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!
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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.
So when I saw the video below, I originally thought it would fit right in with the cavalcade of impressive solves we’ve shared in the past.
I mean, solving three Rubik’s Cubes in 20 seconds… while juggling them? That’s incredible!
Check it out:
Wait, what’s that?
If you watch very closely, there’s something strange going on in this one.
Yes, it turns out it’s been faked. This is not a real solve.
But the reveal of how they pulled it off is almost more impressive than actually solving them so quickly:
That’s a lot of effort to make it look real.
But has anyone actually done a juggling solve of multiple Rubik’s Cubes?
Yes. A little more searching turns up the following six-minute doozy:
Here, as far as I can tell, is a genuine video of someone solving three Rubik’s Cubes while juggling them. It takes him six minutes, and he solves them one at a time (one twist at a time, every third throw, as you can see if you slow it down).
The camera isn’t steady; it’s constantly moving around. And the daunting length of the video adds to the credibility. You saw all the work that went into digitally animating 20 seconds. Doing so for six straight minutes with far greater variation in light and framing? That would be a Herculean effort in editing.
The only thing that’s weird about this one is how nonchalant everyone around this guy acts while he’s performing an amazing feat of concentration and dexterity.
It might not be a rapid-fire speed-solve, but it is a worthwhile watch nonetheless.
Now, to close out today’s post, here’s the opposite of speed-solving, as two Rubik’s pros take 18 minutes (sped up in the video) to solve the world’s largest Rubik’s Cube:
I like how the sheer size of the cube seems to flummox them a bit. After all, it’s not as easy to look at all sides of the cube and assess it as you would a normal Rubik’s Cube.
Still, it’s a very cool feat to document.
Meanwhile, I’ll be over here, trying to crack a regular old cube. Good thing I’ve got extra time off for the holiday. I’ll need it.
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That was a cool story in and of itself, but as it turns out, some other puzzlers have gone one step further, using the Wildlife jigsaw puzzle as their canvas for a stop-motion animation video.
This YouTuber, who goes by the name of Sky!, transformed the Wildlife puzzle into games of Tetris, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Mario Brothers, using completed sections of the puzzle as their gameplay elements.
It’s absolutely mind-blowing. Check it out:
Apparently, it took Sky! and a cohort over 400 hours to solve the puzzle and another 400 hours to animate the video. That is some serious dedication.
But that video got me thinking about other ways creative folks have used puzzly elements to tell stories.
And I was reminded of a video that’s been making the rounds on social media lately. It employs one of my favorite puzzle devices — a Rube Goldberg machine — to tell a story of three brothers who face danger and live to tell the tale. (They do use a bit of stop-motion animation at the start, but afterward, it’s all real-time motion.)
This is the story of a ball named Biisuke. Enjoy!
It’s adorable and even has a song! How could you not love that?
It just goes to show you there’s no end to the puzzly stories you can tell with a little creativity.
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By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.
And I’d like to return to the subject of twisty puzzles.
And twisty puzzles like the Rubik’s Cube are a favorite of many 3-D puzzle designers.
You may remember last year when I wrote about the world’s largest Rubik’s-style puzzle, a 17x17x17 twisty puzzle known as the “Over the Top” Rubik’s Cube, created by Oskar van Deventer.
Composed of 2,691 individual 3-D printed pieces, they’ve had some difficulty bringing their new puzzle to fruition, as you’ll see in the video below, posted a few months ago:
Yes, the first attempt to assemble this monstrous puzzle literally exploded in their hands. (Twice!) But they persevered, and now, please feast your eyes on the new record holder:
And here I sit, having never solved an actual Rubik’s Cube. This one might be a bit too much for me.
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By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.
And today, I’d like to return to the subject of twisty puzzles and the Rubik’s Cube!
It’s been over 40 years since Erno Rubik created the first working prototype of the Rubik’s Cube, and over the decades, these unmistakable little cubes have changed the face of puzzles and games.
This puzzle has truly global appeal, and perhaps no video provides more telling proof of that fact than the one I have for you today.
A globe-trotting YouTuber named Nuseir Yassin brought a Rubik’s Cube with him as he explored eleven different countries, and he accomplished something I’ve never seen before: an international group solve of a Rubik’s Cube.
Not only that, but each person who participated was only allowed 1 move before passing it along. One twist, one turn, one shifting of blocks. That’s all.
And guess what? It worked.
Just watch, and marvel at a truly unique and inimitable puzzle-solving experience:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: puzzles make the world a better place.
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