Earlier this week, the World Cube Association held the Rubik’s WCA World Championship 2023, the first world championship since 2019 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Since it’s been so long since there’s been such a global competition between world-class cubers, there were many intriguing storylines to follow.
In the 3×3 competition, the main focus was between Korean-American speedcuber Max Park, Chinese speedcuber Wang Yiheng, and Polish speedcuber Tymon Kolasiński. While Wang Yiheng was considered the favorite to win it all, Max Park’s veteran status would help him maintain performance, getting a 5.31 average of 5. On the other hand, Wang Yiheng, a younger, less experienced cuber, succumbed to the pressure, getting second place by 0.01 seconds. The 3×3 competition also saw Asian-American speecuber Matty Hiroto Inaba end in sixth place, a strong performance among the top cubers in the world.
For 2×2, Chinese speedcuber Ye Ziyu defeated Asian-American speedcuber Zayn Khanani by 0.02 seconds, getting a 1.34-second average of 5 compared to Zayn’s 1.36 average of 5. Max Park also won the 5×5 and 7×7 events, coming close to first in the other NxN events, too. In the Square-1 event, Asian-American speedcuber Sameer Aggarwal handily defeated his competition, winning by an astounding 0.68 seconds.
Seeing the WCA World Championship return from its hiatus has brought a fun, competitive space for the best speedcubers in the world to fight for a title.