On Saturday 25th July 2026, Crimson Arradaza broke the 3x3 one-handed World Record average at Gan Tarlac Speedcubing Open 2026, he achieved a 7.72 average, tying Luke Garrett's World Record from last year and giving him an official World Record for the first time after his unofficial World Record single of 5.33 achieved at a non-WCA competition in the Philippines, or so he thought...

Just over an hour later, Zhen Chen of China achieved an astonishing 6.99 second World Record average, this absolutely obliterated the previous World Record as I doubt many people expected to see a sub-7 one-handed average this decade. In the first round he broke the Asian Record with an average of 7.99 which was then beaten by Crimson (which was also the World Record) but in the final Zhen Chen absolutely smashed both records. Before this competition his PR average was 8.22 which is very impressive in itself but now his average of 6.99 will probably remain untouched for some time.

Notably Zhen Chen uses CFOP which is less common amongst top one-handed solvers as many of them use Roux with its lower move count but Zhen Chen is able to just turn so fast that it hardly even matters. Crimson uses Roux while Luke Garrett uses CFOP so for one hour we had tied World Records, one with CFOP and one with Roux but CFOP won over in an exceptional way this time.