Solving Things Quickly

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – The Rubik’s Cube is a three dimensional puzzle that has stumped more people than who have solved it.

But there is an ever-growing group of puzzle solving aficionados that compete to find out who can solve those quirky cubes the quickest and Saturday, they will arrive in Zanesville to publicly showcase their capabilities.

“There are about now, I think, almost 300,000 people who have participated in a competition. The Zanesville competition will be around 80 competitors, which is about average. And yeah, it’s going to be pretty interesting. There’s people coming from all over the Midwest for this competition, as tends to be how competitions are in the local areas. And then every year there’s major championships.” Competition Organizer Harsha Paladugu said.

The speed-cubing event will feature competitors of all ages solving multiple versions of geometrically shaped puzzles. The competition is set around World Cube Association standards, which are followed around the globe. Some competitors can even twist the patterns back into shape while blindfolded.

“So the way a competition works is, we’ll be doing certain events in like as order,” Paladugu said. “So we’ll start out with, I believe the first event of the day is the five by five Rubik’s cube. And then later on in the day, there’s other puzzles. Like we have the standard Rubik’s cube. There’s all sorts of puzzles that will be going on throughout the day. And if you want to come watch, it’s basically, just, you’ll come watch people competing and there’s like audience seating as well.”

The free event will take place from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. this Saturday, at the Zanesville-Muskingum County Visitors Center, located at 205 N. 5th Street.