‘The popularity has just completely exploded’: Rubik’s Cube’s second coming

Australia’s Feliks Zemdegs, the Usain Bolt of speed cubing, has been at the forefront of the gadget’s rapid resurgence

A stranger visiting Feliks Zemdegs’s home might mistakenly accuse him of hoarding Rubik’s Cubes almost as fast as he solves them. “I’ve never counted them,” he says. “Probably over the years I’ve owned like 500 or 600, but at any given point in time probably only about 100 or 150.” The number still sounds ludicrous but the reality is more akin to Nike sending Rory McIlroy polo shirts and Head supplying Ash Barty with tennis rackets than an inclination towards the superfluous consumerism of multi-coloured 3D objects.

Zemdegs is a two-time world-champion speed cuber, which makes him a prime target for companies with new wares to spruik. The Australian receives so many he gives them away. He has his own sponsor, anyway, and competes with the top-of-the-range Gan 356 XS. The model is the crème de la crème of the symmetrical six-sided enigma, a global pop-culture icon up there with comic books and Homer Simpson but less one-dimensional.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3dBWkkm