Chennai speedcuber Vijay to represent India in world championship in Moscow

After a point, he got obsessed with it and started playing with the cubes. He also participated in Rubik's cube competitions held in Chennai. Now at 21, the youngster will be representing India at the Red Bull Rubik’s Cube World Cup to be held in Moscow in late November.

“It’s been seven years since I started solving cubes and it was just a hobby in the beginning. But now, I am completely committed to solving the puzzle. Not a day goes by without me playing with the cubes,” he says.

The youngster, who just completed his engineering degree from SRM University, says that the national final that was held in the city recently was the toughest competition he faced so far. “I had to compete with my friend Sripad Sharma in the finals. I was a bit nervous. Though he was leading, I won three games straight by solving the cube in 8.624 seconds while Sripad’s was 8.759 seconds,” he tells us about the nail-biting match.

Vijay’s average solve time is under nine seconds and he hopes to better his timing in the future. “I allocate a few hours daily for practising. Apart from that. I watch YouTube tutorials and follow competitions in which speedcubing champions Feliks Zemdegs (Australia) and Philipp Weyer (Germany) participate. The only best way to bring down the timing is by constant practice. The two important things a cuber needs are focus and patience. Once we solve the same puzzle a couple of times, we, eventually, master the art of solving and also picking up the speed,”Vijay points out.

The national champion follows the Fridrich method or the CFOP method, a fast method for solving the Rubik's Cube created by Jessica Fridrich. “I solve the cube layer by layer that consists of four steps — Cross, F2L (First Two Layers), OLL (Orient Last Layer), and PLL (Permute Last Layer). There are many talented cubers in the country with great potential. If they practise daily, they can easily become world champions,” he remarks.