6-Year-Old Girl Makes Rubik's Cube History With Stunning Performance

According to studies, roughly 94% of adults cannot solve a Rubik’s Cube puzzle. That statistic makes what Lian Yunzhi did even more impressive. Yunzhi isn’t an adult. She’s a six-year-old who recently set the speedcubing world record.

The young Chinese speedcuber recently broke the women's world record for the average time to solve a standard 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube. A few days later, she broke her own record. Yunzhi first recorded an average of 4.52 seconds at a World Cube Association-certified competition in Wuhan. Three days later, she improved that mark to 4.27 seconds at another competition in Guangzhou, making her the first female speedcuber to average less than 4.5 seconds. The World Cube Association lists her as the women's 3x3x3 average world-record holder.

She Broke The Record Twice In Three Days

Lian Yunzhi’s first world-record Rubik’s Cube performance took place on September 13 at the World Cube Association competition in Wuhan. In a video from the competition, she can be seen sitting at the table with a scrambled cube in front of her before solving the puzzle.

One of her individual solves during the competition took approximately 3.54 seconds. After finishing, Yunzhi smiled, clapped her hands, and pumped her fist in celebration. However, that wasn’t the end of her Rubik’s Cube world record run. Just three days later, at a competition in Guangzhou, Yunzhi dropped her average to only 4.27 seconds. That quarter-of-a-second improvement was enough to set a new women's world record and bring her average below 4.5 seconds.

Yunzhi Started Solving At Age 4

A six-year-old Rubik’s Cube champion is already an impressive headline, but Yunzhi’s story dates back a couple of years. She started solving Rubik’s Cube puzzles when she was only four years old. At that time, it took her around 90 seconds to complete a Rubik’s Cube puzzle.

Yunzhi's mother, Lin Yangxi, said her daughter was initially introduced to cubing as one of several extracurricular activities. She was also taking dance and music lessons. Over time, however, her family recognized that she had a particular interest and ability with the puzzle. Her mother eventually decided to focus more heavily on speedcubing.

She Now Knows More Than 1,300 Solving Formulas

Speedcubing isn’t about turning different sections of the Rubik’s Cube as quickly as possible. Instead, it’s about taking a strategic, measured approach based on possible formulas. Competitive cubers learn algorithms that allow them to recognize particular arrangements of pieces and execute specific sequences of moves to solve them efficiently. The faster the solver can recognize the pattern and execute the necessary sequence, the faster the overall solve can be.

According to her parents, Lian Yunzhi practices two or three hours each day and has learned more than 1,300 formulas. Her parents have gone beyond practice at home, too. Reports say they took her to Shanghai to work with top coaches as she continued developing her skills.

Her Mother Saw More Than A Puzzle

Lin Yunzhi told multiple Chinese media outlets that her daughter’s fascination with the Rubik’s Cube goes beyond solving a colorful puzzle that has become a part of pop culture around the world. Lin explained that solving the Rubik’s Cube helps develop multiple skills, including concentration, memory, logical thinking, and spatial awareness.

That means that the six-year-old Rubik’s Cube champion isn’t just memorizing formulas and detecting patterns. While memorizing algorithms is an enormous part of competitive cubing, knowing an algorithm isn't enough to produce a world-record average. Instead, Yunzhi has to inspect the scrambled cube, recognize patterns, determine what sequence to use, and execute those moves with extraordinary speed and precision.

The Numbers Are Hard To Appreciate Until You See Them

If you’ve ever sat down with a Rubik’s Cube, you’ve probably turned a few blocks, then carefully evaluated what the puzzle looks like. Yunzhi doesn’t have that luxury when pursuing world-record times.

At the Wuhan competition, one of her individual solves took about 3.54 seconds. Her record-setting Guangzhou average of 4.27 seconds means that she was able to maintain that extraordinary speed across multiple official attempts rather than relying on one unusually quick solve. Her performance becomes even more impressive when you realize that she’s doing it at an age when many children are still learning basic classroom skills like reading and writing their names.

For now, Yunzhi's record is the most remarkable part of the story, but her age means she has potentially many more years to compete and improve.

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