THUNDER BAY — What’s old is new again.
Thanks to the isolation of the pandemic and a recent Netflix documentary, The Speed Cubers, the popularity of solving the Rubik’s Cube has soared again, with competitions taking place all over the world.
Thunder Bay’s Graham Bill, who averaged about 13 seconds for a three-by-three cube solve at a recent sanctioned competition in Pickering, Ont., is trying to lead the charge locally, in the early stages of starting a Rubik’s Cube club in the city, attempting to foster interest in the hobby, which took the world by storm in the early 1980s.
Inspired by the documentary and gifted a cube by visitors from Nunavut, the 11-year-old said it took him a long time to figure out the solution, having to learn dozens of algorithms to challenge any situation, not to mention recognizing when to use them.
“After that I just wanted to get faster and faster,” he said.
“I started with the two-by-two. Obviously, it’s the easiest. I started with a sheet of paper. There were a bunch of algorithms, which are sets of moves on paper … and after I learned it on the paper, I tried to memorize it and solved the cube over and over again, until I could solve it without paper and it was just muscle memory.”
Graham said there are almost an infinite number of scrambles and solves, and 43 quintillion possible combinations, in competition he has to think quick. His record for a three-by-three cube solve is under nine seconds, but at the world level, he’d be crushed by his opponents, those at the elite level.
Yusheng Du holds the record for a single solve, completing the cube in 3.47 seconds, while nine-year-old Yiheng Want, a cubing prodigy who hails from China, did five solves in an average of 4.69 seconds, setting the new record just last month.
His father said the family realized pretty quickly that Graham had a knack for solving the cube, invented by Hungarian Erno Rubik in the late 1970s, and was really committed to the sport.
“We’ve just kind of let him run with it. The last six months his interest exploded. I think that documentary on Netflix really helped encourage and solidify his interest in it and he could see that a lot of people do this. He wasn’t the only one.”
Graham said he knows he’s not going to get rich solving the Rubik’s Cube, and his father, Steven, said at times he and his wife have to set limits on how much he can practice, but for now, they’re encouraging him to take it as far as he can — and the family travel budget allows.
“I can’t really make a living out of it, but we do want to make a Rubik’s Cube club here in Thunder Bay. We want to invite other people and teach them how to solve the cube and teach them get faster and faster and do competitions here,” he said.
“That would be a really cool thing to get happening.”
The 2024 World Cubing Association Championship will be held in Minneapolis, from July 18 to July 21.
This story was first reported by CBC Thunder Bay.
