Six-year-old Chinese girl breaks women's Rubik's Cube world record

A six-year-old Chinese girl has set a new female world record by solving a Rubik's Cube with three rows out of three in just over four seconds, according to official media. Invented in the 1970s, the Rubik's Cube is a cubic puzzle made up of small colored squares that are rotated to create six solid faces, each of a different color.

The young Lian Yunzhi twice beat the average world record on this cube in September, during two competitions approved by the World Cube Association, the international organization which governs Rubik's Cube competitions, according to public television CCTV. These tournaments took place in China in the cities of Wuhan and Guangzhou.

The first time, the little girl achieved an average of 4.52 seconds over five resolutions, the second time an average of 4.27 seconds. Lian Yunzhi is “the first woman to go below 4.5 seconds on average,” CCTV said.

The men's world record in the same category is held by another Chinese, Yiheng Wang, with an average of 3.51 seconds, according to the World Cube Association. The men's world record for solving in one go is 2.76 seconds (established by the Pole Teodor Zajder), the women's record is 3.24 seconds (the Chinese Qixian Cao), according to the sites of the World Cube Association and Guinness World Records.

In a video published by CCTV, we see the young champion, with a red bow on her head, pivoting and turning the faces of the cube with impressive dexterity. Once the puzzle is solved, she places it on the table, claps and raises her fist in the air. The Rubik's Cube is one of his many extracurricular activities, along with dancing and music, his mother, Lin Yangxi, told Chinese media Red Star News. For her, it is “an excellent activity for developing overall abilities in children.”

The little girl has now memorized more than 1,300 sequences of movements - the "algorithms" that allow you to solve the cube - and trains two to three hours a day, according to Lin Yangxi.