dan > rubik's cube > caltech spring tournament (2004)

A TV news station, some new world records, and a cube-solving robot made the Caltech Spring Tournament quite impressive! The competition involved thirty competitors and many more spectators on April 4, 2004.

Speedcubing.com has posted the results of the tournament, but to sum up, Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi broke two official world records:

• 12.11 seconds - the fastest solve in an official tournament
• 15.62 seconds - the fastest average solve in an official tournament (average 10 solves in a 12 solve series, dropping the fastest and slowest times)

I was able to get a video of most of Macky's solves, and about half of the solves of Lars Petrus (sorry, Lars, I missed your 17.59 seconds solve!), so feel free to email me if you want any videos not displayed below. Also below is a video of the amazing cube solving robot.

Videos

1st Place - Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi 12.11 seconds (2.0 MB)

Cube Pop! - Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi 19.83 seconds (2.6 MB)

Rubik's Robot -- Evan Gates (approx.) 15 seconds (2.6 MB)

You can also download all three videos from Jin Kim's web site in a single zip file (7 MB) by clicking here.

Pictures

Summer Smith and Kerry Bellessa cheer Brittany on! (Shameless plug: Read about their recent movie, "The Gardner")

Brittany cubing

Brittany's new record! 1 minute, 30.98 seconds

Go Dan!

Dan cubing

The judge inspects Dan's cube after completion: 54.67 second solve (Thanks to Macky's tip on cube cleaning, I got my time down to 37.93 seconds the next day.)

Lars Petrus solving the cube

Spring Tournament 2005 Links

• Tyson Mao's web site (Tyson organized the event)
• Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi's web site (1st place)
• Lars Petrus' web site (2nd place)
• Results of the tournament
• Caltech Rubik's Cube Group

Last update: 16 October 2005.