The World Record Corner Twist that Changed Speed Cubes Forever

On June 29 2014 , Felix Zeeg got the most influential Rubik's Cube world record which you have probably never heard about .

At least the WC A doesn't seem to remember this 10 Right .

Yes , that's because this happened .

Yep , Felix got a corner twist .

He was robbed .

Corner twists can happen on all speed cubes .

That is this , it's when a single corner twists on its own , which is not supposed to be possible and can put the cube into a state that is not solvable with normal moves .

And this problem has definitely confused a lot of beginner solvers .

The reason is for a cube to turn very fast , it needs to have some level of looseness and that gives the corner piece a lot of room to wiggle around .

You may find that some cubes can knock corner and twist , but this will typically be Rubik's brands or just some older brands that are really , really tight and that definitely comes at some performance disadvantages .

So because speed cubes are loose , corner twists are something that can happen , but they usually shouldn't because you need a lot of force in a direction that you normally don't apply force .

In 2014 , Felix Zeeg was in the middle of his absolute domination of speed cubing while he didn't always hold the world record single solve .

That category is a bit more luck based because you do need a very lucky scramble to do it .

Felix did however hold the world record average of five which cubers say is more representative of how skilled a cuber is .

Felix held the record all the way from 2010 up to 2021 except for a two month break in 2017 where honestly , Max Park's record was exactly what Felix needed to push him to perform at a level that was way long overdue .

But 11 years with a two month break , what were you like 11 years ago ?

Can you imagine if you were the best Cuber back then ?

And you never lost that title except for a two month break all the way until now .

I would be shocked if we ever see a Cuber as dominant as Felix was .

So Felix is the greatest of all time .

We've all heard that one before , but everyone makes mistakes , right ?

Must have just messed up .

Why should anyone say he is deserving of this world record if he can't turn accurately enough to avoid a corner twist ?

Well , here , let's take a look at how this corner twist even happened .

This is the final moment before the corner twist .

We don't have a lot of frames to work with here , but you can clearly see where his hands are located and which piece got the corner twist .

Yeah .

What I will be patiently waiting for somebody to explain to me how a corner twist like that even happens .

He was not touching the piece and the piece was not pushed against anything .

Now , you'll notice in the video that the cue was slightly misaligned but the way that it was misaligned if you look at it from the back was like this and a little bit over here as well .

Ok .

So if you bring it back to the front and look at the movie he was doing , this is the corner that twisted .

So what was it hitting ?

Like that's just a normal corner cut because if it was the other way , then I get it , it's hitting the centerpiece and maybe it twisted on the centerpiece , but it was actually being given a lot of room to do that turn .

So I don't understand how a corner twist can even happen there .

Basically an act of God determined that Felix did not get to have a world record today .

And the current world record holder , Matt Falk breeds the biggest sigh of relief you can possibly imagine , but that's not the full story at that time back in 2014 .

Something like this happening was not all that unexpected .

This is a Mou Aon version one .

This is the model of speed cube that Felix was using in his solve this cube corner twists extremely easily as I'm doing this motion to corner twist .

It feels exactly the same way all the way through .

It doesn't feel like there's ever much resistance , it's just extremely easy .

So to give you an example of how easy it is to corner twist on this thing .

Way back in the day , there was this famous execution of A G prem algorithm done by Drew Brads .

It was really fast , but the finger trick was crazy .

And I love to use this algorithm to show why we don't like this cube anymore .

The reason why this cube and other cubes at the time corner twisted so easily was because of the rounded corners right here .

So why were these corners rounded in the first place ?

Well , that's because they had to do something called reverse corner cutting if your cube is slightly misaligned , but you would like to turn anyway , then this is called corner cutting .

It's a feature of all modern cubes and even 45 degrees was possible on these very old cubes .

And if we look at my rub brand cube , it is not possible .

Now , if you set the cube in the other direction , then this is called reverse corner cutting and it doesn't look so obvious why this is called reverse , like what is the difference .

But the reason you can very obviously see on an old cube which has squared corners and it just doesn't make sense when you pull down here , why the cube would possibly move ?

Obviously , this corner is hitting this center .

So there's no way this can move .

But with a rounded , it looks very obvious why this is possible .

I mean , the pieces just slide right past each other .

You can even go to a very large extent shortly after the solve or failed solve .

Mou released the mou a long version two , which was advertised to have fixed this problem .

And because of how popular Felix's video started to become the Moy Aon version two sold like crazy .

It was insanely popular but corner twists still happened .

It wasn't until the next generation of speed cubes that the corner twisting problem really started going away when squared corners started to become the standard design .

I remember I had just come back into cubing around this time in 2016 and thinking to myself that the new design looked really weird .

Like , wouldn't this make it harder to corner cut as it turns out ?

No , when you have squared corners , then when you try to corner twist , look at how much every other piece has to to move out of the way in order for this to be possible .

And so this is definitely not gonna happen that much in a solve .

If we look at the a long version one , the pieces don't really have to move that far out of the way .

I mean , it's a pretty big difference .

But how can we have squared corners ?

Because doesn't that mean we can no longer reverse corner cuts ?

No , it's actually fine .

In fact , it's a lot better than before .

Here .

Take a close look at what happens when I reverse corner cut .

When I do a corner cut , the corner just slides over the centerpiece .

This is because corner cuts happen when the cube is turned .

And so obviously , the corner piece protrudes out a little bit more .

So the outermost part of the corners surface is going to go over the centerpiece instead of running into the centerpiece .

And you can see this in the corner piece design , the inside is still very small and rounded in order to do these reverse corner cuts , but the outside is made to be pointy because that's all you need .

In order to avoid corner twists .

If you compare this to the old pieces , you can see how they both have a section where it's very rounded .

It's just the old pieces missing the part that sticks out on top .

So the squared corner design makes it a lot harder for the cube to corner twist , but still keeps it just as easy to reverse corner cut as if this pointy section was not even there .

Nowadays , squared corners are just part of speed cube design and we don't think twice about it , use the discount code J perm .

In fact , seeing these giant holes actually makes me nervous as I get flashbacks to my old solves and you might be thinking to yourself , hey , if corner twisting was already such a big problem , did it really matter that Felix lost his record to a corner twist ?

Wasn't this problem going to get solved anyway ?

Yeah , maybe .

But ever since the first actually good speed cube , the Diane Go Hong corner twisting had just been a run of the mill .

Very normal part of speed cubing don't want a corner twist , turn slower , turn more accurately .

That's just the risk you take when you can't control your turning .

I mean , that was what everyone said , but this video especially when slowed down showed the world that this was simply unacceptable .

Corner twisting is luck based .

And the speed Cuban community did what the speed Cuban community does best .

We demanded new cubes if it's any consolation , Felix won the competition with a 9.40 average .

Barely edging out Jaden mcneill's 9.44 being a cuber back then was different .

Felix Zigs would not get to hold the world record single for another 2.5 years seemingly waiting for Matt VK to get the record again .

Just so Felix could finally take the record the way he was meant to .

But this time in the most legendary moment of Cuban history and then he lost that competition .

But that's a story for another time .