Six-year-old breaks women's world Rubik's Cube record [video]

Six-year-old breaks women's world Rubik's Cube record [video]youtube.com

69 points•1659447091•7 days ago•67 comments•

#video #breaks #cube #record #rubiks #womens #breaks womens #old breaks

67 comments

I'm a bit curious about the rationale behind splitting the category by gender for rubik's cube. Is there a difference in dexterity to justify it?

Sound about as useful as splitting rubik's cube champion by weight class.

Video looks impressive, though the resources poured into that training seems excessive to me. Maybe I'm too poor and don't understand how rich people raise their kids?

MarcScott7 days ago

It's probably more about encouraging participation in the event amongst women. There's probably a hundred male competitive cubers for every female cuber. Having it segregated means that stories like this find their way onto the front page of HN.

figassis7 days ago

I get it, but if women feel discouraged in a sport they're perfectly qualified for and not disadvantaged in the least, creating a category jus tto accomodate anxiety or lack of interest is actually discrimination no?

Shouldn't the work of incentivising more women be outside of the tournament and not bend the tournament altogether?

_ink_7 days ago

I was surprised, too, and looked it up. WCA officially doesn't differentiate. The human World Record is 3.51 currently held by a Yiheng Wang (male). So there is quite a gap to the new record by Lian Yunzh. But if she continues like that, I think we will find out soon whether there are any biologic reasons for the gap or if it is just because there are many more males into that kind of thing.

Randomno7 days ago

There's a big gap between the top 2 solvers (Yiheng Wang and Xuanyi Geng) and everyone right now. Yunzhi Lian is 4th in the world.

ErroneousBosh7 days ago

> or if it is just because there are many more males into that kind of thing.

Women "trail behind" men in things like speedcubing, e-sports and so on, and I've always felt that it's simply because they've got better things to do with their time.

philipallstar7 days ago

It's for the same reason we split any contest by gender: so women can win it.

Chess has a whole separate WxM category so while if they're really good at chess they can become a real GM, but there's also an easier category called WGM (Woman Grandmaster). Same for IM, FM, and CM - they're just as open to women as to men, but they still have easier equivalents called WIM, WFM, and WCM.

voidUpdate7 days ago

I would be interested to see a leaderboard comparison between male and female cubers. As far as I know, there should be no real biological advantage either way

patrec7 days ago

Can you name any fields from the top of your head that have a) objective scoring b) no gender split rankings b) women in the top 10, consistently?

jstanley7 days ago

This was not from the top of my head but:

* Equestrian endurance racing: https://www.fei.org/endurance/rankings

* Long-distance sled-dog racing: https://iditarod.com/race/2023/

* NHRA drag racing: https://www.nhra.com/news/2023/final-2023-camping-world-drag...

* Crossword solving: https://crosswordtournament.com/2018/index.htm

* Dog agility: https://www.agilitynow.eu/results/agility-world-championship...

I read that the reason so many fields appear to be male-dominated is just that men have wider variance on almost anything you can measure, so outliers on any metric are more likely to be men.

16594470917 days ago

Ultra-endurance sports/running. First read discussions about it here but can't remember the thread

https://www.fitnessfirst.com.au/get-there/new-study-finds-wo...

Markoff7 days ago

before opening - I hope she is not Asian

of course she is Asian, poor kid, Asian parents do this to their kids, so they excel in one field/discipline after hundreds of hours training and lost childhood, it's completely meaningless victory for her future life, but at least parent's ego was stroked and they have now bragging rights, sad...

for anyone who thinks about calling me a racist - lived in China for years, my wife is Chinese and I have mixed kids, so I am bit familiar with Chinese/East Asian parenting (and trying to stop ideas like these ocassionally)

nvarsj7 days ago

Maybe she enjoys it? Kids especially ones leaning ASD tend to have these kind of obsessions. I don't think anyone can force a 6 year old to practice rubik's cube 2 hours a day.

Markoff7 days ago

she started at earlier age, parents at that age can easily brainwash a kid, the kid will "enjoy" whatever they will tell him to enjoy, now after years of abuse, sorry, I mean training, she doesn't even most likely know there is any alternative to life like this

I can assure you Chinese parents can very easily force 6yo to do anything 2 hours a day (she spends most likely more hours a day than they claim), what is she gonna do, what's her other alternative at this age?

tsoukase5 days ago

This is an amazing endeavour for a child but I am sceptical about the transfer of this dexterity to real life achievements and eventually happiness. My son was obsesssed at that age with LEGO, making his own sets and uploading them to public repos, and now at 11 yo all he wants is to be a soccer player with no interest in any intellectual activity.

bkaae4 days ago

Soccer is not just physical - it's also team work, strategy, diet, tenacity, etc. A lot of those skills can be learned from almost any activity, including building lego sets online.

The best soccer players are incredibly intelligent and fast thinking.

rinnemak7 days ago

When the differences are in the one tens and one hundreds of a second, isn't the initial configuration a huge factor? How do they prepare the start for a competition like this? Can't just be a random scramble, right?

gunalx7 days ago

There is a min cap on how few moves the cube shall be possible to complete in.

N_Lens7 days ago

For her, it's all downhill from here.

Which is a good thing, because going downhill is fun and easy!

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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