Portsmouth man smashes national record for being fastest to solve Rubik's Cube blindfolded

Ben Stokes, of Drayton, has gone from winning a cube at an arcade in South Parade Pier to being one of the UK’s most elite speed cubers. He finished the puzzle in 18.72 seconds blindfolded at the World Cube Association's UK championship in Coventry.

Ben said it was a feeling like no other. He told The News: ‘It was a lot of hard work. It was a big moment and there was a big crowd there, so it was really emotional.

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‘All my friends were watching and supporting. I ran into the crowd afterwards and my friends came and hugged me. It was very nice.’

The 21-year-old also won the ‘multi-blind’ challenge, solving 16 cubes blindfolded in an hour. After learning to solve a cube six years ago, with hours of practice on the school bus and at lunchtime when he was younger, he naturally began to get faster.

He never had his sights set on being competitive at first, but after seeing others complete staggering records, he wanted to do it himself – starting competitively in 2018. The speed cuber said: ‘At first, it was never my goal. I just wanted to see what I could do, but after I came out of lockdown and I’d had all that time to practise, I started to realise very quickly that it was something I had the potential for.’

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He took on the blindfolded events because they were more challenging. Ben said to clinch the record, he’s had to commit over 1000 algorithms – sequences of moves – to memory to solve the puzzle blindfolded, as well as completing tens of thousands of practice runs, and performing in a ‘completely different atmosphere’.

‘The UK championship is such a whole different thing to any other competition,’ he added. ‘There was a lot of pressure. I don’t know how I managed to cope with it right at the end, but I did.’

Ben has his eyes set on the European record, currently standing at around 15 seconds. Straight after his triumph, he stayed behind to take photos and sign autographs for younger competitors, ‘It was the most surreal moment of my life,’ he said.