SpeedCubing
What is Speed Cubing?
Speed cubing is one of my favorite hobbies. For those of you who don't know what this is, speed cubing is the art of solving the Rubik's Cube in the least amount of time possible. My current record is 11.070 seconds. Which isn't exactly the best in the world. Speaking of world class, the world record single time is currently held by Yusheng Du with a 3.47 second solve in 2018.
My Cubing Story
I first picked up a Rubik's cube and attempted to solve it way back when I was in 5th grade. I managed to figure out one layer of the cube by myself. Later, I began to learn the rest of the cube off of the Rubik's cube guide and other Youtube videos.
During the summer before 6th grade, I did my first timed solve. I got a time of approximately 1.5 minutes. I got my first speedcube, the FangShi ShuangRen. For the rest of summer, I averaged about a minute, and obtained a personal best of 45 seconds.
When school started, the morning announcements said something about a Rubik's cube club. I immediately joined the club and became one of the fastest members there. I learned came up with my own set of F2L algorithms (which were not very efficient ). At the same time, I also taught many of my friends how to solve the cube. I also learned how to solve the 4x4. For the rest of the school year, I averaged in the 30 seconds range which was within the top 3 fastest cubers at our school. At the end of the school year, I was getting 28s and 29s. I set a 12-second record which would be my best for a very long time.
In the summer before 7th grade, I went to a summer camp where I met some other cubers. For some reason during the school year of 7th grade, I barely even touched the cube.
When 8th grade came around, there was a new cuber who averaged 20 seconds! I realized that I was behind and began to practice a lot. During winter break I improved by 3 or 4 seconds. Throughout the rest of the school year, I was slowly improving. I fixed my F2L, learned full PLL, and memorized almost full 2-look OLL. By the end of the school year, I was averaging under 19 seconds. I finally broke 12 seconds, with an 11.95 second solve, then with an 11.63 solve. I attended my first competition and placed 46th out of 93 people.
During the summer before my first year of high school, I cut off 3 seconds and averaged about 16 to 17 seconds. I also got into 5x5 and became the best at it among my cubing friends, averaging about 2 minutes and 35 seconds. I also went to two more competitions with the friends I met at the summer camp 2 years ago.I beat my record twice, first 11.42, and then 11.39.
Less than a week after high school started, I broke 11.39 and it became 11.07.
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Seven weeks into college at Purdue University, I was able to hit 9.04 seconds.
As of now, I am still cubing and working hard to improve my times.
