It was first UIUC…now it’s Northwestern! Well, sort of… Evanston is a place I have long been connected to—whether it’s going to summer camps at Northwestern or spending time with my grandparents, Evanston has always been a part of my upbringing. Now, that includes spending time in the Evanston Library…not to do homework or read, but rather, to cube! It’s crazy how much COVID has changed everything, but the reason for nobody being in the building is likely spring break and not COVID.

This was my first time doing a competition with this format…I’m not even sure if any recent competitions have done anything remotely similar. For this competition, each competitor was given a cumulative time limit of 30 minutes in order to complete as many events as they could. However, you also needed to do all five solves to get an average. Some people joked that they would need all 30 minutes just to do the 7x7—but I’m glad (or maybe, quite sad now) that nobody actually did it! For me, I wanted to prioritize quantity and try to improve on my times in as many events as possible. Thus, I opted for the smaller cubes with some Megaminx, Clock, Pyramid, and Skewb on the side. With so many events and this competition being my first with Megaminx, I was practically bound to get at least one personal best. I wasn’t expecting five though! I’m also now just about a second away from breaking the 60-second barrier in the 4x4. So close yet so far! I’ll get there…