Boon Does Cube Adventure

By: Boon Chew

I walk up to the station, a menacing judge eyeing me and a plastic Rubik’s Cube covering sitting on the table next to him. The judge is just a little kid, but somehow his gaze feels like he is mocking me. I avert my eyes and walk to the seat. I sit down, taking a deep breath in.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I respond, breathing out slowly. 

The judge lifts the cover off and starts a timer. I pick up the cube and frantically rotate it, looking for pieces. The loud chattering of the crowd makes it hard to focus, and a deep pit forms in my stomach.

“4 seconds,” the judge declares. I put the cube on the table, my arms shaking, and lay my hands on the timer. A wave of doubt sifts through me. Have I spent enough time inspecting? What if I mess up? There’s no going back now, I tell myself. I lift my hands off the timer and pick up the cube.

I’m immediately absorbed into the cubing zone, my eyes locked on the puzzle, and I quickly turn the first few sides as I had planned. My cube locks up. Not good. I’m on edge for the rest of the solve, and I pray that my algorithms flow smoothly. I execute a final series of moves and slam my hands on the timer, my cube hitting the table mat with a loud thud. I look up at the timer and see a 22. 

During the rest of the competition, I continued onto the next four solves with similar results, and ended up with an average of 24 seconds. This placed me in 19th place out of around 60 people in my second ever Rubik’s Cube speedsolving competition. I was aiming for a sub-20 second average, but even though I didn’t reach my goal, I came out of the competition feeling confident and motivated.

For the next few months, I used most of my free time doing practice solves to improve my intuition, which is basically turning sides based on what I think instead of following algorithms. I had used a method called the Beginner’s Method to solve the Rubik’s Cube for my past 3 years of cubing, which was obviously tailored towards beginners. Most people abandoned this method once they got fast enough to adopt a method called CFOP, which stands for Cross, First Two Layers (F2L), Orient Last Layer (OLL), and Permute Last Layer (PLL), the four main steps you need to solve the Rubik’s Cube. But I hadn’t made this switch, and had instead optimized many features of the Beginner’s Method. 

Because of this, I started running out of things to learn, which led to a boring and repetitive experience. I had no one to share my interest with, because everyone I knew wasn’t into cubing. So I took a break, perhaps an inevitable one… for more than 2 years.

Every day, my cube sat in a dark drawer under my desk as dust collected on its surface. I didn’t look at or touch it, nor did I even think about it. I didn’t hate cubing, I had just moved onto other hobbies like video game development (on Scratch, a coding platform) and playing chess. Since I had worked so hard and practiced so much for something that I ended up quitting, it took a big part of me away.

In the summer of 2020, with all the free time in the world, I picked up a Rubik’s Cube again. I had forgotten about cubing, the dust especially indicating that, but I had a fresh start and was ready to get back into it.

My first solve went horribly. My turning was slow, like a sloth in honey at 10 percent speed. Also, my intuition was horrible, and I had forgotten almost half of my algorithms. In case you didn’t know, an algorithm is a series of moves that reorients pieces in a certain way. Anyway I timed the solve, and got a 35 second solve. This might seem amazing after not cubing for 2 years, but my average before I quit was below 20 seconds.

This solve motivated me, though, because I expected to see a minute on my timer. After doing a few more solves, my times stayed the same, and I stopped myself. I noticed I was going down the rabbit hole that caused me to take a long break previously. Solving the cube over and over got boring after a while, and I couldn’t let cubing become boring again. So after defeating my reluctance to learn a new method, I started on my journey to mastering CFOP.

“For the CFOP method, the four main steps are the Cross, F2L, OLL, and PLL.”

I pause the video. What does that even mean? The last three terms sound like gibberish. The only one I can remember from the Beginner’s Method is the Cross, which is the first step in solving the cube. I grab my cube and unpause the video.

“The first thing I recommend learning is Beginner F2L.”

I pause the video again. Hold on. I thought I was done with the beginner stuff. Also, why did he skip past the cross? Wasn’t there anything I could learn about that? I unpaused the video. The rest of the video had me confused the same way. 

After finishing the video, I had a vague understanding of how to solve the cube with CFOP, and how it worked. I did a few practice solves, and my times were even worse. Was it worth spending tons of time to perfect this method when I was already doing great with the Beginner’s Method?

Yes. I wasn’t going to quit cubing the way I had 2 years ago.

Over the next few months, I watched tons of cubing videos on Youtube. They taught me tips and tricks, improved my intuition, and helped me learn completely new algorithms I had never heard of before.

I was really motivated to get better and was able to include these things in my solves. Over the next few weeks, I started to see improvement. My times dropped all the way from a minute and a half (with CFOP) down to 30 seconds. Although I wasn’t able to show off and share my talent with others because of the pandemic, I kept improving without getting bored. Cubing was fun again. 

One day, I was on my bed doing practice solves. I was averaging 14-15 seconds, and occasionally got a 13. I scrambled the cube up, put it on the mat, and laid my hands on the timer. 

The red light comes on, and then the green. I lift my hands off, pick up the cube, and come off to a blazing start. I’m absorbed in the cubing zone, and my eyes are locked on the cube. I finish the Cross in less than half a second, and move onto F2L. All the pieces I need seem to line up perfectly, and the hardest part of the solve is finished.

I’m confident, and my turning is flowing like butter. On the next step, OLL, I get an easy case, and execute the algorithm. Things are going amazingly! Finally, PLL. Surprisingly, I get another easy case, swiftly carry out the algorithm, and slam my hands on the timer, my cube rolling away. I glance down at the timer, and my eyes pop out.

“9.6 SECONDS!” I scream. I throw my hands in the air in pure happiness and fall back onto my bed. I lay there for a few seconds, rapidly breathing in and out. My parents walk in, looking confused.

“What’s going on?” my dad asks, afraid something might have gone wrong. I turn my head.

“I got a sub-10 second solve!” I tell them ecstatically with a big smile on my face. 

I was overjoyed with reaching such an amazing landmark. My average times weren’t even close to 10 seconds, so this was a huge accomplishment for me. Solving the cube under 10 seconds was the ultimate goal I set for myself back when I was still solving the cube with the Beginner’s Method, and reaching it made me feel like all of my years of cubing had paid off.

For the rest of the summer, I continued watching videos, mainly about new algorithms. My times improved more slowly because it gets harder to improve when you can solve the cube quickly, but my motivation stayed high. Cubing was fun, and there were still an infinite amount of things I had to learn. 

This takes us to today, where I average 11-12 seconds. I’ve noticed that, not only is cubing a great hobby because it’s fun, it’s also really impressive, doesn’t involve technology, and it’s unique. Cubing has changed me because I know that I can do anything I want to if I put my mind to it and persevere. After spending tons of time, staying motivated, and watching Youtube, I got a 10 second solve, and I think that anyone could if they really tried.