Radomił Baran from Poland broke the world record for 3x3 Fewest Moves last weekend with a mean of 19.67 moves, he previously tied the world record with Evan Brown from the US and Wong Chong Wen from Singapore with a mean of 20, however, last weekend, that 20 move barrier was finally broken legitimately, I say legitimately as last year, Kalindu Sachinthat Wijesundara from Sri Lanka did get a mean of 19.67 moves but he was later found to have abused his delegate priviledges to download the scrambles over a month prior to the competition so he could use online tools to find shorter solutions. Kalindu has since been banned from official WCA competitions for 8 years. Considering that Radomił Baran has been consistently world class at Fewest Moves for the past 2 years and is not a delegate, it seems very unlikely that this result will be in any way disputed.
What is big about this sub-20 move milestone is that it beats 'God's number', in 2010, a team of computer programmers worked together to generate the shortest possible move sequence for every scramble, they concluded that every possible scramble of a 3x3x3 cube could be solved in 20 moves or less, the vast majority of scrambles require 17,18 or 19 moves to solve, scrambles that require the full 20 moves are incredibly rare but they do exist, one example being the superflip pattern where all 12 edges are flipped in their places.
While a computer program can find an optimal solution to any scramble in seconds, it is very challenging for a human to do it even with the whole hour provided in the fewest moves challenge, the top solvers do use a method that works very similarly to the computer programs but at a much much slower speed. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the record to be pushed down further, it is now no longer 100% guaranteed that the world record can be broken or even equalled in a specific set of 3 scrambles (although the odds of a set of 3 scrambles each having no sub-20 move solution possible are less than the odds of one scramble that requires two moves to be solved)
