Psychology teacher Peter O’Hara agreed with the study and said the effects of mind-bending games essentially arises from challenging the brains ability to think.
How did you begin competing?
I was bored one day, and I found my Rubik’s cube. I was just messing with it and got frustrated (with trying to figure it out), so I just looked up how to solve it. One day, I was just searching around on YouTube, and I found this one guy who was doing solves at a competition. Then I researched it, and I found that there was a competition in Fishers.
What are your greatest successes?
My best in competition solve is 14 seconds, but my best non-competition solve is 8 seconds. The way you determine how you beat someone is everyone does an average of 5 solves in a competition, and whoever has the lowest averages wins.
How often do you practice and for how long?
Basically knowing exactly what your algorithms do, and working on turning (the cube) as fast as you can. And, also, pretty much like everything, practice makes perfect.
Competitions are a lot of fun. Its more so about meeting other people who Rubik’s cube. Its not really, necessarily, about doing well, its just about having fun. Ive never been to anything bigger than a state competition but there are also national competitions and also a world competition every once in a while.
Can you do any tricks?
I can do one hand solves and I have actually had one blindfold success, which is actually on YouTube. The way you do a blindfold is, you only need two algorithms to actually do it, but you basically assign letters to every sticker on the cube. Then you memorize in sequence where they are on the cube, and you pretty much make like a story out of that. Then when you put the blindfold on, you just repeat that story in your head so you know where to put all the pieces.
What are some common misconceptions people have about Rubik’s cubes?
I think that more people should be willing to try it. Honestly, when people see it they just think its impossible, but they really need to get the notion into their head that its not really that hard. It just takes a little bit of practice.