A pupil at Calne school Kingsbury Green Academy has secured a top ten finish in an international Rubik’s Cube competition.

Year 12 student Ed Scholey finished 8th in the Rubik’s Clock competition at the Rubik’s WCA European Championship 2022 in Copenhagen.

The Rubik’s Clock event sees players attempt to move nine clock faces to 12 o’clock using four wheels at each corner of the puzzle and has 1,283,918,464,548,864 possible combinations.

Ed clocked a top speed of 5.06 seconds to rank eighth out of 400 competitors and competed in four other events - the 3x3, the 2x2, pyramid and skewd.

The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald:

Despite not beating his personal best, Ed said that competing on an international stage “was overall a very good experience”.

He taught himself to solve the Rubik’s Cube using online tutorials in 2019 and can now complete one in a matter of seconds.

He said: “We have always had Rubik’s Cubes lying around at home and one day I decided I wanted to learn how to do it. 

“I taught myself by watching methods on YouTube and with practice I managed to cut down the time it took me to solve it from 10 minutes to around two minutes.

“I then came across Rubik’s Cube competitions and decided to learn a new method to be able to compete.

“I’ve managed to lower my average time to 12 seconds, but my best is 7 seconds.”

Kingsbury Green Academy Principal Jason Tudor added that activities like Rubik’s Cube can have benefits for students in school as well as being an enjoyable pastime.

“Competing on an international scale is a wonderful achievement for Ed”, he said.

“Activities like the Rubik’s Cube can have real advantages to helping pupils succeed in school by teaching them new and different ways of learning and retaining information, as well as giving them much needed fun and relief on breaks from studying and school.”

Ed has also competed at a local level, including the World Cube Association Chippenham Autumn 2022 competition.

Going forwards he has his sights set on a return to international competition and a potential trip to Korea for the World Championships.

He added: “I would like to get to the World Championships, but for that I need to improve and get below a certain time to qualify. 

“The next one is in Korea, and it would be great to be sponsored and be able to compete.”