Rubik’s cube championships bring competition and friendship to Seattle

When Breylan Ouellette marched through the Seattle Convention Center on Thursday, the 16-year-old from North Carolina wore a blazer, tie and trousers — all in vibrant hues of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and white. Every inch of the fabric covered in Rubik’s Cubes.

Ouellette, who’s been cubing for five years, is set to compete in seven of the 17 events at the 2025 Rubik’s World Cube Association World Championship. He dedicates hours each day to solving cubes of different grid sizes, and puzzles, including the tetrahedron-shaped Pyraminx. Ouellete said his specialty is the original 3x3 cube, which takes him between 7 and 8 seconds to unscramble. More than participating on the international stage though, he looks forward to meeting fellow competitors.

“All the top people are here. Everyone who has world records or setting records and titles, they’re all here,” Ouellette said. “It’s difficult to see them, like I’ve only seen them in YouTube videos and now they’re here in person, and I get to meet them.”

The 12th WCA World Championship started Thursday and runs through Sunday at the convention center. This year, 2,000 speedcubers from 74 countries registered to compete, up from the 1,187 competitors who attended the last world championship in South Korea in 2023, said Zach Garber, a board member and organizer with CubingUSA.

This year’s event sold 4,500 spectator tickets, the most in the competition’s history, Garber said. Seattle is an ideal location for the world championship because organizers found the city to be friendly and accessible for international competitors, Garber said, citing public transportation and tourist spots such as Pike Place Market and the Space Needle.

Garber, who started solving Rubik’s Cubes from his home in Ohio in 2009, attributes the growing interest in cubing to its inclusive community. The competitions, he said, do not have specific divisions for age or gender.

“The person sitting next to me could be an 8-year-old from China who’s twice as fast as me,” Garber said. “The kid who currently has the world record is under 10 years old. So it’s just really cool to see that regardless of age, you’re able to compete.”

That world record for a single attempt in solving a 3x3 cube is held by Xuanyi Geng, who finished a cube in 3.05 seconds.

But the world championship is much more than a competition, said Kian Barry, the chair of CubingUSA.

“For the 95% of everybody else, you’re competing against yourself and what you’ve done before then,” Barry said.

On Thursday, some participants excitedly ran around the convention center, asking record holders for autographs and photos. Others sat together in between matches, trading puzzles, scattering them on their table and testing them out. Daniel Evans, a competitor from the United Kingdom who runs a cube store, carried 18 puzzles in his black backpack. He met Ben Hitz, a competitor from Tacoma, who tried unscrambling the two conjoined 5x5-grid cubes that Evans made. Meanwhile, Evans solved a 30-centimeter cube that Hitz brought with him in 33 seconds.

CubingUSA is volunteer-run, Barry said, noting many of the over 300 volunteers at the 2025 championship are also competitors. Kevin Hays, who lives in Green Lake, helps CubingUSA with its livestream and production. He will also compete in the 6x6 cube event, where he held multiple world record titles from 2011 to 2017. Hays said being able to put together a large-scale event in his hometown has been a “once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“Even 10 years ago when (the competitions) were much smaller, like less than a quarter of the size of this weekend, it was fun,” Hays said. “It’s just magnified so much more. It’s hard to even conceptualize because no one’s ever seen anything like this.”

For Tommy Cherry, a competitor from New Jersey who holds the world record for solving a 3x3 cube while blindfolded (12 seconds), cubing has challenged him to stretch his sequential thinking and creativity as he looks for the most efficient ways to solve puzzles.

“It’s almost kind of like learning a foreign language,” Cherry said. “You can’t translate everything directly, but you can have multiple different ways of expressing the thought you’re trying to convey.”

Cherry became interested in speedcubing in 2015 after watching a YouTube video of his friend’s cousin solving a Rubik’s cube. He then studied videos of speedcubers at competitions and tutorials for complicated puzzles. Now halfway through college, Cherry dreams of being a full-time cubing coach. He said he’s made his closest friends through cubing competitions, and that meeting competitors from all over the world will never get old.

“Being able to go to events like this is where I truly feel at home,” Cherry said. “It’s kind of like being surrounded by hundreds of my best friends all at once.”

Test your speed

Blink during a speedcubing competition and you just might miss it.

Take the 3x3 — the most popular speed cubing event. In this weekend’s championships, there are 130 competitors who have recorded a sub-five-second time.

Here’s a challenge: Can you type a sentence faster than a speedcuber can solve the 3x3?

Find out below.

0:00

Incorrect letters must be deleted and fixed before moving on.

Click the white box and start typing to begin.

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