Are your fingers this fast? In just 3.13 seconds, a 21-year-old speedcuber from California broke the world record for the fastest time of solving a 3x3x3 rotating puzzle cube, according to Guinness World Records.
Max Park completed the world-record solve during a Pride at Long Beach event on June 11, beating his previous personal record of 3.63 seconds.
Wearing a black shirt with the Rubik’s Cube logo, a focused Park zoomed through the challenge at lightning speed, slammed his cube on the table, clapped and shouted, “Yes!” as attendees cheered around him, a video of his victory shows.
The 21-year-old Korean American, who has autism, also holds “nearly all” of the other records for speedcubing, including records for solving the 4x4x4 cube, 5x5x5 cube, 6x6x6 cube and 7x7x7 cube, according to Guinness World Records.
The world record site defines the speedcubing pastime as “rearranging a variety of rotating puzzles into their constituent colors … as quickly as possible under competitive conditions.”
The World Cube Association, the governing body for mechanical twisting puzzle competitions, has had “over 100,000 unique competitors across 140 different countries,” its website said. Park has participated in over 140 competitions, according to the association.
“Cubing has proved to be a good therapy for Max to socialize and strengthen his skills,” the champion’s parents, Schwan and Miki Park, said.
“There was a time when Max couldn’t even open water bottles, but he showed interest in solving Rubik’s Cubes,” they told Guinness World Records, which lists their son as a Hall of Famer.
When he was 10, Park won a cubing competition against college students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology.
His story was featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary, “The Speed Cubers.”
Erno Rubik invented what we now know as the Rubik’s Cube in 1974, though it was first released as the Magic Cube, according to the puzzle company’s website.
Park is also an official ambassador for Rubik’s, his Instagram account states.