So, I am going to show my age a bit here.
Back in the 1980’s when The Rubik’s Cube came out, I, like many, sucked at solving it. There were all kinds of patterns that you could make, the checker board with the various colors, or to make it have one color as a frame and another inside the frame. Then there is the issue of putting it back to the original design.
Ya, about that. This is where most of us really sucked. However, I did find a work around, pop the corner off, take it apart and reassemble it. If you do that too many times, it eventually falls apart anytime you play with it so you had to buy a new one.
This happened more often than not for me, because my parents bought the dollar store generic version, “The Moving Color Cube”, which had colors like brown, army green, purple and black. It also would stick or not turn.
If you didn’t want to pop the corner off to reassemble it, there was always the fallback, peel the stickers off and put them back on (never straight), or, again with the dollar store version, the stickers wouldn’t re-stick to the cubes, so you ended up with 6 additional black cubes.
Then there was the best solution, find the kid who could solve it within minutes.
Fast forward 40+ years later, the Rubik’s Cube has made a kind of comeback, with the advent of the fidget industry, and with it has a new rise in kids who challenge each other and enter competitions to find the one who can solve it faster.
Enter Charlie Eggins, Charlie entered the Australian Nationals for Rubik’s Cube championship. He is that kid you wanted to hand you messed up cube to so you could fuck it up again.
Charlie was able to solve his Rubik’s Cube in 12.1 seconds. While that doesn’t sound too exciting. I mean the fasted time to solve it is 3.13 seconds by Max Park.
But Max can’t do it blind. Charlie Eggins can…and did making him the fastest person alive to solve the Rubik’s Cube blindfolded.
Who knows if anyone can beat these world records, but both of these kids will forever be known as the first to hold a world record in solving a Rubik’s Cube…something most of us cheated at to solve.