I had dinner at TED with this wonderful kid from Malaysia — Chester Lian. We found the next best Rubik’s cube solver in the room — Daniel on the left, happens to be a former DFJ portfolio CEO from Switzerland. Chester was handed a mixed up cube and given 30 seconds to formulate a plan.

Then he was blindfolded, and the video starts…

Afterward, I asked him about his technique, and he memorizes the entire sequence of moves in advance, using a pictogram for recall, much like the kids who memorize Pi to a huge number of digits.

4 responses to “Rubik’s Cube Prodigy”

  1. scleroplex Avatar
    scleroplex

    amazing 🙂

    there’s also this indian-american college kid called Ravi at stanford who solves the cube while juggling.

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/28/173191139/whoa-st...

    Reply
  2. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    I have never solved it… but my son can do it in under a minute.

    The 3×3 blindfolded record is 26 seconds for a single cube.

    Chester Lian holds the world’s record for solving 17 Rubik’s Cubes, each with a different pattern, in 53 minutes… blindfolded.

    Reply
  3. scleroplex Avatar
    scleroplex

    "but my son can do it in under a minute."

    under a minute is plenty impressive!!

    Reply
  4. linux-works Avatar
    linux-works

    well, santa claus seem amused, at least 😉

    Reply

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