International Rubik's Cube Competition

Singled Hand!Blind Fold!!
I went to the "International Rubik's Cube Competition" in San Francisco's Exploratorium today. Technically, it was yesterday (Saturday). I am so excited right now because not only was it a really fun event to watch, we got to play with lots of hands-on science experiment as well as cool optical/magnetical/thermal/etc effects demos. Afterwards, the 3 of us went to JP town for some yummy (tabemono), as well as delicious gelato (yes, in the freezing cold weather), and played a game of "Tickets to ride" and "Bohnanza" each. What a weekend!

My friends and I were there for over 6 hours, and we were entertained the whole time. There are rounds held for 3x3x3 "standard Rubik's cube", 4x4x4 "Rubik's Revenge", 5x5x5 "Rubik's Professor cube", 3x3x3 blindfolded, 3x3x3 single handed, and Magic.

The clear winner for the Rubik's standard 3x3x3 cube is Shitaro, a Japanese kid still in HS. During one of his rounds, he broke the previous world record, solving his cube at a little over 11sec!! Watching him perform round after round, delivering consistent performance below 14sec was just amazing. I was very happy that I got his autograph on two of my personal cubes.

There's also this little kid named Neil when we first entered the competition area. Neil impressed all of us by twisting Magic in a lighteningly fast method. His competition score for that was > 2 secs, while the winner was a little over 1.5 sec. Neil came all the way from Colorado, and he has this angelic face with a head full of curly golden locks, *so* adorable and smart! =)

Not included in the competition, but demoed by the vendor or puzzle creators were: patterned cubes, ultra smooth flying fast cubes, custom built kite cubes, Square 1, calendar cube, various Magic, and even a scary dodecahedron puzzle that completely blew me away Not seen there today, but as far as I know, there are some other pretty evil puzzles out there by similar creators, some of them simpler than the others but others can be totally wacky!


In addition, I came home loaded with brand *new* toys that are hard to find else where or are discountinued. I am smiling from ear-to-ear, and I will be a hermit playing at home for a few days... =) haha... (can't stop smiling and drooling over the pile of new toys! O, and delicious gelato pints from SF)

- for further discussion on Rubik's, see my earlier post on Jan, 2006

-- for those of you want an ultra cool 2006 calendar, check out: http://www.ii.uib.no/~arntzen/kalender/