Solving a Rubik's Cube is too easy.
Solving a Rubik's Cube blindfolded gets interesting, but I need something more.
What if I solve it blindfolded with my feet?
Something like that must have been on the mind of Timothy Goh, a cuber who specializes in blindfolded solving. In May 2018 he filmed himself solving a Rubik's Cube with his eyes covered and using only his feet. It took him 2 minutes 43.79 seconds: about 25 seconds to memorize the cube and about 2 minutes 18 seconds to solve it.
The most impressive thing isn't the time, but what it took: as he tells it himself, he practiced for more than a week and made more than 100 attempts. Only one worked. When he finished, he said he was never doing it again.
How to solve a cube blindfolded
There's no trick to blind solving: it's done in two parts.
- Memorizing: with eyes open, you look at the cube and memorize where every piece is. Cubers use special methods that give a letter to each sticker, turn the pieces into a list of letters and make words or images with them to remember them better.
- Solving: you cover your eyes and solve the cube piece by piece, following that list from memory, with move sequences that change only two or three pieces at a time.
The timer runs during both parts. And there's no room for error: a single wrong turn and, when you take off the blindfold, the cube is scrambled.
Why is it so much harder with feet?
With your hands, you can feel perfectly whether you've turned a face a quarter turn or a half turn. With your feet, turns are much less precise: a face can stay half-turned or go too far, and without seeing the cube there's no way to check. Timothy explained that he often didn't know whether he had made an extra turn or lost the orientation of the cube. That's why almost every attempt failed.
Solving with feet was an official event
Even if it sounds like a joke, solving the cube with your feet (eyes open) was an official World Cube Association event until the end of 2019. It was dropped because it was held at fewer and fewer competitions. Its last world records are still in the history books: 15.56 seconds by Mohammed Aiman Koli (India) for a single solve and a 19.90-second average by Lim Hung (Malaysia), both from 2019. Blindfolded with feet, on the other hand, was never an official event, so Timothy's video is an unofficial record.
Blindfolded solving with your hands is an official event, and the best cubers do it in just over 11 seconds, memorization included. You can see that record and all the others on our Rubik's Cube records page.
Curious? The first step is to be able to solve the cube with your eyes open: start with our step-by-step Rubik's Cube solution.