For die-hard fans of the Rubik’s Cube, it isn’t about whether you can crack the iconic puzzle. It’s about how fast.
In a bustling hotel ballroom in Queens, some 90 competitors are practicing or locked in a speed-cubing showdown, racing to match all sides of the three-dimensional puzzle.
Over a loudspeaker, event organizers summon participants to join one of six tables for a round. When the scrambled cube appears, players have 15 seconds to scrutinize it, turning it this way and that to plot out a flurry of rotations. The fastest solve took teen whiz Jerry Yao just 5.5 seconds.
After a ceremony honoring the winners, Yao playfully boasted in response to questions from a reporter. “If my friends are listening, I’m like, I’m a lot better than all of them,” he said. “And I want to like, keep it that way.”