Six-Year-Old Chinese Girl Breaks the Women's Rubik's Cube Speed Record Twice

Six-year-old Lian Yunsi from the Chinese city of Chengdu has twice broken the women's average-time record for solving a 3×3 Rubik's Cube — both times at official tournaments held under the World Cube Association, one in Wuhan and the other in Guangzhou.

Under the rules, a competitor gets five attempts, of which the average time is counted. The first time, the girl posted a result of 4.52 seconds, and the second time she improved it to 4.27 seconds, becoming the first woman ever to break the 4.5-second barrier, and by a wide margin at that.

She solves the cube even faster on a single attempt: footage released by Reuters shows one of her solves taking less than 3.6 seconds.

The young "speedcuber," nicknamed Zizi, got hooked on the Rubik's Cube at a club she began attending alongside dance and music classes. Her mother, Lin Yangxi, eventually noticed that the puzzle was doing a great job of developing the child's all-round skills and started paying special attention to the activity.

According to her mother, the girl trains two to three hours a day and knows roughly 1,300 solving algorithms by heart. "It's not about blindly memorizing formulas, but about logical thinking on the way to the optimal solution. Solving the cube also improves concentration, memory and spatial awareness, and teaches you to take wins and losses calmly," the new champion's mother said.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz