The year Lucas Etter was born, the world record for solving a Rubik’s Cube stood at 17.02 seconds.
Fourteen years later, Lucas Etter is the proud owner of the new mark — and it is outstanding!
Yahoo! reports that 14 year old Etter solved a 3×3 Rubik’s Cube in an astounding 4.904 seconds at the River Hill Fall competition in Clarksville, Maryland. That’s a full three-tenths of a second better than the previous mark of 5.25 seconds set earlier this year, and the first time a human has broken the five-second barrier.
Being a formally sanctioned “speedcuber” event, Etter followed proper competitive Rubik’s Cube protocol which means that he was able to look over the Cube before attempting to solve it, but the moment his blazing fast fingers started twirling blocks, the clock started. His mark has since been verified by the World Cube Association.
Etter’s incredible time might impress fellow human beings, but it’s hardly a threat to the true Rubik’s Cube champs, robots! Last year, a Lego Mindstorms creation solved a cube in 3.2 seconds (and before you start praising the champ, remember that it is a robot with powerful computers for brains – programmed to do nothing else but that!)
But Lucas Etter is 100% human like the rest of us, or he is more?
