Eighteen-year-old Sripad Sarma Katrapati started cubing as a hobby by following his father’s footsteps. It didn’t take long for him to hit the saturation point and give up on the puzzle. “I found the cube again in my memory box sometime in 2013. That’s when I started cubing seriously,” says Sripad, who’s the current national champion in the one-handed category. With an average of 12.14 seconds, Sripad is second in India and 11th in Asia, which are impressive figures. But he scorns at the statistics because his rival, Bhargav Narasimhan, holds the national record with 11.86 seconds. “I’m trying to beat that. I did beat him in the nationals, which makes me the national champion while he’s the national record holder,” he says. Sripad was one among a group of cubers who gathered at Phoenix Market City on Saturday to participate in the ‘Speed Cubing Competition’, organised by Chennai Cubing Club in association with World Cube Association.

Sripad’s friend, Vijay Kishore (20), is another prominent name in the cubing circle. He broke the national record in the two-handed category, with 5.72 seconds in 2016.

Despite being friends, Vijay and Sripad have often competed against each other. In fact, the latter lost to Vijay in the qualifiers at Red Bull Rubik’s Cube World Championship earlier this year. The duo even got selected for the World Championship in Boston, where they competed against some of the world’s fastest. “It sort of gave us an idea as to where we stood against them,” he says.

Vijay, though, unabashedly admits that cubing isn’t as fascinating as it was when he started out. “It’s not an artform where you have to constantly show improvement. Cubing is very mechanical and the only way you could improve is by learning more algorithms,” he says, quickly clarifying that it was cubing that gave him an identity. Sripad and Vijay were part of a team that set the Guinness World Record for most number of cubes solved in an hour at IIT Madras’ Shaastra in 2016. The previous record of 1860 cubes was by team Italy. “We broke it with 2454 cubes, with 9 people solving and two people scrambling,” says Vijay.

Unscramble

There aren’t any specific algorithms to solve the cube, although both Sripad and Vijay use the same technique called CFOP (Cross, F2L, OLL and PLL). After inspecting the cube, the participant attempts to get a cross sign on the cube, after which he/she solves it, layer-by-layer. With the help of algorithms, he/she performs the last two steps – OLL (Orient the Last Layer) and PLL (Permutate the Last Layer).

During their stay in Boston, the duo met their idol Feliks Zemdegs (Australia), who’s the current world champion with an average of 5.80 seconds in the 3×3 category. “The methodology is the same, but his (Feliks) turns-per-second is faster and he tweaks the algorithm a bit,” explains Sripad, who says he had a major fanboy moment on Feliks.

Blind melody

Vishwanath Jeyaraman (22), is an expert in solving the Rubik’s Cube blindfolded. What’s amusing about Vishwanath is his uncanny approach to solving the puzzle. For instance, when Vishwanath gets the scramble, he takes one good look at the cube and assigns one letter to each corners of a single face. He then memorises each face — all of which is done in a matter of few seconds.

“If I assign letters H, K, I , L,U and V, I remember them as, ‘Hong Kong, Iceland and ultraviolet rays are coming from the Sun’,” he says. By this method, Vishwanath generates a vivid picture in his mind that eventually helps him solve the cube, “There are over 800 algorithms I need to drill into my system. It requires a lot of practise,” he adds.

Though the success rate is relatively lower in the blindfolded category, Vishwanath believes that luck plays a huge factor for with regard to records . “The current national record is 22.26 seconds. My personal best is 21.21 at home.”

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sport> Other Sports / by Srivatsan S / December 04th, 2018