Hey y’all! I am a professional Rubik’s cube solver who holds the National Record for 3x3 average and single in my country AMA

a professional as in you get paid to do it, or?

Unfortunately not. It just means I’m pretty fast and I stand a good chance at a podium in official competitions. No money (at least not yet) it’s a pretty young sport

At that speed, are you still trying to solve one piece at a time or multiple pieces simultaneously?

Definitely multiple pieces simultaneously. In fact, at a certain level you have to be solving not only multiple pieces simultaneously, but also solving the next pieces inside of your mind so that when you finish solving the pieces you were doing, You can go straight into the ones you were solving in your head without any pauses. It’s called “look ahead”

Sounds complex but start small and when you reach that level, you’ll have a good laugh at how simple it can actually be.

Could this "looking ahead" skill be used in any aspect of life other than cube solving?

chess, piano and juggling utilise look ahead as well.

Have you ever tried to solve a shitty non-speed cube and found that you can’t remember the algorithms unless you can do them fast?

I couldn’t tell you how the hell to do any of the double spin PLL algs, and I can’t do them on a slow cube, but with my Zanchin my hands just know the moves.

Would you say there are algs that your hands know but your brain doesn’t?

Absolutely!! There’s this “algorithm” in blind solving that I can ONLY do while blindfolded, and If I look or do it any slower than normal. I’ll get completely lost, it’s pretty funny

Of all the colors on the cube, which one is your favorite?

My sticker configuration allows me to have pink. So I’d say pink, but otherwise I think Orange is pretty nice

not at all what you expect when you first get into it

How so?

very good question! So people usually ask me “don’t you get bored of repeating the same thing over and over again”? And I ask them, don’t you get bored of watching Netflix the whole day?

Believe it or not, it’s the same thing. EVERY SINGLE scramble I’m given to solve, requires a different combination of moves in order to solve the cube. It’s like scrambles of the Rubik’s cube are like shows in Netflix, it’s completely different every time. In fact it’s almost like every scramble has its own personality and once you solve it, you’ll never meet that “personality” ever again. Repeating moves for a scramble In order to solve it is practically impossible.

There’s 43QUINTILLION different ways you can scramble a Rubik’s cube. If you were to arrange every possible scramble for a Rubik’s cube in a line each Rubik’s cube back to back, they’d be able to match the whole diameter of the Milky Way almost 3 times :)

Apart from that; the lessons I’ve learnt from being a speedcuber are endless. For example I’ve literally learnt how to learn lmao. I’m not kidding though, anything skill I pick up snaps into my head 10x quicker than when I wasn’t a speedcuber it’s crazy. I learnt how to juggle 3 balls in 2 nights of like 20 minute practice each.

Some great analogies.

I have, at times, known how to solve the cube (though I've never tried to do it fast), and it certainly was rather formulaic; I got no sense of "personality." But I can imagine that, to optimise for speed, you'd need to know lots more sequences, think ahead more, and also consider more of the cube at once.

very correct. Speedcubing is utterly and completely different from the normal solving that people usually do in minutes. It’s like fire and water

What kind of money are we talking about in the cube game? You say professional, but does that mean technically above the poverty line or does it mean you own a nice boat? What are we talking here?

I get this question a lot lmao. In really really big competitions like this 1st place gets like $1,200 and 3rd place gets $500.

But in normal casual competitions there’s usually not any prize money, which literally nobody in the community complains about because meeting other speedcubers you can talk to about stuff that other people wouldn’t understand and getting your times officially recognised is more than enough payment.

Speedcubing also happens to be one of the only sports with no one even attempting to cheat. It’s pretty wholesome. But if money is what you’re interested in, the people who arrange this competitions (delegates) usually get the big bucks, idk how much but it’s enough.

Professional just means if I show up to a competition I’m likely to be one of the fastest cubers there and that’s all the media cares about, so you get to be on TV a lot. Also it’s very unlikely that you’ll ever meet someone who can do it faster than me, kinda like being a GM in chess.

What country do you hold the records for?

Kenya

What cube do you main? Also what cubing stores do you buy from?

I main the Moyu GTS2 and you can get really good cubes from these places;

1.https://www.thecubicle.com

2.https://speedcubeshop.com

1. https://m.lightake.com

"Professional" might be a bit of reaching here. Maybe "competitive" might be a better choice of words. As in, you're actively competing in competitions.

Not trying to take anything away from your achievements, but all of my current official PRs would be NRs in Kenya. I'm by no means a professional and wouldn't even consider myself fast in any event, when compared to the really fast people, which you should if you're calling yourself a professional. I'm not even close to getting a NR in my Country, not even close to being able to win any event at any comp in my area.

Anyways, keep it up and maybe one day you're fast enough to call yourself professional :)

The records I set were such a long time ago tho. I’m averaging high 9 right now. And I only said “professional” so people don’t think it’s just some dude playing with some kids toy. I also mentioned the NRs because people take you more seriously when you have those type of titles. Nothing personal homie

As a speedcuber yourself I’m sure you’re aware just how much work goes into speedcubing.

Hi! I've never solved a Rubik's cube in my life, but I want to learn how to do it. For those who are interested in learning like myself, what tips can you give us?

Also, does it necessarily make you smarter if you start learning how to solve it? If yes, what differences did you experience prior to learning and after?

u/topppits has answered well enough.

Do you have an estimate of how much time you have spent on this? I practiced a lot a while ago and got down to about 30 seconds. It's really impressive how good people have gotten!

I’ve done the math and very roughly about 207hours of practice.

But don’t let that intimidate you, in half that amount of time you could be doing under 20sec

Did you miss a digit? 207 hours is like... nothing. I've spent more than that on video games I still suck at.

I know...crazy right?

That’s why Cubing is fun, you don’t need to be putting in 3hrs a day everyday in order to get fast

how many comps have you been to ?

Probably like 5. I don’t keep track, I just go and have fun

Why is it such a sausage fest?

There’s a lot of phenomenal female speedcubers all around the world and we would love to see even more of them. Maybe they just haven’t been exposed to it as much as males which isn’t fair, but that should change for sure!

[deleted]

Keep cubing, virgin.

I’m so sorry of it came off condescending. I’ve edited the text, sorry again

Do you have some mental dictionary of algorithms/ move sequences that you work from or are all of the moves done on the fly? It's always fascinated me how people can do this considering the staggering number of configurations that a cube can be in.

Great question!

So in the advanced method called CFOP(Cross-F2L-OLL-PLL). There’s literally 4 steps you need to know in order to solve the whole thing. For each step, besides the first one(Cross) which you have to do with ya brain. There’s a set of algorithms you’re supposed to know.

How we memorise those algs is literally by doing it so many times that it just slips into our muscle memory and we can do it very fast and on demand. In a solve when you see the case during one of the steps, it’s like your hands know what to do.

So in F2L there’s 42 algorithms and OLL there’s 57 and PLL there’s 21. If you cram those, you can solve any scramble of the cube. It’s a bit hard to explain the whole thing in full, but I hope you get the gist.

edit: you should also know that learning all those algorithms is NOT necessary to learn how to solve the Rubik’s cube. The beginners method has like 7 algorithms in total and they’re super duper simple. CFOP is only for the sake of efficiency and speed.

Do you use 1 method of solving most of the times or do you have multiple depending on what the scramble is?

Are you Feliks?

Do you have any tips for me? I have an average of 20s with cfop

There’s currently no one who uses 2 methods depending on the scramble it’s just inefficient and unnecessary. But it’d be pretty cool

No, I’m not Feliks unfortunately. But I’d love to race him

If your doing 20s and you know full CFOP then your weak points are most likely fingertricks. Also your cross by now should under 2secs every solve

How do you feel for that poor guy that was about to break the world record and then dropped the cube with 1 second left?

One of the saddest moments of the year honestly. And i share a name with him as well, so I hope it doesn’t happen to me like that :[

In competition, how do officials decide how to scramble a cube? Do they just randomly turn on it for a while? How do they ensure that it’s sufficiently scrambled? Aren’t some “random” starting positions easier to solve than others and doesn’t that impact the time that competitors will achieve in competition?

There are programs that generate random scrambles. For practice, many of us use this website:

qqtimer.net

When you open the site, you'll see a series of letters across the top. Those are random moves we should apply (F - turn the front layer clockwise 90 degrees, F' - turn the front layer counterclockwise 90 degrees, F2 - turn the front layer 180 degrees, etc..)

At competitions, they have a list of random scrambles that they use. Each competitor submits their cube to the judges, who scramble the cube to match the listed one, then the competitor has 15 seconds to inspect and then solve the cube as fast as they can.

This is repeated 5 times. The fastest time and slowest time are removed, and the average of the three middle times is used to determine if they continue to the next round/win the competition.

So every competitor should be presented with the same 5 scrambles to make it fair.

well said

Hey! I am a cuber, and my PB is still 10.94. Do you have any tips to get sub-10?

It’s so vital that you ensure you have all your fundamentals down. That means;

1. You need to know full CFOP.

2. Learn all the essential fingertricks

3. Make sure you can do all of your LL algs in under 1.5secs.

4. Your F2L should take 6.5s maximum; so make sure you rotate wisely, make sure you can do all your F2Lpairs blindfolded from any angle in about 1 second.

5. Learn how to do 1st pair in inspection once your comfortable with all the above.

If you do that, sub10 will be yours

1. You need to know full CFOP.

Or Roux

haha yes. That works too

...I realize I'm setting myself up for "pick up a cube" but - How do you even get started into this world? Rubik's Cubes confuse me and make me feel like a caveman.

Don’t feel down. You should also know that solving it on your own without watching a tutorial will probably frustrate you to death.

Go on YouTube and explore the world of speedcubing there, those guys are super duper helpful. Make sure you’re only watching beginner tutorials at first, they’re a good place to start

It is impressive to watch some of these performances, but I'm curious if there's any evidence that doing this helps develop cognitive abilities that are useful for anything other than speedcubing.

In other words, is there data showing a correlation to an increase in performance speedcubing to mathematical abilities, spatial thinking or logical analysis, etc.?

Good luck to you!

Short answer; No. Long answer; I’ve learnt more lessons and skills from speedcubing than I’ve ever learnt in My life skills classes in school. Big misconception is that the cube requires math and truth is it really doesn’t. You can be the worst in your class at maths and still be as fast as your willing to work for.

For me personally I’ve learnt so much from doing this that I can’t even write them all here. You can find out for yourself, give it a shot it’s definitely worth it :)

I got two questions:

1- I believe there was a research paper saying that optimally, you can always solve a rubik's cube in under 21 moves, did that effect the way serious players play the game in any way?

2- With all the time you've put into it, do you ever think that it would be much better to get obsessed and really good at sth more profitable or more empowering? so for ex, probably programming/engineering would be compatible for you (given you're good at rubik's cube solving)

1. Yes. It’s possible to solve any Rubik’s cube in 20 different moves or less but we still don’t fully understand how a computer is able to do it. In official competitions you only have 15seconds to inspect your cube anyway, so even if we knew we wouldn’t be able to figure it out quick enough.
   What’s even funnier about this is, even if we theoretically were able to figure out these magical 20 moves, doing them would take longer than doing some fingertrick friendly 55move solution. Seems odd, but cubers are crazy xD

2.What do you do for leisure? Well...us we cube lmao. It’s a lot of fun, and I think that’s what really matters

Do you think you would make a good teacher for someone who wants to get in speedcubing?

Absolutely. I’ve taught countless people and I love doing it

My highscore is around 18s but it was done by me like 7-8 years ago. Back then I was solving using Friedrich(?). Then I stopped as I thought it's Just not giving me anything in return, sorry for that.

Question is, what is the Best solving method right now? Is it similar to Friedrich? Do you think of any other idea that could help solving the cube quicker?

What's the Best 3x3x3 cube on the market right now ? I might buy it Just for fun.

Also in you opinion what's the most boring cube to speedsolve? Is it Just getting much boring when you for Instance take 6x6x6 and compete?

“CFOP” is extremely reliable for reaching unimaginably fast speeds. So it’s sufficient. Another better looking method that also works for many is “Roux”. Either of these two are the best.

There’s no “best” 3x3 right now. A good 3x3 is what gives you the best times, I personally like slow cubes that are kinda heavy but don’t strain your fingers when turning fast. The Guanlong cubes do that well for me.

There’s no boring cube to solve. They’re all fun for their own reasons

My daughter is 10 and she can solve the standard kind in 17 seconds. She loves solving them and taught a lot of her friends how. How does she progress from here or how do I support her?

that’s amazing. I always love to hear of young guys getting into it, and the fact that she’s a girl makes her an automatic treasure.

The number 1 advice I’d give to parents is to support their kids throughout. I never received proper support when I was starting and I almost quit completely.

Also take her to competitions, it’ll give her motivation to become faster and meet very good people who can help her. Check out the world cube association website to look for official competitions in your area

I've met one other speedcuber in my life, so this comes more from our observations of him than I... Are you better than average at manipulating other geometrical matrices in mental space?

Not at all. Actually I have Aphantasia

How do I solve a rubiks cube without peeling off the stickers?

this is all you need to watch. Getting frustrated at first is common, but keep pushing and anyone can do it. I promise :)

At the highest level, is solving still 'just' applying the known patterns, or are the top solvers adapting to the situation way more?
Obviously adapting is way faster, but to what extend is it possible in such a short timespan?

The average solve is completed at 8turns per second or higher for a top level solver. And yes that is actually VERY practical, it’s done all the time. But for someone to be turning that fast, things need to be as automatic as possible.

So at first you just have to know. But since there’s so many people in the game, you have to have a little something up your sleeve once in a while in order to give you an edge

Di you have any tips of learning new algorithms quickly? I am very slow at learning algs and forget them in solves

I know exactly what you mean.

I’m actually planning on making a video for this type of thing coz I haven’t seen anyone mention this tactic.

But if you focus on the front right F2L pair while doing algs and remember how it moves. You can memorise an alg in minutes. It’s a bit odd at first, but in the long run you’ll be able to learn new algs anytime you choose

Why oh why do new Rubik's cubes come pre -solved. What is the actual point !!!!???

haha. I like this question. Actually some scrambles are impossible to solve without removing pieces. So when it comes solved it just shows that it’s possible.

Are you Felix? Mats? Or are you a smaller name in the community?

smaller name for sure. But between my last competition and now, I’ve improved so much from then, that you might just get to hear my name come up when this pandemic clears

How long would you say you've had to work on algorithms, specifically F2L and OLL? This is assuming you use CFOP, of course. I can solve using the basic layer building method, but learning the algorithms for CFOP seems kind of daunting. Thanks!

It took me 9months to learn full CFOP from the day I started cubing. Which is a hella lot more time than it should have. But hey, I made it anyway.

My point is, just pick up the cube and learn an OLL when you feel like it. No rush. F2L on the other hand can be learned extremely quickly since you technically aren’t doing algorithms.

Start with “beginner F2l aka intuitive F2l” and “beginner OLL aka 2-Look OLL” then you can go to intermediate later. That’s what I did and that what is recommended.

But never push yourself too hard, Cubing is all about having a good time

But how many rubiks cubes can you sopve in an hour?

100+

My sticker setup has pink instead of orange so I’d say Pink. But otherwise Orange:)

I can solve a 3x3 with little issue. I have to look up guides for parody’s when I get in to the void cube and 4x4 and 5x5. Do you have any particular websites, books, instructional videos or tips on how I can get better and retain the algorithms easier? (I really only use my own algorithms that I “made up” that make sense only to me. Mostly it’s muscle memory at this point.) I’m still solving the cube by turning it multiple directions and using the same few fingers repeatedly. I know I need to hold the cube still and turn around it, but it’s hard to wrap my head around the mechanics.

I don’t intend on getting to speedcubing status, but I’d love to be faster than the average person, or at least fast enough to show off a little. Plus it’s fun to get better at certain skills, you know?

Ah. So there’s a graph for improving that everyone has to follow until you get so fast that your problems become unique. That’s usually at like 11secs average. But from even 5mins the progressions is the same.

1. Make sure your using the proper beginners method, which you can watch here

2. Get the proper fingertricks, which just means you should be using fingers to turn layers/sides instead of ussing your whole palm.

3. Practice and this can get you to around 50secs average.

4. Only when you’re comfortable, start learning the beginners speedsolving method. It’s called CFOP, and it’s as simple as searching beginners CFOP on YouTube and follow their instructions.

5. Once you have *mastered the beginners CFOP, move on to intermediate and master that. This is enough to let you average like 25secs or less

6. Once you’ve mastered that, just search full CFOP guide and once you master that you can even reach 10secs with practice purely.

7. By this time you’ll know exactly how to improve more from the knowledge you’ve gained up until this point.

8. Have a heck load of fun :)

What is your record?

6.948secs. And I stumbled a lot during that solve, it could have been faster

What’s your favorite dinosaur?

Pterodactyls sound pretty..............fly :L

I was given a cube in the hope of solving it on my own. I realize that it's not going to happen.

I've tried several methods over the internet but cant seem to correctly get past the cross. I know its like step 1.

What methods do you recommend or is there a link you can provide for someone like me?

Thanks.

this tutorial is very well done

What's the largest amount of turns required to solve a puzzle? What I mean is how complex can you make the cube and how fast can that puzzle be solved?

Any scramble can be solved by a top level speedcuber in a similar amount of moves each time. And depending on how challenging those moves are, the time is affected. So if you give me a scramble and the moves required are a bit awkward, then I’ll take a longer time.

But if a cuber averages 8secs, it’s hard to give her/him a scramble that’d take above 10secs max to solve.

When did you know you had a special talent for it? Or was it something you randomly wanted to be good at and you pushed yourself to be this good?

Either way, this is a kickass accomplishment to have

Well both.... I did put in a lot of hours and effort into cubing. But I remember at my first competition I had only been cubing for 5months and I was averaging 21secs. And there was a guy who’d been cubing for 8years and he was averaging 15secs. That’s when I realised I was doing pretty well.

But there’s people who’ve improved at much faster rates and still blow my mind. Leo Borromeo is a good example

How many Rubik's Cubes did you build yourself from scratch?

If you mean like putting the pieces together. Then I’ve done that countless times while servicing my cubes. Most speedcubers have

Can you solve 3 while juggling them?

Working on it ; ]

I still do the cube one row at a time, moving onto the bottom cross etc. Best time is about 50 seconds. How can I (a 50 yr old) improve my technique without learning a new style?

Improvement from 50secs is actually very simple, but I wouldn’t say easy.

The method you should start learning once you get very comfortable with beginners method(which I’m assuming you have) is CFOP. Which stands for 1.Cross, then 2.F2L ,then 3.OLL and finally 4.PLL.

What I personally did when at your level, is I looked up what step I wanted to learn first (you can learn them in any order but I highly recommend F2L first) and put beginners in-front of it then search that on YouTube and watched some videos on it.

So for example I’d search up “Beginners F2L” on YouTube and follow what they teach. Once I’m comfortable with that, I’d search “Beginners OLL” and then master that. After mastering all the beginner versions of CFOP move to intermediate, then master that, then you can move to the normal CFOP and finally Advanced.

I don't know if you're still around and asking questions, but, if you are, here are a few questions that I would really be interested in getting your answers to.

1.) Are there Rubik's cube solver groupies? 1a.) Have you actually had any females want to hook up with you, because of this skill?

2.) Have you ever gambled against other people? 2a.) If you have gambled on this, have you ever lost?

3.) Do you like Eminem?

1.Yes. YES

2.Yes

1. He’s one of my favourite artists. You stalking me or smth?! jk jk :}

When did you first find an interest for cubing?

September 2018 is the month I leant how to solve it.

Ok, I'm not making fun of you or putting you down here, this is something I've genuinely always wondered:

Of all the things you could invest the time and energy into getting really, really good at...why solving Rubik's Cubes?

Like I said, I'm not judging (I mean, I've invested serious time and energy into hobbies with no practical purpose other than I just enjoy it)... but what attracted you to this is particular?

No that’s a good question. The truth is philosophically speaking, at the end of the road all that matters is how much fun you had on earth right. So if it seems fun to do, then flippin do it.

Also let me just say, that if you personally got into it and try for yourself which I highly recommend. You’ll understand exactly why it’s so captivating, I can remember what I used to think about Rubik’s cubes before I got into it and let me just say boy was I off.

The reason I decided to try it out was I saw some guy solving it on Instagram once, and he happened to live very close to me. So I asked for the cube as just some thing I was curious about randomly and I ended up getting hooked.