A six-year-old girl from Chengdu, China, has set — and then reset — the women's world record for solving a Rubik's Cube, twice within the span of three days.
Lian Yunzhi first posted an average solve time of 4.52 seconds at a World Cube Association-certified competition in Wuhan on September 13, breaking the existing women's record. Three days later, at another certified event in Guangzhou, she lowered her own mark again, averaging 4.27 seconds across five solves — a time that would be competitive at nearly any level of the sport, regardless of age or gender.
Yunzhi began learning to solve cubes at age four and now practices two to three hours a day, according to reporting on her rise, working through more than 1,300 memorized solving algorithms that let her recognize patterns and execute moves almost without conscious thought. Competitive cubing has increasingly become a young person's pursuit, with top-ranked solvers worldwide often starting in early childhood, but a six-year-old holding an open-category world record is a rare feat even by the sport's own fast-moving standards.
Video of her runs has circulated widely since, drawing attention from outlets not usually inclined to cover competitive puzzle-solving and turning a niche competition into an unlikely viral moment. Her results have been ratified by the World Cube Association, the governing body that certifies official times from sanctioned competitions worldwide.
Whether Yunzhi keeps chasing records or moves on to other pursuits, her back-to-back performances have already reset expectations for what a child barely old enough for elementary school can do under competition pressure, cube in hand and a clock running.