Full Results
Ravi's 10.49 solve
My WCA Rankings
Oh boy! My first time organizing a competition. I set up the tables and displays the night before, but there's still a bunch of things to haul and last minute things to take care of. So I go to the church at 8:15 and do some setup. A little later, someone else from church comes down and tells me there's people waiting in the parking lot. I went up and signaled for them to come in. I think most of the people were there early or right at nine.


Everyone sat around and warmed up before the competition began.


Noah Hevey playing with a Helicopter Cube

At 9:30, the competition started. I gave a quick introduction/instruction (instroduction as I like to call it) on the competition and explained the timers. We had some timers in the back for people to practice on. I was one of the first competitors, so I could be done and then help with judging and scrambling. As a competitor, I felt I could have done much better. Maybe because I haven't had time to practice or warm-up, but oh well. After I competed, I spent a lot of time scrambling, and just a bit of judging. We were very busy for the 3x3x3 round. However, surprisingly, we finished right on schedule! In fact, except for pushing out the Pyraminx event, we stayed pretty much on schedule the entire time. Ravi got a 10.49 single solve in the first round! After that, I made sure I took video of him for his solves in case he broke the WR. His dad also started taking video, but he didn't catch the 10.49. If anyone has that, please upload it somewhere.


Micah Christofferson (age 9) was our youngest competitor


Max McConaughey competing


Amie Logan solving. Andres Gonzalez (Cuban National Champion) is on the left.

After the 3x3x3 round, we had the 4x4x4. It was a combined final round, with a pretty lenient cutoff time, so everyone who competed in it was able to do a full 5 solve and get an average. Little Caesar's forgot to put in our pizza order, so the pizza was delayed a bit. We did the Square-1 event and I was able to bump my average by 10 seconds.


Noah Hevey and Jake Rueth brought some puzzles for people to see and even some to buy

I was going to compete in the 2x2x2, but I dropped out in order to do the initial scrambling. I didn't have an Eastsheen, and I hadn't gotten to practice much, so I didn't want to embarass myself anymore by having 2x2x2 average that's worse than my 3x3x3.


Some puzzles brought by Mike Snyder



During the competition

For the one handed event, I explained to the audience how one-handed works, and some of them were just surprised that people solve one-handed. I should have told them about blindfold solving. In the one-handed, I was surprised with a PLL skip, for a PR time of 55.14. I remember doign the OLL, and then just being stunned for split second before I put it down and stopped the timer. Isaac was watching in the front row, and he nodded and said, "PLL skip". I was like "WooHoo". Even on my subsequent solves, all my OH times were better than my best time in Chicago, so that was good (I also established an PR average)


Isaac Wappes doing OH (Noah Hevey judging)


Adam Fischer doing OH (Hugo Hinojos-Kabata judging)


More practicing. Paul Anderson (orange) actually learned the Pyraminx the day of the competition and entered the event. Good job Paul!

The Pyraminx round went pretty fast. I had originally intended to practice the Pyraminx, but was never able to get around to it, so my times were similar to that in Chicago. Anyways, even though there weren't that many competitors in this event, I do like to have side events, because they are entertaining, and I hope it'll encourage others to learn new puzzles.

In the final round of the 3x3x3, I still did poorly as a competitor, but I did get to bump my PR a little bit, so I suppose that's good.

After the final, my wife was busy making the certificates, I drew names for prizes. We had some Rubik's Twists and Rubik's Brain Rackers donated by Winning Moves. They donated 10 items, and with 20 competitors (and my wife's and my names removed from the drawings), there was a good chance of winning something.


Our top three. Isaac Wappes (3rd place, left), Phil Thomas (2nd place, middle), and Ravi Fernando (1st place, right).

Even though those guy dominated the competition, I think they really inspired a lot of the other cubers to do better in future competitions. For those of you thinking you can't improve that fast, look at Isaac Wappes' WCA listing. First competition was the US Open in June. Best single was 34.41, average was 48.90. 4 months later he comes to the Minnesota Open, best single of 15.10 and a best average of 20.87. So yeah, I was beating Isaac in Chicago, but he smoked me in Rochester.

After the competition, some people helped clean up and put the chairs back in place, and then we went to Denny's for some dinner and to raise the geek ambiance in the air there.


Noah Hevey, Jake Rueth, Andres Gonzalez Jr


Andrew Quist and Hugo Hinojos-Kabata

Peter Babcock was also at Denny's, but sitting on the side of the table. Noah was excited to play with the helicopter cube some more. He even set his camera to video himself solving it. A few other people were intersted in watching our racing, but no one came and asked for autographs (they must not have known we were approachable). I tried to educate Peter and Jake on the Square-1. They told me their parity fix was easier, but I'm not sure I believe them. We did some racing at the table, which was pretty fun, since we all had similar times, it was usually unpredictable who would win. Noah took video of a few of the races which he said he's put on YouTube. Then someone had the idea of racing using odd methods (corner's first, edges first). We tried a few times and then just determined that was awful, and that our spectators watching would get bored. After that, we all left.

Anyways, I should really practice some more and have an improvement in my times for the next competition.

A big thanks to the following: