The two cubing competitions so far this month took place in Wakefield and Essex, Essex was definitely a smaller competition as it was on the Easter weekend but still almost filled up (although I suspect with a location so near to London it would usually fill instantly).
We saw a few new national records at Essex, we saw Nicholas Archer get the UK's first official sub-10 3x3x3 one-handed average with a 9.84, he also got another sub-10 average later that day but it was not quite fast enough to beat his own NR
Ben Stokes got a 3x3x3 blindfolded single of 16.78, I tried the scramble and it was a good scramble but I am rubbish at 3x3x3 blindfolded and DNFed my terrible time anyway.
Ryan Eckersley got a 4x4x4 blindfolded average national record of 2:09.99 finally beating Oliver Frost's national record from 2014 (which was world record at the time), it seems Oliver Frost has finally lost his NR's which were our longest standing for years, now the longest standing national record is Charlie Stark's Square-1 single from 2017.
At Wakefield we also saw some national records, Luke Burns finally broke the 2x2x2 average national record with an average of 1.34, this beats the previous NR by 0.23 seconds and moves the UK NR up from 81st in the world to 18th!
Ryan Eckersley also got national records here but in 5x5x5 blindfolded, he got a single of 4:00.56 and a mean of 4:10.35, however he lost his European average record to Ezra Hirschi (from Switzerland) at the same competitions, he got a mean of 3:38.72!
Other European Records included Sean Moran's megaminx single of 27.47 at Wakefield Spring.
Magnus Lensch from Germany got the 3x3x3 one-handed average European record of 9.33 at Bremium Cubing 2023, I want Nicholas Archer to get this!
Manuel Prieto de Anton from Spain got the skewb single European record with a time of 0.88.
I am not going to keep listing all the continental records but Yunhao Lou did briefly pop into Essex Spring and get the clock Asian record with an average of 3.81, he is currently studying at university in the UK but has only competed 3 times in the UK and only in clock and fewest moves.
Charlie Eggins got 3x3x3 blindfolded single and average oceanic record, it will be interesting to see if he can catch up with Tommy Cherry even when he is still very young.
The only world record so far in April was Michael Nielsen's Pyraminx world record average of 1.64 at Richmond Spring 2023
In cube release news we have the new Weilong V9, as I suspect these will be very popular I have put them on pre-order, it will come in 3 versions, a standard version with only regular magnets, a maglev version and a ball core UV coated version, it looks like it should build on the YS3M and become a very good cube.
We also now have the MGC Evo 3x3x3 version 2 available, unfortunately I have not been impressed with this cube, the only impressive thing is its ability to withstand being crushed by a car! The actual performance of the cube is not great sadly.
The QiYi Hexagonal Klotski was also released, this has triangle shaped numbers instead of squares and they move around a hexagon, it isn't too difficult to solve and is not really a twisty puzzle but still fun nonetheless.
