Competitions
Soon after the Rubik's cube was released, people started holding competitions world wide. The very first competition was held on March 13, 1981 As of 2003, all of the Rubik's cube competitions are held by the WCA (World Cube Association). It is mandatory in competitions to time solves with a stack-mat timer, which is a timing device originally used for Speed Stacking competitions (Other type of game/puzzle).
Stack-mat Timer
![Picture](/uploads/1/9/2/8/19286503/660792697.jpg?228)
StackMat timers have two touchpads, one on each side of the display. The hands are placed on the two touch pads. After about a second, a green light will light up, and when one or both of the hands are released from the touch pads, the timer starts. When both hands are placed back on the touch pads, the timer stops.
World Records
- Single time: the current world record for single time on a 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube was set by Mats Valk of the Netherlands in March 2013 with a time of 5.55 seconds at the Zonhoven Open in Belgium.
- Average time: the world record for average time per solve was set by Feliks Zemdegs at the Australian Nationals 2012, with a 7.53 second average solve time.
- One-handed solving: A time of 9.43 seconds was made by Giovanni Contardi at the Italian Championships in 2012. The average world record of 12.67 seconds is held by Michał Pleskowicz of Poland.
- Blindfold solving: the record for blind solving is held by Hungarian Marcell Endrey, who solved a cube blindfolded in 26.36 seconds (including memorization) at the European Championships 2012 in Poland.
- Fewest moves solving: Tomoaki Okayama of Japan holds the record of 20 moves set at the 2012 Czech Open.
- Non-human solving: the fastest non-human time for a physical 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube is 5.270 seconds, set by CubeStormer II, a robot built using Lego Mindstorms and a Samsung Galaxy S2. This broke the previous record of 10.69 seconds, achieved by final year computing students at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia in 2011.