HUNGARY: Records broken at first Rubik's Cube competition held in Budapest for 23 years

Record ID: 759012

  • Title: HUNGARY: Records broken at first Rubik's Cube competition held in Budapest for 23 years
  • Date: 25th November 2005
  • Summary: (L!1) BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (RECENT - NOVEMBER 20, 2005) (REUTERS) COMPETITION VENUE IN SHOPPING MALL LARGE DECORATION RUBIK'S CUBE SPEEDCUBE COMPETITION IN PROGRESS CLOSE UP OF RUBIK'S CUBE TURNING SPEEDCUBING IN PROGRESS (2 SHOTS) AUDIENCE WATCHING AND CUBING YOUNG BOYS SPEEDCUBING (3 SHOTS) VARIOUS OF AUDIENCE SPEEDCUBING
  • Embargoed: 10th December 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Hungary
  • Country: Hungary
  • Topics: Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVA8K7XQAS5ET9B949RBRYM832NU
  • Story Text: After a 23 year lapse Budapest has once again held a Rubik's Cube competition.
    In the home city of Erno Rubik, inventor of the Magic Cube, more than 130 contestants took part from age 8 to over 50, and hundreds of people watched the competition as well as tried their own hand at the puzzle.The Rubik's Cube may appear simple to solve, but the 3 x 3 original has an astonishing 43 quintillion (43,252,003,274,489,856,000) different configurations. Solvers must restore the cube to its original state, with each face a single colour.
    The cube was invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik, a professor at the Hungarian Academy of Crafts and Design in Budapest. Rubik meant to create a cube with parts able to move around a centre axis. He painted each side a different colour for demonstration purposes and accidentally stumbled upon the puzzle now known as the Rubik's Cube. It became a popular worldwide phenomenon. Some 300 million cubes have been sold worldwide since 1980, and there has been a recent new revival in interest due largely to blogs and websites dedicated to it.
    But in Hungary itself the cube had seemingly been a little forgotten. Organisers of the event felt it was high time to change that.
    "The Cube is a huge craze all over the world from the US to Japan, everywhere, but in Hungary where the inventor of the Rubik Cube lives no competition has been organised," said Csaba Barsony. "Therefore we thought that we ought to do such a competition here as well. We wanted to have a home competition that can raise the popularity of the cube with more and more young people getting to know it," he added. During the competition the Hungarian 3x3 speed-cubing record was broken twice, first by Kolos Kantor, then by 19 year of Mitko Prodanov. He says a complex array of talents are needed to speedcube. "You have to learn a lot of various movement sequences, then you have to be able to think through fast what you want to do, what situation you want to solve with how many moves and how fast, and of course you need to have a good finger technique with which you can achieve all this," Prodanov said. Australian, German and English champions were eager to compare their talents and hardly ever stopped playing. During one of these informal sessions English champion Dan Harris accidentally broke the current world record of 75 seconds at the 3x3 by doing it in 11.24. Harris's achievement was not timed officially, but it was caught on camera.
    "Stefan Pochmann from Germany and I were doing three cubes each to see who gets the best time and on my third cube, I think it was, I got 11.24, which was timed with a stopwatch so it's not official but it's 11.24 seconds. It's better than the world record," Harris said.
    After the official Hungarian competition an international Cube Show dazzled the audience. The foreign champions performed speed cubing with several different cubes as well as solving it with just one hand. They even tried it blindfolded. The competitors were given a few minutes to examine the cube before donning blindfolds and attempting the puzzle. German Stefan Pochmann achieved it, and is said to be one of the few in the world who can do it. Given the success of the event, organisers have decided that they will hold a European Championship next year in Budapest.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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