A popular puzzle
First-ever speedcubing competition in P.E.I. draws large crowd
For the past six months, Gavin Carey-sullivan has been enjoying solving Rubik’s Cubes in his spare time and it quickly became his favourite activity.
The 11-year-old recently started a club at West Kent Elementary School in Charlottetown where fellow enthusiasts meet once a week to practise speedcubing, which is a competitive sport aiming to solve Rubik's Cubes and similar puzzles as quickly as possible.
“When I solve a new cube for the first time, I feel very excited,” he told Saltwire in an interview April 7.
Gavin was among approximately 100 people at the Charlottetown library's Rotary Auditorium that day for a speedcubing competition organized by Speedcubing Canada, a regional branch of the World Cube Association.
He didn’t win that day, but he did reach the finals in the 2x2 cube category, a puzzle with two layers and four corners on each layer.
"Very happy and excited," he said when asked about his emotions upon making it to the finals.
GROWING THE SPORT
Tarandeep Mittal, the director of Speedcubing Canada, said the April 7 competition marked the organization's
first event in Prince Edward Island as it is hoping to the grow the sport and the community out to P.E.I.
“We definitely have cubers – what we call people who solve Rubik's Cube and other
puzzles – here. But we don't have events here to allow them to compete. And so we want to bring the events to them. And so this is a good opportunity to do that here in P.E.I.,” he said.
“We want to see more people see that the Rubik's Cube is a challenge at first, but it’s something you can overcome and learn how to get better at it, which is super cool.”
The competition drew 27 participants, with many others on hand to watch.
“For the first competition in P.E.I., that's not bad at all. We're very happy to have
them all here,” Mittal said. “Hopefully, it'll help us with growing the sport and the community here.”
COMMUNITY AND FRIENDSHIP
Competitors came to Charlottetown from various parts of Canada, including Rhivu Rashid, who travelled from Happy Valley-goose Bay, N.L. A former five-time national champion back in his home country of Bangladesh, he is now working as the host for CBC Radio's Labrador Morning.
He had taken a hiatus from speedcubing after moving to Canada in 2017, realizing it was expensive for him to fly around the country to attend different competitions. However, he returned to the scene for speedcubing events in Dieppe and Charlottetown organized by Speedcubing Canada on April 6-7.
At 27, Rashid said he knew he wasn’t as sharp as he used to be after his hiatus, so his goal was simple: make it to the finals. And he achieved that goal in both events.
“From my experience, at least, age is a factor in terms of your reflex, your agility, like, you're not a child anymore. Your fingers do not feel as fast as it used to be when I was a teen,” he said. “So it's hard to catch up after seven years because cubing has grown so much.”
The reason he returned to speedcubing wasn't for trophies. It was the friends he'd built over the years thanks to the sport. Even though his cube-solving buddies now scatter across the globe, they stay connected through their shared love.
“You definitely can earn a lot of money solving cubes. But the most important thing that we get is the community and friendship and relations,” he said.