Last weekend at Stevenage January 2025 we saw Nicholas Archer break the world record for 3x3 with one hand, in many ways this was a long time coming, Nicholas has achieved some incredibly fast times and has been close on multiple occasions before, however, it has been slightly more difficult since Sean Patrick Villanueva's 8.08 average last year.

In classic Nicholas Archer style, there was very little reaction to his 8.03 world record average, possibly partly to do with the fact that he probably thought he could have got a sub-8 average relatively easily, but also just because Nicholas Archer isn't really known for reacting to fast solves.

Nicholas Archer also uses Roux so the world record average is still done by a Roux user, however, the current world record single was with CFOP, Roux is usually considered faster for one-handed due to the lower move count and the development of 'table abuse' where the solver leans the cube against the table to support it while doing M slice moves during Last Six Edges (the last step of the Roux method).

I suspect that a sub-8 average will happen this year by either Nicholas Archer, Fahmi Aulia Rachman, Dhruv Sai Meruva or Sean Patrick Villanueva, it is just going to require a good last solve, Nicholas's best possible average was 7.46 going into the last solve so it could have happened.

This is also a rare case of a British speedcuber getting a world record, other than Jacob Sherwen Brown tied FMC World Record, this is the first british world record since Jacob Chamber's clock world records, the last of which was a 2.77 world record single nearly 2 years ago.