening score in a Scrabble tournament is 126 points for the word MUZJIKS (using a blank for the U), played by Jesse Inman in the 2008 National Scrabble Championship.
Speaking of personal achievements, Ashish Dutt Sharma of Rajasthan, India, created the world’s largest word-search puzzle! Inside a grid of 129,600 letters, you can find over TEN THOUSAND words on Sharma’s list.
Of course, given its size, it’s actually impossible to have a definitive list of words in the puzzle, because of the vast number of potential letter combinations in the grid. All the words that were intentionally placed in the list mix with hundreds more formed unintentionally.
[Image courtesy of Getty Images.]
To close out this rundown of world-record puzzles, let’s return to the time of King William III and Queen Mary II of England, who commissioned a hedge maze in Hampton Court Palace in Surrey, which still stands today, more than three hundred years later, as the oldest hedge maze in the world.
These are just a sample of the amazing puzzly accomplishments that have been achieved all over the world by intrepid puzzle fans. I can’t wait to see what my fellow puzzlers come up with next.
Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!
PuzzleNation.com Blog 