The 1982 World Rubik's Cube Championship was a competition for speedsolving the 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube. It was held in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

, on 5 June 1982. Contestants selected from 19 countries took part.

Minh Thai Minh Thai (born 1965 as Thái Minh) is a Vietnamese-American speedcuber. He was a sixteen-year-old Eagles Rock High School student from Los Angeles when he won the first world championship on June 5, 1982 in Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is ...

from the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

was the winner with a best time of 22.95 after three attempts for each contestant. The top attempt of three was taken as the competitor's score. First prize was a gold-plated Rubik's Cube. Writing shortly afterwards,

David Singmaster David Breyer Singmaster (born 1938) is an emeritus professor of mathematics at London South Bank University, England. A self-described metagrobologist, he has a huge personal collection of mechanical puzzles and books of brain teasers. He is mo ...

who was one of the judges, described the competition as being efficiently organized, although at one point power for the TV and the display timer failed in the middle of a trial. The cubes were selected by

Ernő Rubik Ernő Rubik (; born 13 July 1944) commonly known by his nickname, "Little Man", is a Hungarian inventor, architect and professor of architecture. He is best known for the invention of mechanical puzzles including the Rubik's Cube (1974), Rubi ...

himself, and according to Singmaster "competitors described them as pretty good". However, writing around 20 years later,

Jessica Fridrich Jessica Fridrich is a professor at Binghamton University, who specializes in data hiding applications in digital imagery. She is also known for documenting and popularizing the CFOP method (sometimes referred to as the "Fridrich method"), one o ...

who had participated in the contest, criticised the cubes for being "really hard to turn and were not prepared for serious speed cubing". This competition was the first officially recognised competition of its kind. The next competition was held in 2003 in Canada, with many differences to the competition structure and many other puzzles being added other than the Rubik's Cube.

Results

The results were: WR = World Record ER = European Record AsR = Asian Record SAR = South American Record NR = National Record * Sandqivst's second attempt was disqualified since his cube was broken twice in the same attempt. This was a violation of the competition rules and the attempt was stopped at that point.

References

{{Rubik's Cube Rubik's Cube 1982 in Hungarian sport 1982 in sports International sports competitions in Budapest International sports competitions hosted by Hungary