The mother of the six-year-old girl who broke the women’s world record by solving a Rubik’s cube in an average time of just over four seconds said the award was a “dream come true” for her daughter, who trains up to three hours a day for competitions. “She was delighted and felt that all her hard work had paid off,” Lin Yangxi told The Guardian of her daughter’s feat. Lian Yunzhi, known as Zhizhi, broke the women’s 3×3 average world record at a speedcubing event in Guangzhou organized by the World Cubing Association on September 16. The girl, who is from Chengdu, solved the puzzle in an average time of 4.27 seconds, breaking the record of 4.52 seconds she had set earlier this month. On some individual attempts, he solved the puzzle in less than four seconds. “Now the whole school knows her,” Lin said. “The teacher told me that older students came to her classroom with pieces of paper asking for her autograph, filling the room. “She has gained a lot of love and attention through cubing.” Zhizhi’s journey from Rubik’s Cube aficionado to world record holder began at age four, when her mother took her to speedcubing classes as one of her “seven or eight” extracurricular activities, including dancing, painting and gymnastics. Although Zhihi behaved well in all her classes In the classes, Lin and her husband decided that the speedcubing route “had great potential for her future development, so we decided to proactively invest more time.” Lin said that solving the puzzle helped “improve concentration, memory, logical thinking, and spatial awareness.” reduced her average time to eight seconds, but then she hit a bottleneck. “For about three or four months, no matter how she practiced, her times didn’t improve at all,” Lin said. “To be honest, both as parents and as a child, we felt like we gave up at that time.” But after finding a specialist teacher in Shanghai and learning more than 1,300 Rubik’s Cube formulas, her speeds improved “very quickly.” with her kindergarten studies, two to three hours on weekdays and up to six hours on weekends on the puzzle. Lin said that most weekends were spent at speedcubing competitions, which were a chance for Zhizhi to relax from regular practice and see her friends. Zhizhi used to envy the children who had more time to play, her mother said, “but then she told me that she didn’t envy them anymore, because pursuing her own goals also made her really happy.” Although physical injuries are rare in speedcubing, Lin monitors Zhihi’s eyesight. Lin said she and her husband felt “extremely nervous” at this month’s speedcubing championship, but admired how their daughter “handled the pressure at that crucial moment.” Zhizhi’s mother doesn’t see a career in speedcubing for her daughter, but said the sport instilled good habits in her. It can build some courage and perseverance into her, which will serve her well in whatever she decides to pursue in the future.”
