RECORDS were set in Limerick over the weekend, and it wasn’t just by the senior hurling team.
Solving by the Shannon, a speedcube competition, was held in St Munchin’s College in Corbally across last weekend.
Speedcubing is a competitive sport that sees participants compete to see who can solve a combination puzzle – like a Rubik’s Cube – the quickest.
One of the organisers of the competition, Kevin Timmons, spoke to the Limerick Post after the event, heralding it as a massive success.
“Everything went off better than I thought it would,” he said.
Kevin says he first caught the fever for the unique sport when his son, Ben, introduced him to it.
The pair have been attending speedcubing events across the country together for a number of years before making the leap to bring the competition to the Treaty City.
“We had a few national records broken. In the Skewb competition, Cathal Bourke broke the average and the single national records, the average was 3.31 (minutes) and and the single was 1.74.”
“Then in the Pyraminx competition – that’s a pyramid shaped puzzle – Enda Loftus broke the national record for average, with an average of 1.85, which puts him in the top 70 in the world,” Kevin explained.
Irish Speedcubing Champion Ciarán Beahan also broke the national record for the 6×6 cube with a time of 1.16.
The competition attracted over 600 people to Limerick over the two-day event. Kevin said that feedback from competitors and parents was positive.
“We had a lot of people stopping on the way out thanking us for a great weekend and saying that the kids had a great time.”
“The parents are great. They get involved as well because these competitions, every time someone does a solve, they have to be judged, so a lot of the parents get involved and do the judging and they do the running to get the cubes out to the people,” Kevin said.
Following the success of the first Solving by the Shannon event, eyes have already turned to 2024 to make the competition even bigger.
“Limerick 2024 is already in the planning. I would hope to have a competition next year and a bigger venue,” Kevin said.
Having seen the potential in the success of Limerick’s first speedcubing competition, Kevin said there’s a lot of hope for the future of speedcubing in Ireland.
“If there’s anyone out there that wants to sponsor Speedcubing Ireland, we’d be very grateful. We’re hoping to send a team to the European Championships next summer in Spain, so anyone who’d like to get involved, by all means give us a shout,” he concluded.
The group can be reached at SpeedcubingIreland.com
