Six-year-old Lian Yunzhi from Chengdu in Sichuan Province set a new women's world record for average Rubik's Cube solving speed twice in three days, on a 3×3×3 cube.
At competitions certified by the World Cube Association (WCA), she first posted an average time of 4,52 seconds in Wuhan, and then improved the result to 4,27 seconds in Guangzhou.
Lian thus became the first girl in the world whose average solving speed dropped below 4,5 seconds.
The results were calculated from five attempts under the standard WCA rules: the fastest and the slowest are discarded, and the average is taken from the remaining three.
Over the past year, the girl, known in the family as Zhizhi, trained for two to three hours every day and mastered more than 1300 solving algorithms.
It all began with an ordinary club among other after-school activities — dance and music. Her mother, Lin Yangxi, gradually came to understand that the cube does an excellent job of developing concentration, memory, logical thinking and spatial perception, and she put the emphasis on it.
Now the daughter's trophies stand on a shelf at home, and after a successful solve Lian usually claps her hands and joyfully clenches her fist.
What path this young record-holder will take next, only time will tell, but even now her achievements make one think about what children are capable of with the right support and perseverance.
The previous women's record was held by nine-year-old Qixian Cao, who at the age of six averaged 5,97 seconds.
