Rubik's Cube Archives

February 5, 2005

With his eyes blindfolded, his nimble fingers twist and twirl the cube in a frenzy. His visage intent and mind focussed, he races through the moves encoded in his memory to crack the puzzle which had sent millions crazy in the 80s - the Rubik's cube. The cube could still be a conundrum for many, but it's literally child's play for this boy wonder from Tiruchi.

Meet Bernett Orlando, whose memory feats often appear to be straight out of fairy tales that he loves to read. At just eight and in class IV, Bernett is already a celebrity among his peers. Indeed, one could hardly help being impressed by his exploits. Hand him a cube jumbled into any formation, it takes just a few minutes - six to be exact - for him to solve it. What's more, he can even crack three cubes in tandem, still blindfolded. And with his eyes open, he can solve it with much more ease in a little over a minute.

Inspired by his father, John Louis, himself a memory expert of considerable fame, Bernett is fast becoming a prodigy. With a razor sharp memory he can recall the day for any date from 1600 to 2100 AD. He has memorized and can recall 300 binary digits and 100 random numbers. He can reproduce in exact terms whatever is taught in class and spends very little time learning to rote his texts.

Memory skills
Bernett has imbibed the memory skills such as the "link," "substitute word system," "journey" and "Roman Room" systems taught by his father. These scientifically proven methods sharpen the faculties in receiving, recording, retaining and recollecting of information. His father introduced him to the Rubik's cube 18 months ago and immediately discovered his son's extraordinary talent. Without wasting time, Mr. Louis put him on to an online coach, Stefan Poachmann _ a professional and champion cuber of Germany. The coach fine-tuned his strategy and introduced him to the blindfolded way of solving the cube -- all through sessions over the Internet. Though adept at various cube solving strategies, including the layer and first two layer methods, Bernett follows the exclusive strategy taught by his coach when doing the blindfolded act.

Before going blindfolded, he memorises the position of the individual `cubelets' for about five minutes. He converts each and every cubelet into pictures or alphabets in English and Tamil (such as apple, ant, aeroplane or `anil' `aduppu' etc), then works out the steps to solve it and retains it in his memory in the exact sequence. The moment he is blindfolded he quickly and confidently executes the steps to solve the puzzle within minutes.

His best timings so far have been six minutes for blindfolded solving and 90 seconds with eyes open. He normally solves the cube blindfolded in about 20 steps, each comprising 15 to 25 moves. "He was able to understand the rudiments very quickly and saw the logic behind the formulae. He is probably the first Indian child to solve the cube blindfolded with such timings," Mr. Loius says. It is his ardent belief that Bernett will be able to solve the cube blindfolded in flat three minutes with some more training.

World record
The world record is 2.57 minutes. Bernett is now trying his hand at the Rubik's Revenge Cube, which has a 4x4x4 formation of cublets. He is also gearing up to enter the World Rubik's Cube Championship, possibly in November this year itself subject to sponsorship. Notwithstanding his childish pranks, his mastery over his memory that goes beyond his age surely promises to take him far one day. Hopefully, it will be soon.