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Max Park: Rubik's Cube World Champion
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Feb 13, 2024
Max Park (USA) is a Rubik’s Cube speedsolver with numerous Guinness World Records titles including the fastest time to solve cube sizes from 4x4x4 through to 7x7x7 and the fastest average time to solve a Rubik’s Cube one-handed. Max has also been diagnosed with autism. Ahead of World Autism Awareness Day, Max's parents Schawn and Miki have talked about their son’s records and how cubing has helped him with his autism.
View Transcript
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
2:55
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
3:22
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
4:54
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
5:06
He adjusted this. He looked over there and
he adjusted the certificate just like them
5:10
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
5:51
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
6:17
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
6:36
Max is going to be incredibly happy to be
in the Guinness World Record book because
6:40
his whole life is about being number one and
being the best and that being quantifiable
6:47
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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