In 2016 the board was Ron van Bruchem, Chris Hardwick, Ilkyoo Choi, Luis J. In 2015 the board was Ron van Bruchem, Ilkyoo Choi, Olivér Perge, and Pedro Santos Guimarães. In 2014 the board consisted of Ron van Bruchem, Ilkyoo Choi, Natán Riggenbach, and Tim Reynolds. In July 2012, Sébastien Auroux and Tim Reynolds joined as board members. Gilles Roux retired from the board in November, 2008, and Masayuki Akimoto retired in the beginning of 2012. Gilles Roux joined as a board member in October, 2004, and Masayuki Akimoto in September, 2005. The WCA was founded by Ron van Bruchem and Tyson Mao, who were also the first members of the WCA Board, the governing body of the WCA.
This is because Max had to engage with people, not just his tutor, but other cubers, to join in the championship. His father described the sessions as social skill practice disguised as a cubing workout.
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These tutoring sessions had a secondary effect: they helped teach him how to interact with other people. His parents hired a tutor to help teach him the algorithms and methods you can use to solve a Rubik’s Cube quickly. He did not just practice solving a cube by himself. Competing in these events has helped him learn how to improve both of those sets of skills. Like most people who have autism, Max has issues with social and communication skills. Social and communication skills hidden as cubing lessons He even had difficulty saying hello to others.īut adopting solving Rubik’s Cubes as a hobby has helped with these skills. Max did not intend any disrespect when he avoided eye contact, but it still came off that way to some people. To someone who is neurotypical, avoiding eye contact can be seen as disrespectful, which can further the social gap between people with autism and those without.
Max Parks’ father described the difficulty some people with autism have with eye contact as “someone who wants to invade their space and take from them without permission.” Like many other children with autism he had difficulty with people looking him in the eye. Before cubingĬubing is the verb used by people who not only play with Rubik’s Cubes but practice learning the skills necessary to solve them quickly.ĭiagnosed with autism at a young age, Max did not learn the typical social skills commonly learned by toddlers and young children. The path of learning to solve these puzzles has also taught him many things about interacting with others. Winning that championship was not the only victory he has had with Rubik’s Cubes. That is definitely the case for Max Parks, a teenager with autism who, at the age of 15, became the Rubik’s Cube World Champion in 2017, put on by the World Cube Association in Paris, France. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser thatīut that is not the case for everyone, and in fact, having a social hobby can help someone with autism improve their social skills.