Scottish speedcuber Ryan Eckersley seems to have been very much motivated by Stanley Chapel's offer of $600 for the next person to achieve an official sub-1 4x4 blindfolded success as he achieved some very impressive times at Cambridge Autumn British Blind Off. This was a small competition in Cambridge but it attracted some fast blindsolvers.

Ryan Eckersley first achieved a European Record single in 5x5 blindfolded with a time of 2:28.53 which also places him 3rd in the world with only Hill Pong Yong Feng and Stanley Chapel himself ahead of him, his single is also only one second slower than Stanley Chapels World Record average (which has stood since 2019!)

The next day, at the same competition, he achieved a single of 1:20.81 and an average of 1:30.62, these are also new European Records and place him 6th and 4th in the world. I am excited to see how he progresses further and whether he will ever present a serious threat to the dominance of Stanley Chapel.

In Europe, he has some competition from speedcubers such as Daniel Wallin from Sweden, Ezra Hirschi from Switzerland (who is currently living in the UK) and Adrian Debski from Poland, all of these people are top 10 in the world for a blindfolded event.

Ryan Eckersley also seems determined to finally beat Steven Kearn's multiblind National Record which has stood since 2019, Steven Kearns achieved a result of 32/33 which is 31 points, Ryan's best so far is 32/24 but he seems to keep trying attempts of around 37-40 cubes but the way the multiblind scoring system works, he doesn't beat the record unless he solves very close to all the cubes. There are also a few other British speedcubers such as Jaye Sloan and William Wright who are quite close behind at the moment.