Two hundred speedcubers and their friends and families crowded into the Trojan Grand Ballroom on Saturday for a speedcubing competition hosted by USC’s student cubing club, Cube SC. This competition, USC Cubing 2024, was Cube SC’s first-ever event. 

Cube SC and the Viterbi School of Engineering co-hosted a post-competition reception at the Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience in honor of Max Park, a 22-year-old record-holding speedcuber from Los Angeles who is regarded internationally as one of the fastest cubers in the world. Jack Waterman, Cube SC’s president and a junior majoring in journalism, founded Cube SC in Fall 2022. 

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Speedcubing entails different varieties of three-dimensional combination puzzle cubes, popularized by the Rubik’s Cube, and trying to get the fastest possible time to color-coordinate each of the cube’s six sides. 

The various categories and types of cubes include the 3x3x3 (rows of cubes), 3x3x3 one-handed, square-1, 4x4x4 and the 5x5x5. In each round, the cuber solves the puzzle five times, with the fastest and slowest times not included in the average solve time, which is derived from the remaining three. 

One young cuber, 13-year-old Dominic Shoji, started cubing a year-and-a-half ago and went to his first competition shortly after. Another cuber, 12-year-old Zack Rubio, started cubing along a similar timeline. 

“Everyone in the cubing community is so nice, and it’s overall a very, very, very positive community,” Rubio said. “Cubing competitions are very friendly.” 

The demographic of the competition ranged from elementary school-age to college students, from all across the West Coast. 

“Like 90% of the people here, middle school, elementary school age, it’s a really great thing for them to get involved in. Also, they’re helping out, they’re taking responsibility for when they have to be competing,” Waterman said. “It teaches a lot of really good life skills as well.”

The VIP of Saturday’s competition and the reception’s honoree was Max Park. Even at today’s event, which was significantly lower stakes for Max Park in comparison to his younger competitors, Max Park was able to pull off wins in all four categories he competed in, the 3x3x3, 3x3x3 one-handed, 4x4x4 and 5x5x5. 

During the first round of the 5x5x5, cubers crowded around Max Park as he almost beat his own world record, still eliciting a round of applause in awe of his sheer talent and dexterity.

Last June, Max Park broke the world record in the 3x3x3 puzzle, solving the cube in just 3.13 seconds and smashing the 3.47-second world record from 2018. In 2017, six years after Max Park began cubing, he became the Rubik’s Cube world champion at the World Championship held in Paris when he had the fastest average solve time of 6.85 seconds — in the world. Last August, Max Park won the World Championship in Seoul, South Korea.

Max Park’s accomplishments as a speedcuber were featured in the Netflix documentary “The Speed Cubers” (2020).

“[Cubing] gave him a life that probably we could never have hoped this much for. Because of his notoriety, it gave him the ability to have more opportunities to meet with people, talk with people,” said Schwan Park, Max’s father and manager. “That’s been a tremendous godsend to be able to leverage that for developing his social personality, his skills to communicate and all.”

After the cubing competition, a small reception was co-sponsored by Viterbi to recognize Max Park for his achievements.

“No one epitomizes perseverance and determination more than our honoree this evening, Max Park,” said Liv Coverdale, a graduate student studying quantum information science and co-organizer of the Cube SC event.

Though this was the first competition Cube SC hosted, Waterman said he hopes it will not be the last. 

“Solving a Rubik’s Cube is a really cool skill that will help you in many different ways,” Waterman said. “[This competition was] a lot of fun. I hope we get to do it more.”