New Rubik's Cube world record set
Competitors race to solve the popular puzzle
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/16/rubiks.ap/index.html

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A 20-year-old California Institute of Technology student set a new world record for solving the popular Rubik's Cube puzzle, turning the tiled brain-twister from scrambled to solved in 11.13 seconds.

Leyan Lo is part of Caltech's Rubik's Cube Club, a student group that hosted the competition at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. Lo's record-setting time came early Saturday, among his first five tries in the preliminary rounds.

The record-setting solve caught competitors and Lo himself by surprise.

"It's kind of scary now that I set it, because I have two more (attempts) to go," Lo said humbly afterward. His time of 11.13 seconds broke the previous record of 11.75 seconds, set by Frenchman Jean Pons at the Dutch Open competition last year.

Still, the world record alone didn't gain Lo the overall champion's title at the event, which was determined by averaging three of five solution times in the final round. For that title, Lo went up against the teenager widely considered the fastest Rubik's Cube solver on the planet -- Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi, a 15-year-old from Pasadena.

Makisumi prevailed, clocking in with an average time of 14.91 seconds in the final round to take first place.

Besides blindingly fast fingers and a head for memorizing algorithms used by most top competitors to solve the cube, what is Makisumi's secret?

"I don't know. Faster first two layers," he surmised, referring to solving the first two layers of the cube's colored tiles before moving on to the last.

For his victory, Makisumi won a Rubik's Snake puzzle, one of several variations of the basic cube which has sold more than 100 million worldwide, according to the manufacturer.