Events | News | StudentsMarch 14, 2025

Calling All (Rubik's) Cubers

Written By: Ian Silvester

Click, swirl, twist, repeat. Solve the white cross and corners, then the yellow. 

Though many can’t achieve the feat, for those who are able to solve a Rubik’s cube, speed is the name of the game.

At the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, Michael Lander, a sophomore music history major, pulls a speed cube—a Rubik’s cube with miniature magnets separating tiles for a frictionless turn—from his pocket. He spins it, mixing up the colored squares before setting it down on the table before him. A moment later, Michael picks his cube back up, and with a few rapid flicks of the wrist, it is solved in under a minute.

That’s fast, but his personal best is an incredible 6.73 seconds. The current world record is more than twice as fast, at 3.08 seconds.

For anyone who knows Michael, cubing has been a way of life for years. He recounts watching his brother play with a two-by-two (a smaller version of the Rubik’s Cube) in 2017.

“He learned how to solve it, so I thought, ‘Well, if he can do it, I should be able to do it too.’ So, I did,” Michael laughed.

By the following spring break, Michael’s mom saw how much he and his brother enjoyed solving and asked them if they wanted to try competing.

Since his first competition in 2018, Michael has attended nearly 50 across the country. At one point, he even achieved the rank of 309^th best cuber in the world. Over the years, he also became a delegate for the World Cube Association and now splits his time between competing on his own and organizing and planning other competitions.

“There’s nobody else that does it here. I want this community to keep flourishing. When I first started [competing] in 2018, there was a total of like nine Oklahoma competitions ever. Last year alone, we had 10 Oklahoma competitions!” 

Memorizing the more than 43 quintillion combinations has been helpful as he learns to navigate college life, too. 

“Cubing is a very good study break,” he said, “but it’s the memory retention, too. It’s learning an algorithm completely different from anything you’ve learned before and then putting it into practice. Cubing has helped me learn better ways to study.” 

As Michael nears the end of his first semester at UAFS, he said he is excited to bring the cubing community to campus and continue his competitions. The next one is next week, in fact.

“It’s going to be the first-ever Arkansas championship for speed cubing!” he said.

Newcomers to advanced cubers are welcome to the competition, which starts at 8 a.m. on March 29-30 at the Fort Smith Convention Center. More information is available at: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/competitions/ArkansasChampionship2025/register.

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