How devastated were you when Roger Federer lost the Wimbledon 2019 finals, despite earning two championship points? The emotion was no different for the supporters of cuber Sripad Sharma, who was defeated by his friend Vijay Kishore in the the nail-biting tie-breaker at the National finals of the recently-concluded Red Bull Rubik’s Cube World Cup. Until then, fortune was favouring Sripad who took a giant lead against Vijay in the Speed Cubing (mixed) category, when the score was 2:1 respectively. Vijay sprung a surprise by winning three games straight, thereby establishing his spot at the Rubik’s Cube World Cup, slated to roll in November in Moscow, Russia. The final time? Vijay solved the cube in 8.624 seconds while Sripad’s was 8.759 seconds — to loud applause from the teenage boys present in the room.
Comeback mode
Vijay says he pulled off an all-nighter ahead of the finals and tried emulating whatever solves he prepared during the practise session. “I have a table where I sit and practise. But I thought let me stand and try solving the cube, which, sort of, worked in my favour in today’s match,” said Vijay, 21, whose average solve time is under eight seconds. What was running in his mind when Sripad was on the cusp of winning? “I was a little nervous and should have taken it smoothly. But the cube got stuck in the middle and I completely lost the momentum.” Vijay’s comeback, however, pales in comparison to Lakshimi Shree, 17, who was 1:2 games down to Priyadarshini in the Speed Cubing (female) category. Lakshimi gathered her thoughts and beat her opponent in the tie-breaker, with the timer clocking in at 16 seconds. She is naturally excited about her trip to Moscow, given “it is my first time outside Chennai”.
- To commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Rubik’s Cube in 1995, Diamond Cutters International designed a fully-functional Rubik’s Cube made of 185 carats of gemstones. Its worth was $1 million at the time.
According to the norm followed by the World Cube Association, players are given an average of 15 seconds to inspect the cube before solving it. However, in Red Bull Rubik’s World Cup selection, the inspection time was brought down to eight seconds. When the timer started, Priyadarshini was swiftly scrambling the cube, while Lakshimi took a brief pause, had one good look at it again and then proceeded. “There are at least a million ways of solving the cube,” she explained, adding, “I took that pause because I was thinking: ‘what method shall I use for this one?’”
Semantics and algorithms
Success is on Bhargav Narasimhan’s fingertips, whose forte is one-handed solving. The current National champion gave no room for Sripad Sharma to improvise and completely dominated him, cruising at eight seconds in the Fastest Hand category. For the uninitiated, Bhargav missed the bronze medal by 0.04 seconds in the world championship held in Paris in 2017. That is a grouse he still has. “Cubing is all about practice and holding your nerves. I have been representing the country for over nine years now,” said the 26-year-old, adding, “The folks who came first, second and third in world championship... I will be facing them again at the Red Bull Rubik’s Cube World Cup.”
While others had to scramble the cube as fast as possible, the challenge for Bengaluru-based Aniketh Arya, 19, was to invert the process. His is the Re-scramble category, where he is given two non-identical cubes and has to match the individual squares of the cube, to make them look identical. About his technique, Aniketh said, “It is similar to match the following. A lot depends on what you think at that particular moment. I usually use CFOP (Cross, First two layers, Orientation of last layer, Permutation of last layer) method.”