Max Park: Rubik's Cube World Champion

Name: Max Park: Rubik's Cube World Champion
Uploaded: 2024-02-13T15:57:40+00:00
Duration: 7 min 37 s

0:00
My name is Schwan Park
0:19
I am Max's father. I am Miki Park. I'm Max Park's mother
0:26
Their competitiveness is fierce. I mean fierce, fierce. I mean you can put it up against any sports athlete
0:32
You can see that they're cut from the same cloth. That they have this really fierce competitive strive to be number one
0:38
My name is Patrick Ponce and I formally held the single solid world record for the Rubik's Cube
0:43
For the final at Skullcon I was paired with Max Park who is a very, very good speedcuber
0:49
He is second in the world for the average record which means like for consistency's
0:55
sake he's the second best cuber in the world. So first person to get three wins was the winner
1:02
So like eyes were all on us. Let's begin solve one. Alright Patrick takes solve one
1:14
6.71 against 7.10. We went back and forth. So the first solve I won by just a second and then Max won
1:25
Unfortunate corner twist there. Max takes that one 6.50. And then he won again
1:33
Alright Max advances to match point 5.99 to 7.15. 2-1. And for the fourth attempt I was on my last turn at maybe five seconds and when I went
1:45
to stop the timer, the timer malfunctioned. Alright we're going to have to do a re-solve on that one unfortunately
1:50
We had an unfortunate timer reset for Patrick. We had to do an extra attempt
1:58
Alright we're going to be moving into a solve five. Patrick takes the fourth one
2:15
And Max takes it 5.78 against 6.07. What an exciting final. I think the most amazing thing in cubing is that everyone is accepted
2:26
Like Max Park has autism and that doesn't deter him from being so good at what he does
2:33
And I don't think other communities are as good of facilitating that as cubing is
2:40
Originally we never started cubing because of cubing. We started cubing because of Max's autism
2:45
You're really primarily working on one thing which is socialization. And in order to do some socialization you need somebody around to socialize with
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So we were going to go to the cubing competition to teach him how to stand in line and wait
3:00
his turn and look directly at somebody and say I'm ready, which is a big thing, looking
3:05
at somebody and pointing and things like that. Really him becoming good at cubing was just an afterthought
3:14
Actually it wasn't even considered. It wasn't even important. At the time fine motor skill was not there
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He couldn't open the water bottles and we had a Rubik's cube around our house and he
3:29
kind of showed interest. So at the time there was a YouTube video so I learned first and then I taught him and
3:38
the next day he was feeding me. One day at his very second competition he won and we were pretty surprised
3:50
I mean we thought they made a mistake because he was competing against kids that were like
3:55
college graduates from MIT and Caltech and here's this 10 year old boy beating him and
4:00
we were thinking I think there's a mistake. We never thought that it would take him so far up to the point now that he's being sponsored
4:09
He's getting world records. He's being sponsored to travel all over the world
4:13
This is just all new territory for his mother and me. The biggest thing we noticed about Max before he started cubing and after was the wanting
4:23
to speak with somebody else. When he comes to these competitions of course he knows instinctively everybody's there because
4:29
they all have the same interests. That has tremendously increased his awareness and his ability to speak with other people
4:38
When we went to the world championship and Max won and of course we were very very proud
4:44
of that but the big big big success story for us was he did this thing where he got
4:50
the certificate and he was looking at the people next to him and he was adjusting his
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certificate to be like everybody else because that's something that we want our autistic
4:59
kids to do is to reference somebody else. Me and Mickey were like did you see him adjust this
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He adjusted this. He looked over there and he adjusted the certificate just like them
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So that was the reward for us. The cubing community did more than just accept Max
5:21
I've never met a group of people in the cubing community that is just a perfect representation
5:29
of the utopian society. If somebody actually does a solve and if the judge writes down the wrong time the competitor
5:36
will say oh I'm sorry you made a mistake. My time is two seconds longer
5:41
You put the wrong number down. It's so hard to explain how genuine and how honest and disciplined and just good people
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in general this cubing community is. Pretty sure Max was the one who started the trend in the cubing world to doing AO100
5:59
It means average of 100. 100 solves. So you solve 100 solves and then pick it out the best and worst and then average out
6:07
I remember the first time we went to world's. So who does AO100
6:13
Everybody was joking. Max was going around asking people what is your AO100 average
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Now the AO100 is a marker. A badge of honor and a marker for how good you truly are now in the cubing community
6:25
I think that he's had an influence in the cubing community of setting the standard for
6:30
what you should do in order to best help yourself to succeed in this environment
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Max is going to be incredibly happy to be in the Guinness World Record book because
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his whole life is about being number one and being the best and that being quantifiable
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So to see his own name in the ranks of the best is going to be just amazing for him
6:53
His motto is don't think, just solve

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Max Park: Rubik's Cube World Champion