Date: 27 Jul 1981 1111-EDT
From: PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling)
To: DUFTY at MIT-MC
Cc: CUBE-LOVERS at MIT-MC
In-reply-to: Message of 27 Jul 81 at 1029 EDT by DUFTY@MIT-MC
Subject: Regional Cubing Championship
Message-id: <[MIT-DMS].205137>

According to the Boston Globe, the fastest times were;

	48.31 sec. - Jonathan Cheyer, 10
	51.16 sec. - Jeffery Varafano, 14
	51.59 sec. - Peter Pezaris, 11
(these are for the "junior" division; under 17).  The fastest
"seniors" were;

	69.64 sec. - Herbert H. Thorp, 17
	69.83 sec. - Charles Hawes
	77.26 sec. - Rick Miranda

Jordan Marsh says they sell about 2000 cubes per week.  As the
Jordan Marsh V.P. who was standing next to me said, "You can't
buy this kind of publicity!"

The competition was organized reasonably well, consisting of
three rounds:

	1) The qualifying round consisting of being able to 
solve a cube in under three minutes.  No official timing other
than "under three minutes" was done in this round.  About 20
people were tested per qualifying round, and from 20-30% qualified.
The cubes were allegedly "broken in" in advance, and all had the
same color orientation.  They were re-randomized between rounds.

	2) Those who qualified in the first round were given two
tries to solve a random cube in under two minutes.

	3) Three "patterned" cubes were solved (presumably everyone
got the same patterns).  I didn't see this round so I don't know
the details of it.

	My impression of the qualifying rounds was that those who
qualified differed from those who didn't largely in speed.  They
didn't seem to use any macros I haven't seen, they just did them
extremely fast and rarely paused more than fractions of a second
to decide what to do next.  The fact that the three top finishing
juniors all had better times than the three top-finishing seniors
indicates that competitive cubing is a young person's game.