[UPDATED] This Malaysian is the Usain Bolt of Rubik’s cubes… and he just broke a world record!

This article was originally published on 11 August 2023.

[Update: 15 August 2023]

Just 2 days after we posted our article, Hill Pong went on to break the world record again! Over the weekend, Hill shaved off less than a second from his previous world record, posting a time of 2 minutes and 18 seconds.

And guess what guys– that makes Hill not just the current world record holder but also the 5×5 Blindfold World Champion 🥳 Congratulations, Hill!

[End of update]

 

In 2019, the fastest ever blindfold solve for a 5x5x5 Rubik’s cube was set by an American guy. And he did it so fast, his record would remain unbeaten over the next 4 years…

Until this Malaysian showed up and broke it by a mere 2 seconds.

By day, Hill Pong Yong Feng is like any other 20-year-old Malaysian. He lives in Cheras with his family and studies Electrical Power Engineering in UNITEN. Oh, and he also holds the world record for the 5x5x5 blindfold solve.

Now if you’ve tried solving the Rubik’s cube before, you’d know firsthand how challenging it really is– and that’s probably with the smol, cute one that’s sold at your local pasar malam:

But here’s the massive cube that Hill actually solved for his world record:

And just when you think it can’t get any more impressive, he did it his with eyes closed 🤯

Intrigued, we reached out to Hill for an interview, and as it so happens, he’s got a very interesting story to share. So let’s backtrack to the beginning, when…

 

Hill thought he could beat his friends at the Rubik’s cube… without trying it before

Hill first came across a Rubik’s cube when he saw his two schoolmates challenging each other to solve one. But since he was so good at Maths, Hill secretly thought he could do better than them. So he took on the challenge…

And failed.

But rather than give up, Hill went home and asked his parents to buy him his own cube. Then he spent the entire night trying to solve it until he eventually succeeded.

“That night, I still remember there was a night market around my area and I requested my parents to buy me a Rubik’s cube. Finally that night I managed to solve one side.”

Hill’s interest only grew from there. Despite limited resources, he was making good progress– but that came to a halt when one day…

 

He hurt his hand and he suddenly lost his superpower speed

Hill was just running around in school when he accidentally fell and broke his hand. Thankfully, he healed up fine, but he noticed that he couldn’t pull off those nifty twists and flicks as quickly anymore. That was a real bummer, because according to Hill, even a fraction of a second can make a difference in speed solving.

“In competitions, 0.1 seconds is quite a lot, so you have to be precise to make efficient solves.”

So now that he was in this situation, Hill decided to take a break and try other stuff for a change. One of them was chess, and he discovered he was actually pretty good at it. But ultimately, nothing got him quite as excited as the Rubik’s cube.

And that’s when he switched to a different category, one that was a little less reliant on speed, something called the blind solve.

 

Hill basically started solving the Rubik’s cube with his imagination

According to Hill, there are 2 parts to a blind solve– memorization and execution.

When he’s given a cube, the first thing he does is analyze it, which is he how he figures out the steps to solve it. And when he’s done memorizing, he puts on the blindfold and executes those moves. So in a way, he’s pretty much solving the whole thing in his head.

And just to give you an idea of how fast all of this happens, here’s Hill’s world record where he clocked a time of 2 minutes and 19 seconds.

But solving a Rubik’s cube is more than just twisting it randomly. It needs to be precise and planned, and to do that, Hill put a lot of hours into reading books, watching tutorials and practicing day after day.

“Besides memorizing algorithms, we also have to memorize all the colours, where each piece is located and where it should go. But it’s not just about memorizing because solving Rubik’s cube is about the quality of the solve also. So I really practice a lot.”

Those of you who’ve seen Sherlock Holmes would know of the infamous Mind Palace technique, a super intricate method to memorize large amounts of info.

Well, Hill uses the same technique, plus a few others to help with his memory, which he very casually explained as:

“When we get a Rubik’s cube that’s already scrambled, every piece of colour gets a letter– like here is A, here is B and this piece need to go in A and that piece need to go in B. So when I’m memorizing, I apply Roman Room and Letter Path. For example, I use B and L– which is recognized as BALL, so it becomes ‘I was playing a ball in a room’. Then when I finish my memorization, I have to convert the image I create into alphabets and apply the algorithm to solve.”

Um, come again?

You might think with all that training, Hill would be dreaming of the Rubik’s cube in his sleep! But he doesn’t, though he admits he could probably play the Rubik’s cube all day long if given the chance. But that will have to wait since…

 

Hill is heading to South Korea to take on his biggest rival– the guy whose record he broke

Remember the American we mentioned at the beginning? That’s Stanley Chapel, the ex-world record holder, and also the guy who’ll be defending his world title this coming weekend. To make things even more interesting, this will be the first time ever that Hill and Stanley are going head to head.

Outside of competition though, Stanley and Hill are on friendly terms. When Hill broke the world record, Stanley called him up to congratulate him. In fact, Hill says the community is actually pretty tight-knit and that’s largely because participants of a competition usually help each other out by volunteering as judges or scrambles when they’re done with their own events.

But as he heads into the World Championships, Hill tells us that he’s just hoping to enjoy his time. Win or lose, he knows he would have done his best. And with that in mind, we wish him the best of luck!