Thomas Patterson finally broke the UK's longest standing national record on Saturday at Norwich Winter 2024, the previous record of 32/33 by Steven Kearns had stood since 2019 and many people have got very close to beating it but hadn't quite made it. On Saturday, Thomas Patterson's result of 37/41 shook the UK cubing scene as it took down the last pre-lockdown national record.
Multi-blind is where the competitor must solve as many cubes blindfolded as possible within an hour (if attempting 6 or more), usually they spend around 35-40 minutes memorizing all the cubes and then 20-25 minutes solving them under the blindfold. The scoring system works by subtracting the number of unsolved cubes from the number of solved cubes so the previous record of 32/33 was 31 points as 32 cubes solved and 1 cube unsolved, the new national record is 33 points as 37 cubes were solved but 4 were unsolved. Thomas's accuracy was lower than Steven's but because he attempted 8 more cubes, he was still able to take down the national record. I suspect this will open up the floodgates and we shall see many more cubers from the UK get results over 30 points, there are already 4 others with results over 27 points. Ryan Eckersley also attempted 38 cubes at this competition but unfortunately only solved 29 successfully, resulting in just 20 points.