Magic Cube

Important

My personal best was to achieve an average of around 16 seconds for five restores of the 3rd-order (3x3) magic cube, and a single best of 13.81 seconds. Although I haven't practiced for a long time, I think I still can achieve around 25 sec now.

I used to be able to recover a 4th-order magic cube, though at a relatively slow level (about 2.5 minutes). Now I have forgotten the most difficult edge-exchanging formula.

I am a Magic Cube (aka Rubik's Cube) amateur and was fascinated by it for a longer period of time in high school. At the time, the record for the fastest average of five recoveries of a 3rd order Rubik's cube was held by Feliks Zemdegs (1995--), who broke his own previous world record in 2013 with an average speed of 7.91 seconds.

Personal best solves

I reached my single personal best (PB) of 13.81 seconds in Sep 2022, but unfortunately it was not recorded. Here is the video of my best in all recorded cube solves, which is 16.29 seconds. I also attached an interactive tool for you to play with (you can drag to change viewing angle), so you can see how I finished the solve in the video.

A standard cube solve includes following steps:

  • Scrambling: Scramble the cube with the given steps, which is randomly generated each time. Then confirm the cube is correctly scrambled (with the same pattern given in the bottom right of the website).

  • Observation: Tap the space bar to start a 15-second observation. In the observation, you can rotate the whole cube (but NOT single layer) to see every side of the cube. You have to start within 15 seconds, otherwise it is considered as a failed solve and called DNF (Did Not Finish).

  • Solving: Hold the space bar for a while and then release it. The timer starts when you hands leave the space, and will stop when you put hands down. In the official competition the requirements are even stricter, you cannot hold the cube at the beginning. You must keep both hands on the timer and releasing either hand will be counted as starting to restore the cube.

The method I used is called CFOP (Cross, First 2 Layer, Orientation of Last Layer, and Permutation of Last Layer), the most widely-used advanced method across the world.

Misc

I bought two 3x3 cubes in total. The first is Guojia 2 (国甲二) but its designed is far fallen behind. Here is a photo of my second and also beloved cube, a Dayan Lingyun (大雁凌云) bought around 2013 (but with a Gan's sticker). It came with me all the way from Hubei to Shanghai to Davis. But I haven't lubed it for a long time and It doesn't rotate pretty smoothly now.

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In my personal opinion, there are several stages in the level of amateurs' Rubik's cube by the average solving time：

  • Don't know how to restore: This is the level of most people in the world.

  • Successful restore is not guaranteed: Entry-level amateurs who not yet fully master the restore method.

  • In 5 minutes: You may need a better cube and learn finger skills to help you speed up.

  • In 2 minutes: You can enter 1 minutes by practice.

  • Around 40 seconds: You can learn some advanced restoring method, such as CFOP.

  • Around 25 seconds: This is a bottleneck for capacity enhancement. You need to many new factors (e.g. sharper observation, more advanced top-level restore methods) to go further.

  • Around 15 seconds: Sub-professional level. I think 12 seconds is probably the ultimate in what the CFOP method can achieve.

  • Less than 12 seconds: You are no longer an amateur.

I used to play 4th order cube and can restore it around 2.5 minutes, but now I've forgotten the tricks for 4th order Rubik's Cube.