The fastest of the fastest will compete in Nanaimo for B.C.’s first-ever provincial speedcubing championship
For the secret behind speed-solving the puzzles, Chang said it comes down to the methods the speedcuber chooses to solve the puzzle with. Photo: Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7fm
Around 150 competitors will be filling the Beban Park Social Centre this weekend to find out who is the best in the province at speedcubing.
Nanaimo is hosting B.C.'s first-ever provincial speedcubing championship over the weekend starting on August 16 and running until August 18.
Speedcubing is a competitive sport of speed-solving mechanical combination puzzles. While the puzzles can range in shape and size, the most well-known puzzle is the 3x3 cube also known as the Rubik’s Cube.
Before the competition kicked off this morning, CHLY met with the organizers of the competition.
Vianne Chang is one of the organizers of the event and a delegate for the World Cube Association (WCA). Their job is to make sure all the rules are being followed and everything adheres to the WCA standards to make this competition official.
The WCA governs competitions for puzzles that are operated by twisting groups of pieces that they said are commonly known as ‘twisty puzzles.’ 17 different events can be done in a WCA competition and for the B.C. provincials, 13 will be held.
“It's a very wide range of people that come, most people are not here to win. They're just here to beat their personal records,” they said. “So we have people who solve it in like a minute, we have people solving in like five seconds. It's a very welcoming place.”
Chang said, hosting the games is more than just competing, but also meeting people from around the province with the same hobby. They said the WCA hosted its first competition in Toronto in 2003 and has hosted the Canadian Championship recently in B.C. in July 2023. Besides smaller competitions, this is the first large-scale WCA provincial championship in B.C.
Chang explained for each event, each person will get five solves to finish the puzzle.
“So we'll call up a batch of people, and then all of the people that are called up at the same time get their cubes mixed up in the same way, so it's fair. Then people just come to these stations up here, they use these timers, and they time themselves, and then their averages and their best times are recorded,” Chang said. “That happens throughout the day for each event. We also have subsequent rounds where we'll take like the top XYZ people from the previous round.”
Chang said each cube is scrambled by a competition scrambler who will read a computer-generated sequence of moves and apply that sequence to every cube so they all end up in the same scrambled state. While it’s a similar concept, they said a speed cube is a little different than a typical Rubik’s Cube.
“The mechanics of it are a little bit different, so it turns faster, it's smoother, but people are also allowed to compete with a Rubik's Cube–whatever they want, just whatever they're most comfortable with is what they bring to the competition,” they said.
For the secret behind speed-solving the puzzles, Chang said it comes down to the methods the speedcuber chooses to solve the puzzle with.
“There are methods that you learn that basically help you solve the cube in steps, and you memorize different algorithms to help you do each of those steps. The method that most people use is called CFOP, where basically you solve the cross on the bottom layer of the cube, and then you build up the first two layers, and then you solve the last layer at the top layer in two steps,” they said. “Then to do that, you memorize different algorithms depending on what you see on the cube at a certain time.”
For 18-year-old Jacob Kotai and 15-year-old Jose Valdes Rodriguez, they have spent hours training for the B.C. Championship.
From North Vancouver, Kotai said he has made a lot of friends in the speedcubing scene since starting competing in 2017. Valdes Rodriguez who travelled up from Victoria said he is excited to compete in such a large competition. He said he started competing in the sport a little after the COVID-19 pandemic brought back his interest in it.
They both said while there is a growth in popularity, the speedcubing community is still pretty small where they are from. Kotai said out of the whole lower mainland area, only a couple hundred people do the sport.
For Valdes Rodriguez, he said in Victoria he only knows two other people who do it.
“It's definitely way smaller on the island here, which is actually something cool about this competition being held on the island, because it might help grow speedcubing on the island, perhaps,” Valdes Rodriguez said. “It's way smaller where I'm from, so it's a good thing to be able at least to take ferries most of the time and see other people at competitions in Vancouver..”
Kotia said he is competing in every event at the competition this weekend.
“So there’s 2x2–the smallest one. It's the fastest, people average under two seconds. Then you have the classic 3x3, which is just what everyone will know,” Kotia said. “Then there's variance, so you can do that with one hand and then I use this one for blindfolded, where you look at a completely messed up cube, you have to memorize it and then put a blindfold on, then solve it.”
Kotia said after the classic 3x3 cube puzzle they go up in magnitude including the 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, and the 7x7 cube. Kotia said at the competition there are also side events for puzzles not in the typical cube shape including the 12-sided Megaminx, the triangle-shaped Pyraminx, the Skewb which turns in half, the Square-1 with triangle pieces that need to be turned into a cube shape then solved, as well as the clock puzzle where the user must use the four dials on the side to have all nine clocks read midnight.
Valdes Rodriguez said he will also be competing in every single event besides the 3x3 blindfolded one. He said in the cubing scene, practising all puzzles besides focusing on just one or two is called all-rounding.
“One thing that me and Jacob both do is we practice basically the majority of the events, and that's in cubing. It's called all rounding so it's where you're good at a variety of events,” Valdes Rodriguez said. “In fact, the two of us are both in contention for being the province's fastest all-rounders.”
Valdes Rodriguez said he trains for about three to four hours a day.
“I haven't been cubing as long, so I don't have as many solves, maybe like 50,000 3x3 solves, but I'm still trying to get as many solves as I can in a day,” Valdes Rodriguez said.
For Kotia, he said during the summertime, he trains for about two to three hours every day
“The biggest part is just repetition. In my life, I have probably done about 200,000 solves of the 3x3,” Kotia said. “There are also tons of resources online for learning and getting more efficient– you know, solving it in fewer moves and whatnot, and finding new ways of solving.”
The 2024 BC Speedcubing Championship has already kicked off in the auditorium at the Beban Park Social Centre and will run throughout the weekend leading up to finals on Sunday.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.