Lutheran High School South junior Silas Williamson has a knack for Rubik’s Cubes — the fast-flying colors, the speedy solves. Over the summer, he took his hobby to the next level with his participation in the 2025 Rubik’s WCA World Championship, held in Seattle.
Rubik’s Cube solvers from across the world joined for the three-day championship from July 3-6. For Williamson, his first true exposure to the competition was in summer 2023, when he spent a few days watching the livestream while on break from school. It sparked the idea that, someday, he might compete.
“I thought it would be cool to go to one in person, so I kept practicing and going to competitions in order to qualify for the next championship, which was revealed to be in Seattle,” Williamson said.
Williamson competed in eight events while at the championship. There was the standard 3×3 competition — the event titles are marked by the number of squares on each side of the cube — as well as the 2×2, 4×4 and even a 3×3 solved one-handed. It wasn’t just limited to Rubik’s Cubes: Williamson solved “weird and unique puzzles,” he says, like Pyraminx, Skewb, Square-1 and Clock.
Williamson set a personal record for himself in the 3×3 competition, coming in with a time of 8.42 seconds. While he says he doesn’t care overmuch about “single solves,” and cares more about the average of five solves they do each round, he was still excited to beat his record.
“It was exciting to get a time as fast as 8.42 (seconds) in the biggest competition ever, and I was happy about the result, even if it only beat my previous best by 0.05,” Williamson said. “Most of the other solves in my average were 11-12 seconds, which was disappointing since I’m consistently under 10 seconds at home. But that doesn’t really matter, since I was never expecting to win.”
The Lutheran South junior’s love for Rubik’s Cubes began long ago, before attending a world championship in Seattle was even a thought. Williamson was 13 when he noticed an idle, unsolved Rubik’s Cube in his home that led to a period of discovery.
“There was an unsolved cube in my house and I wanted to learn how to solve it,” Williamson said. “I searched up a tutorial on YouTube, and that quickly led me down a rabbit hole of other cubing-related videos.”
Once he was able to solve the cubes consistently, Williamson began to use a timer and track how fast he could solve the puzzles. He says he “instantly became addicted” as he made efforts to whittle his time down more and more; he enjoys the challenge, and the fact that, with a Rubik’s Cube, every solve will bring something slightly new.
“Each scramble is different, so every solution is also different, which adds to the fun,” Williamson said.