Stories
Written from the record, checked every night
Thirty million solves, forty-four years, no interviews: every piece below is built from the official data, and every figure in every story recomputes nightly, so a story about a living record is never out of date.
The lead story
The data essay
The world record that 82,518 people have beaten
In 2003 the fastest official solve in history was 16.53 seconds. Today it would rank 83,913th, and the median competitor is within a few seconds of it. This is what a sport looks like before it finds its limits.
Read the story →The essay
The most collaborative sport on earth
Cubing measures its athletes to the hundredth of a second, and your rivals do the measuring. 96% of everyone who has ever competed has never won an event. They keep coming, and that is the whole story.
The standard
It has never been harder to win a Saturday
In 2008 the typical competition final was won with a 13.56 average. Last year it took 7.44: the same trophy now demands twice the speed, and someone has lost a final with a 3.85.
The long read
Nineteen entered the first Worlds. One never stopped.
Budapest, 5 June 1982: nineteen champions from nineteen countries. The winner never competed again. The runner-up is faster now, in his sixties, than he was on the podium. What the official record holds of the sport's founding morning.
The manifesto
The fastest solve in history didn't count
The average of five discards each round's best solve, on principle. 34 of the 39 world-record singles never counted toward their own average. This is why the site has its name.
The rivalry
1,007 rounds of Zemdegs and McNeill
No fixture list exists in cubing; every meeting is a choice. The most-met pair in history have shared 1,007 rounds across fourteen years, from a six-second gap in 2012 to a meeting this month.
The data essay
Beginners start where they always did
The world record fell from 16.53 to 2.76 seconds. The median newcomer's first-day single moved about two seconds in the same twenty-three years. The fastest became six times faster; beginners start where they always did.
The archive
The three months the timers stopped
April, May and June 2020: zero competitions anywhere on earth, and the longest silence the record book has ever seen. Then the sport came back faster than it left.
The board
Records nobody at home can touch
Mongolia's 4.84 has stood for 2,681 days against a scene of 2,346 competitors. The man who set it is still competing, and he can't touch it either.
The sidebar
Ten one-person national teams
In ten countries, the sport's entire official history is one name. Christian Lacle has carried Togo's flag through 30 competitions, and not one of them was in Togo, because Togo has never held one.