{"id":544319,"date":"2026-07-16T12:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/544319\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T12:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:27:09","slug":"eighty-israelis-come-together-to-compete-in-rubiks-cube-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/544319\/","title":{"rendered":"Eighty Israelis come together to compete in Rubik’s Cube event"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly 80 people from across Israel attended the Mike\u2019s Cubes 2026 Rubik\u2019s Cube<\/a> competition on July 5, joined by hundreds of onlookers at the Shoham Medical Center in Pardes Hanna-Karkur.<\/p>\n

Twenty new competitors were welcomed into the community by veteran participants after registration for the event filled to capacity in just a few minutes. The World Cube Association and the Speed Cubing Israel Association supervised the initial registration.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s event was sponsored by the Steimatzky bookstore<\/a> chain and connected people from various parts of Israeli society.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond the competition itself, seeing all the friendships being forged here and the community continuing to grow, this is what warms my heart most of all,\u201d said Esti Stone, the co-founder of the event.<\/p>\n

The structure of the Rubik\u2019s Cube event was divided into three subsections, dictated by the size of the cube, its shape, and whether competitors were blindfolded when solving.<\/p>\n

Ben Baron was the top competitor, earning 1st place in four of the six categories and placing in the top five overall. Baron set two national records, solving a 3D combination puzzle, called a Skewb, in 1.33 seconds and a 4x4x4 cube blindfolded in just over two minutes.<\/p>\n

Yoav Vishne, a computer science student at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology<\/a>, also did very well, making the podium in half of the categories. Vishne solved a 2x2x2 cube in just 0.91 seconds, winning the category, though he failed to beat his personal best of 0.68 seconds from 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only category not won by either Vishne or Baron was the \u201cpyraminx\u201d category. Netanel Pour set a national record for the pyramid-shaped puzzle in the first round, solving it in 1.61 seconds, and going on to take 1st place in the category during the final round.<\/p>\n

Stone established the annual event in honor of her late husband Mike Stone, an American-born cube solver who passed his love for Rubik\u2019s Cubes on to his children and grandchildren. \u201cGrandpa Mike\u201d participated in several cubing competitions as Israel’s oldest competitor before he passed away in 2022 at 72-years-old.<\/p>\n

Due to increased demand, the community is already preparing for the 2026 Israeli Championship in Tel Aviv<\/a> at the end of August, which will likely attract a record number of cubing competitors and spectators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 80 people from across Israel attended the Mike\u2019s Cubes 2026 Rubik\u2019s Cube competition on July 5, joined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1767,5968,85,46,43,247473,577],"class_list":["post-544319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-competition","tag-gaming","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-rubiks-cube","tag-technion-israel-institute-of-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}