There's a keenness to ensure he isn't stereotyped as a one-dimensional genius. Zemdegs is well-liked and his mates have got his back. Timms tells how, in year 7, Zemdegs made a short, self-deprecating, satirical video about "how to be cool", which unintentionally, and embarrassingly for its maker, went viral in the school yard, to much hilarity. Zemdegs' sense of humour is described as sharp, witty and observational. "We'll go to student parties and he'll get on the beers. "Feliks is just like any other uni student," says Paddy Timms, a close friend from high school days. One boy wanders past wearing a red hoodie emblazoned with a large "pi" symbol and a GoPro camera mounted to his head. Yes, they probably are a bit geeky, thank you very much they're primarily the kind of boys you'd expect to find at the top of their science class, or to be dedicated fans of Star Wars and Marvel comics. The rank and file of the speedcube set do have a "look". Girls are very much a minority, and not a solitary one has entered the Canberra event.
Most speedcubers are teenagers: no other demographic has the free time for this obsessive pursuit, so the theory goes. He has a younger brother, Oskar, 17, who can solve the cube but has no interest in speedcubing. He lives at home in the affluent inner-Melbourne suburb of Armadale with his father, David, an IT consultant, and mother, Rita, a dentist. He attended the Catholic boys' school St Kevin's in Toorak (finishing with an ATAR of 99.90) and is now a second-year commerce student at the University of Melbourne. A gifted student, Zemdegs was moved up a grade at primary school but later repeated year 6 to re-synch with his peers. Like the puzzle, his bio joins up and follows logic. Zemdegs is warm, clearly smart and very polite. This turns out to be a trademark of his, diverting praise from his achievements. It's a remarkable story, but Zemdegs dismisses it as nothing particularly special. One year later, he simultaneously held 12 world records across a variety of cube sizes and categories. In less than two years, with a blistering solve of 6.77s seconds, he'd broken his first world record, blasting past the previous record of 7.08 seconds. Within four weeks, he was clocking times of about half a minute. He returned home from the shops and had solved the puzzle in less than an hour. In 2008, aged 12, after chancing upon some speedcubing videos on YouTube, Zemdegs bought his first Rubik's Cube. He's lost count of the world records he's broken along the way (he estimates about 70).įeliks Zemdegs holds 12 world speedcubing titles. Since bursting onto the speedcubing scene in 2009, Zemdegs has claimed a total of 12 world titles.
His fastest official time is 5.39 seconds – which is a full two seconds quicker than the time it takes a Porsche 911 Turbo to go from zero to 100mph. Zemdegs, a 19-year-old university student, is the world champion of the 3x3 Rubik's Cube. An elite corps of Australia's fastest Rubik's Cube solvers have set up in the building, among them Melbourne teenager Feliks Zemdegs – speedcubing's equivalent of Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt. You can hear it before you've reached those doors: a strange whirring sound – a continuous clickety-clack, like an orchestra of mutant crickets. In fact, among the 50 or so people gathered there, a world champion, no less, is present, and with little fuss or fanfare he is about to obliterate a world record over the course of the weekend.
Yet there are curious goings-on down the hallway, inside the function room. They're too busy nursing afternoon schooners, watching the footy on wall-mounted televisions or dropping coins into the chirruping pokies. No one in the main bar of the Canberra Irish Club seems to notice the group that has quietly moved in and overtaken the adjoining room.