With athletic fingers and even blindfolds, the Rubik’s Cube Club puts its own twist on solving the classic puzzle, which turns 50 this year
When Zachary Miller, A26, first arrived at Tufts, he didn’t know anyone, but some students who had seen that he was active in Rubik’s cube competitions quickly changed that. “I was able to connect with people and develop friendships from day one, which I didn’t think I could do, and it’s been special for me in that way,” says Miller.
One who reached out was Chris Yen, E25, who’d noticed Miller’s frequent activity on various cubing community forums. They both had spent years mastering the art of solving the Rubik’s cube fast—really fast—and were familiar with the cubers’ competitive circuit. They gathered other interested friends and started meeting every week, practicing and going to competitions. Soon the Tufts Rubik’s Cube Club became official.
Rubik’s cubes burst on the scene in 1974 and are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year. Invented by Hungarian architect Ernő Rubik, the 3-D puzzle became an instant worldwide global phenomenon—some 500 million Rubik’s cubes have been sold worldwide in that half century.
Yen’s passion stemmed from playing sports and wanting to be the best at whatever he did. “Pretty early on, it was obvious that I wasn’t physically as gifted as others, but cubing was something that I excelled at, and that’s one of the reasons why I was able to stick with it for so long,” he says.
The analogy with other sports competitions is a good one. “Cubers practice as much as any other athlete would,” Yen says. “We spend hours and hours every day trying to refine our turning to make sure it’s as accurate as possible and as consistent as possible. Our fingers are very, very well trained to make these very precise movements.”
That’s a good thing, too—speed cubers make up to 25 moves on a Rubik’s cube in a single second, which you clearly need to solve the entire puzzle in just 7 seconds, which Yen and others in the club have done.
Miller started cubing and attending World Cube Association events as a youngster. “I’ve now been to over 77 WCA competitions, and I’ve met a lot of different people through high school clubs and college clubs—it’s helped me connect with people and build a social sphere,” he says.
Solving the Rubik’s Cube—Blindfolded
Another club member, Thiago Han, A25, started cubing more recently. He got into it just before the pandemic, and at home in Sao Paulo, Brazil, “had a lot of time to practice—that’s what kept me going during quarantine,” he says.
Han is passionate about solving the Rubik’s cube blindfolded. “I used to hold the Brazilian record for the single solve with a time of 21.37 seconds, but then my friend beat it twice,” he says.
Watch the video for tips and tricks for the Rubik's Cube. Video: Jandro Cisneros
Blindfolded cubing works like this: The cube is set to a random mix of colors and positions and placed under a small box. The cuber, who has a blindfold resting on their forehead, starts the timer, takes the cube out of the box, and looks at the cube, memorizing it. Once memorized, they shake the blindfold into place blocking their vision, and set about solving the puzzle.
Han currently holds the Brazilian national record solving a cube blindfolded with an average over three attempts at 24.88 seconds.
How on earth does he do it? “Once you put on the blindfold, obviously you can’t keep track of the pieces moving around when you solve things, so you have to use special algorithms that move only a few pieces at a time,” Han says.
“People on our team are extremely talented. Chris and Zach are both world-ranked cubers, and Thiago is a world-class blindfold solver, but you’d never know it just by talking to them, because they’re so humble and easy to talk to.”
Competitions are a key part of the cubing culture. “You hear the word competition, and you probably think it’s really cutthroat, but it’s honestly pretty laid back,” says Miller. “We’re all just there to hang out, talk to people, learn some cool new stuff.”
The cubers are not so much competing against other people as competing against themselves, trying to improve their own times. For Yen, who’s a mechanical engineering major, “when you’re practicing and you’re breaking your personal best, it can give you a really big boost of confidence. And if I’m performing well with the cube, then there’s no reason why I can’t perform well in other aspects of my life,” he says.
Building the Cube Club
When the club members get together, “we get to bounce ideas off of each other, which is something we wouldn’t be able to do on our own,” says Yen. “If we do a solve and one of us notices they could have done that step in this other way better, we help each other.”
Peter Morganelli, A27, solved his first Rubik’s cube when he was in sixth grade, “and since then, it’s just been one of the biggest joys of my life,” he says. He started his own Rubik’s cube club in high school and was happy to find a club at Tufts. “People on our team are extremely talented. Chris and Zach are both world-ranked cubers, and Thiago is a world-class blindfold solver, but you’d never know it just by talking to them, because they’re so humble and easy to talk to.”
As he goes on with cubing, Yen is now coaching younger players. “I think I have a good amount of knowledge that I could offer to other people, and I’ve always been interested in the educational side of things,” he says. “Coaching younger people to get faster, helping others out when they’ve hit a roadblock, is something that’s really gratifying to me.”
Yen hopes the club inspires future Jumbos. “I’d really love to see the Tufts club become one of the biggest cube clubs in the country,” he says. “I want to see it grow well beyond my years here, because this is my last year. I want people to come to Tufts because of the Rubik’s Cube Club.”
