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From a mere toy in the 1970s, the Rubik’s Cube has spawned competitions for the fastest solving of the 3D puzzle dubbed speedcubing.

Last 26 May, 16-year-old Ateneo de Manila High School student Sean Patrick Villanueva earned a national and world record in speedcubing when he solved a 3x3x3 cube one-handed in an average 8.09 seconds during the Quezon City Open II 2024 at the UP Town Center in Quezon City, GMA News reported.

Villanueva’s time beat that of American cuber Max Park’s 8.62 set in August 2022 at the Marshall Middle Slice 2022 contest.

The time of 6.6 seconds from one of Villanueva’s five tries was also a national record for a single solution of the 3x3x3 one-handed.

The original Rubik’s Cube has spawned other versions like the skewb. In 2014, Filipino Mharr Ampong set a world record time for solving a skewb in just 3.21 seconds.

It’s probably impossible to speedcube in less than Ampong’s time but a new category of speedcubing made that possible.

Engineers at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MEC) were responsible for solving a 3x3x3 puzzle cube in the fastest time, beating the previous world record held by an American university.

MEC engineers built a robot using technologies for quickly and accurately positioning wires in motors for electric appliances such as air conditioners and ventilating fans, Asahi Shimbun reported.

The MEC robot could rotate one of the puzzle cube’s six faces by 90 degrees in 0.009-second and had cameras powered by artificial intelligence to recognize the colors of the cube’s individual panels.

The robot solved the 3x3x3 puzzle cube in 0.305-second, 0.075-second faster than the previous record. The 0.305-second is equivalent to the blink of an eye.

WJG @tribunephl_wjg