Saturday, January 30, 2021

3/52 Docs - The Speed Cubers

 


 

I won't lie, I was initially drawn to this because it was 40 minutes long. I had a short window of time to fill and this just fit and I am so glad that was my criteria, because this was super sweet. Speeding cubing, because I had no idea what it was either, is folks who solve Rubik's Cubes at lightening fast speeds. I'm talking single digit seconds, fast! I mean, just the fact that they are solving these cubes at all is incredibly impressive to me because the best I could ever do is one side. Slowly. These folks are solving them one-handed or blindfolded, depending on the competition.

While I always enjoy a story about people at the top of their game, whatever their game may be, the bigger part of this story was the friendship and rivalry between, Feliks Zemdegs and Max Park, the two best speed cubers in the world and how this simple cube was able to make a drastic impact on a young man with autism. The bulk of the documentary focuses on this very unlikely and yet incredibly sweet relationship between the two guys while still giving you a brief glimpse into the quirky yet, seemingly, very supportive world of speed cubing. Truth be told I wouldn't have been opposed to learning a little about the rules and structure of the competitions, but honestly I loved the story between these guys so much I can't gripe seriously about it. Kindness and empathy are the take away here, what a gift they are to the world and this documentary has it in spades. 

We watched this on Netflix.

2 comments:

Lynn said...

We watched this one! My two oldest have a teacher who is obsessed with speed cubing and made them do speed cube related projects last year, so now they can both solve it and they even knew who Max and Felix was. We all really enjoyed this one, it was such a sweet story and the friendship between competitors on the circuit was heartwarming.

Plus we all spent like, two weeks afterwards doing intensive rubik's cube training. Speed cubes can be had on Amazon for like $15 and they are really cool and definitely better than your average variety if you are looking for stocking stuffers at Christmas!

Shan said...

I didn't even think to look at Amazon for such things. Great idea. And what a fun school project that would be. I am super impressed they can solve it. I was blown away that the greats memorize literally hundreds of algorithms! Wild!