At the UK Championships Fewest Moves Championships today, we had a shock world record from Jacob Sherwen Brown of 16 moves, this ties the previous world record single which was initially achieved by Sebastiano Tronto in 2019 and then also tied by Aedan Bryant and Levi Gibdon earlier this year.
Every 3x3 scramble can be solved in 20 moves or less and most take 18 moves, scrambles where 16 moves is even possible are quite rare but it seems that Jacob Sherwen Brown was somehow able to find the 16 move solution despite never achieving a result below 29 moves before, his other two solves in the mean were 31 and 33 so he also didn't come close to winning.
It is also interesting that the people that we would normally expect to be finding very short solutions such as the eventual winners Fabio Schwandt and Jaye Sloan and runner up, Harry Savage, were unable to find the solution, Harry Savage was able to find a 19 and Fabio and Jaye found 20 move solutions.
This result also puts a british person back on the FMC world record list, Harry Savage was the first to find a 17 back in 2017 but then that was beaten with the first 16 in 2019.
This is the 4th tied 16, I wonder how long it will be until the sudden 15 move solution happens, ultimately, it could happen any day, at any point, it could be next week or it could never happen at all, we just simply cannot predict it.