Singapore Speedcubing

We just never know what we'll see when we talk a walk down Orchard Road. This time, on a trip to the Killiney Post Office (probably the only post office with a bar upstairs), we walked through Orchard Central, one of the newest malls in this remarkable shopping district.

That's where we stumbled into the 2010 Singapore Open Speedcubing competition.

It's hard to believe that the commercial version of the Rubik's cube is 30 years old. Introduced by Ideal toys in 1980, the Rubik's cube was invented in 1974 by Hungarian professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Solving it at all turned into "how fast", and the first global competition was in 1982. Thus speedcubing was born.

We watched the teen in this picture solve the cube one handed in 26 seconds. The scoreboard for the semi-final round of the two-handed competition had the top 15 competitors solving cubes in average speeds 17 seconds or faster.

Apparently the world record is just over 7 seconds.

Alongside the competition was an attempt at the world record for the largest Rubik's cube mosaic wall. (OK, we didn't know there was such a thing, much less world records to be broken.) This construction was impressive and consisted of 4,992 cubes. The media was there shooting video and taking pictures.

Speedcubing and Rubik cube mosaic walls, we just never know what we will learn next on a Random Singapore Walk.