What a ride the World Cubing Association’s World Championships 2023 from 12-15 August were!
We were sadly unable to attend the WCA World Championships 2023 even though they were hosted in Asia not too far away (Incheon, Seoul, South Korea).
But two amazing results really stood out!
Megaminx
The first round was on Day 1 and not covered by the live stream (why was there no live stream on Day 1?!) and the usual suspects were there LML (current World Record Holder) and our national hero (TCY – current World Record #2) was fifth.
So it wasn’t with great hopes for TCY that we watched the finals the next day.
But heyyyyyyyyyy…..
Guess who emerged as the champion?!
Putting Singapore on the map, it was TCY!! By what we thought was the narrowest of margins! 0.42 seconds!
This is TCY and his uber supportive dad (image taken off IG) who always has a kind word for Cubeth too.
Cubeth had made a video of his journey to getting Singapore’s first speedcubing World Record three months ago. You can watch it here.
3x3x3 Finals
The hot favourites were Max Park and Wang Yiheng (for the China crowd – though he does hold the current World Record Average, set on board a cruise ship that departed from Singapore this year). Tymon from Poland was also a strong contender, but I find him a bit of a diva, stomping out of the Nation’s Cup (which was So Enjoyable to watch overall!!) after his team lost in the semi-finals due to him starting the timer 2 persons early, thus DNF-ing.
Singapore didn’t field a team to the Nations Cup segment – I wonder why? Our top three cubers who were in Korea could definitely have qualified.
There were 4 rounds of 3×3 and the finals were head-to-head and nailbiting!
Who would have thought that due to an unforeseen counting 6 second solve (9 year old Yiheng uncharacteristically had two 6 sec solves – his first and his last solves, likely because of the pressure and so much was at stake), Max Park won by literally the NARROWEST of margins – 0.01 seconds for his average of 5 solves.
As you can tell, Yiheng did not look pleased getting the second prize. Even El Divo Tymon was all smiles at getting third!
“What is wrong with this chair?” he apparently said at the end of a solve, given the too-high tables and too-low chairs of the competition. I do agree that Korea was remiss in that, since the first thing they should have ensured in setting up the competition was that the tables and chairs are of an acceptable height for optimal solving. No one needs to go into Worlds with such a significant handicap. Nonetheless, perhaps it just goes to prove further that truly the best cubers can solve fast under any adverse circumstances. It’s not the cube, it’s not the table height, it’s the cuber.
The other rather tragic thing was that right after Yiheng finished his final solve, his mum was caught on camera flailing her arms about, ostensibly reprimanding him or venting her own frustration or disappointment as his heavily eye-bagged dad looks on. The poor kid is probably going to grow up and write some memoir titled “Battle Lament of the Tiger Mum’s Cub” (in Chinese, of course), if not have deeper issues with this stage of his life. The poor dude always looks so stressed and unhappy! Even when he got the equivalent of a silver medal in the Olympics of Speedcubing!
Later, Yiheng’s mum clarified her side of the story on social media. Guess she could have a point too, and this was not a bad retort.
Well, super bummed we couldn’t go cos this was school period, and also bummed when they announced that the next Worlds Championship in 2025 (it only happens once every 2 years, and the last one was in 2019 in Australia, no thanks to Covid thereafter) would be in Seattle, USA. That’s 21 hours flight time from Singapore and would cost a pretty penny to boot. Also, we’d have to overcome jetlag (as the Americans and Europeans no doubt had to this time) and arrive earlier etc. So it looks like we’re going to miss ANOTHER Worlds Championship boohoo.
Till then, guess there’ll be many local and regional speedcubing competitions that Cubeth can take part in. Hooray.
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