Monday, January 19, 2009

Rubik's Cube Competition

I spent a draw-dropping Sunday afternoon at the Exploratorium witnessing much of the San Francisco Open 2009 Rubik's Cube Competition. It was pure, addictive nerd fascination to watch these pros spin the faces of the cubes into place without seeming to even think about it. At a certain point physical dexterity becomes just as important as mental ability. I saw some insane stuff. I little boy who looked to be about 4 or 5 solved his cube in under 3 minutes. Players rapidly aligned the faces of 4x4x4 & 5x5x5 cubes & solved cubes using just one hand. Most incredibly, several people took up the challenge of solving the cube blindfolded. Probably less than 1 out of 3 trials resulted in a successful solve, but I saw one girl study the cube for about 30 seconds, don a blindfold, & successfully solve it within 2 minutes! In the final round, I watched Lucas Garron solve a cube in exactly 10 seconds.

This is definitely a young man's game. The majority of the contestants were teenage boys. In the final rounds, the competitors were all guys, & none looked to be above college age. They got punchier as the competition came to a close. At the end of the final round, Michael Gottlieb played a trick on us by using a specially scrambled cube to make it look like he solved it in less than 4 seconds.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I (Lucas Garron) was the person who got the 10:
http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/c.php?allResults=All+Results&competitionId=SanFranciscoOpen2009

Michael Gottlieb did the fake 3.78.

Axel Feldheim said...

Oops! My blog entry has been rectified. Thanks for correcting me & congratulations on your awesome 10! I'd never seen a Rubik's Cube competition before, & I was pretty blown away by the top solvers

The blindfolded solve is one that really got to me. Do you memorize the cube & then you can manipulate the image in your head as you twist the actual cube? Or do you memorize a sequence of moves that you figured out will solve it? I don't get it...