A national record in cubing works the way it does in any sport: the best official result ever achieved by a competitor of that nationality. Because roughly a record of some kind falls somewhere on earth every day, most national records are young. The all-time list of the 3×3 records that have stood longest is therefore a list of oddities, and the oddest entry on it deserves a full telling.
On 5 May 2019, a Mongolian solver named Myagmardorj Ulziijargal (Өлзийжаргал Мягмардорж) completed a 3×3 solve in 4.84 seconds. To place that time: it ranks around 259th among every solve-holder in history, comfortably world-class, quicker than most national records in Europe. It has been Mongolia's national record ever since: 2,681 days and counting.
The obvious explanation for a frozen record would be an absent scene, and it is wrong here on every count, which is what makes the case interesting. This is worth setting out carefully. Mongolia is not a country where cubing barely exists: the database lists 2,346 Mongolian competitors and 63 competitions held on Mongolian soil. Nor has the record holder vanished, the other usual reason records fossilise. Ulziijargal is still an active competitor; his most recent official results are from 2026, weeks old as the data stands. A national scene of thousands has been chasing this number for seven years, and the man himself keeps returning to the timer, and the 4.84 has outrun all of them, its own author included.
and counting: the age of Mongolia's 4.84, chased by 2,346 compatriots and by the man who set it.
That is the real subject here: a great solve is a moment, not a level. On one May afternoon in 2019, everything cooperated at once, and a time was recorded that seven further years of trying, by everyone including its owner, has not touched. The average-of-five rule exists precisely because such moments are real and unrepeatable. A record board, though, keeps singles, and so it keeps moments, and some moments simply refuse to be caught.
The rest of the board tells kindred stories with different mechanics. The oldest mark of all belongs to Belize: 9.69, set in 2009 by Anthony Brooks, a solver who is still competing today without having dislodged his own seventeen-year-old moment. Monaco's 49.50 belongs to Pauline Faggio, who is also Monaco's only competitor in history, making her record safe by arithmetic: there is nobody else who could break it. Greece's 4.89, a near-twin of Mongolia's, has stood since 2017. Each of the ten is a solve that its whole nation, in some cases including its own author, has spent years failing to repeat.
The ten oldest national 3×3 records (singles)
- Belize 9.69 · Anthony Brooks6,140 days
- Monaco 49.50 · Pauline Faggio4,089 days
- Greece 4.89 · Antonie Paterakis3,452 days
- Liechtenstein 10.42 · Jannik Gartmann3,087 days
- Algeria 6.73 · Yassine Bettahar3,060 days
- Haiti 8.44 · Fan Derlentz Perceval2,968 days
- Tunisia 7.29 · Emna Boughizane2,883 days
- Mongolia 4.84 · Myagmardorj Ulziijargal (Өлзийжаргал Мягмардорж)2,681 days
- Guyana 12.08 · Benicio Warwick Khan2,668 days
- Grenada 42.86 · Kamel Ayoub2,605 days
The clocks advance nightly. Any one of these numbers could fall at any weekend competition, and the morning after, the board would quietly rewrite itself. Until then they stand, monuments to ten very good afternoons.
Oldest date each current national-record time was first achieved; holder activity from the same results. Recomputed nightly.