From the outside, it appears that relationships between the WCA, Red Bull, Rubik’s, and The Cubicle are in much better shape than 12 months ago, with the WCA now collaborating with the qualification events for the Red Bull competition. It seems that many of the other issues cubers had with the event are also now resolved. (Yes, I still gave up on solves and did not take my own advice)

Personally, I was very intrigued by the head to head format for speedcubing, it adds a few interesting elements of strategy, small things such as glancing at your opponents cube when you’re on PLL to decide whether or not to spam the algorithm or safety the finish, trash talking during inspection and during solves, making sure to never give up on a solve, etc. There was some shade thrown at the limited qualification system, and the fact that only 18+ year olds were able to compete in 2018. People were concerned that hardware would be restricted (a very touchy subject in cubing). The “World Championship” name and some of the marketing was in bad taste given the history of WCA-organised Rubik’s Cube World Championships and competitions around the world. Probably, a lot of this was due to the extremely recent lawsuit filed by Rubik’s against The Cubicle. When the event was initially announced with the promotional video back in 2017, there was a lot of backlash from the general speedcubing community. This year’s competition in Moscow certainly delivered on that front, from my perspective as both a competitor and spectator.

After all was said and done, I felt that the event in Boston was a start to something which can hopefully continue to develop and grow as a real showpiece of competitive speedcubing.

There wasn’t too much content shared around the cubing community about the competition in Boston, besides a couple of highlight videos, so I still feel like there’s not a clear picture of exactly what this competition was all about. As the winner of last year’s event in Boston, I was lucky enough to be given a wildcard to the 2019 competition. In November 2019, Moscow played host to the 2nd edition of the Red Bull Rubik’s Cube World Cup.

Cube world update 2018