Rubik's World Championships 2003
Day 1 of competition - 23 August
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Day One of RWC began with registration over at the Ontario Science Centre. We got a great registration pack with lots of cool stuff (t-shirt, backpack, pin, silver cube with matching stand). We'd been told that we'd have to re-sticker our cubes, so we also scored some new stickers. :)
Chris Hardwick and Jasmine Lee.
We had to resticker are worn in cubes so they looked nice and new for the cameras.
Chris Hardwick and Jasmine Lee.
Still re-stickering. Chris was competing in many events and so had quite a few cubes to re-sticker!
The stack mat timers where placed on huge model Rubik's cubes. To use the timer, our scrambled cube was placed in the centre of the grey pad, and we put our hands on the two yellow pads. When we lifted our hands to pick up the cube, the timer would start. The display showed our time, measured to 1/100 of a second, to the audience.
All solves were also manually timed with a stopwatch in case the stackmat timer failed to start/stop properly. This actually happened to me during the 3x3x3 speedsolve qualification round.
Here's the stage setup for Day One of competition. Andy is having a last minute test of the timers. Keith Sauer and Jason Hildebrand are standing at a nearby cube stand. Lots of other people are on stage checking out the set-up.
Here's Jason Hildebrand having a go with the timers. In the background on the right, we see Katsu and Akimoto also testing out the timers.
The huge cubes were very cool, but must not have been designed by a cuber because the colour configurations are not valid. I'm sure non-cubers would not have noticed this, but it was quite obvious to us cubers (especially in this picture!). Regardless of this, I still thought the huge cubes looked great.
More cubers test out the timers. Check out how Peter Babcock's hair matches the blue on the cube stands!
Some last minute instructions for the officials before the time trials begin. I wonder if the officials got bored? I'm guessing that they aren't all obsessed by Rubik's puzzles, otherwise they'd be competing themselves. I imagine standing there timing cube after cube all day would have become boring after a while.
The officials in a huddle. I don't know what was going on here as I was with all the other cubers out the back. The documentary makers didn't miss a thing though, with their boom mic positioned over the team of officials.
Jessica Fridrich in the 3x3x3 qualification round.
Lars Vandenbergh being interviewed by documentary-maker Richard.
Photography by Peter Still | Page last modified Saturday 2 October 2004 by Jasmine Lee.