Alberta teen solves Rubik's cube 300 times while riding unicycle, beats Guinness World Record

A 17-year-old teen from Brooks, Alta., just multi-tasked his way into the Guinness World Records.

Jesse Bradford now holds the record for solving the most Rubik's cubes — 300 of them — on a unicycle.

He learned to ride in the summer of 2020, and decided to pair it with the puzzle he'd learned to solve in Grade 3.

"I probably had about 20 solves on there," Jesse said of the first time he tried both.

Then, the thought occurred to him.

"I was like, 'I wonder if there's a world record for this,'" Jesse said. "So I looked it up, and it was 250."

Parental guidance

The desire to beat the previous record kicked off a training schedule that involved riding a loop by his parent's house.

"My parents would come out and just hand me cubes and mix them up," Jesse said.

David Bradford, Jesse's dad, says his son had his full confidence. And there is enjoyment in watching your kids try things, he said.

"He would ride his unicycle around town for five, eight kilometres at a stretch without falling off," David said.

"We had no doubt that he could take two individual skills and combine them … takes a lot of work, but it's lots of fun to see it come to fruition."

Technicalities

The process for trying to beat a Guiness World Record is quite technical, the Bradfords said, and David helped organize the logistics.

For example, six independent witnesses had to witness the the attempt, and they had to be at arm's length from Jesse — no family or friends.

"We had a police officer, we had a city councillor — you know, things like that," David said.

He also said the Rubik's cube also had to be scrambled in accordance with the World Cubing Association's algorithms.

"You can't just hand him a cube that somebody just mixed up on their own."

Two hours and 15 minutes

The attempt itself took two hours and 15 minutes, Jesse said.

He rode his unicycle in laps around a recreation centre solving a cube before handing it off to a witness, who would hold it up to cameras around the room to show that it had been solved.

"Then they would hand me a mixed up cube from a box, and I would take that, and keep unicycling," Jesse said.

"It was tiring for two hours, but I was just thinking about how badly I wanted the record. So I just kept going."

When he hit 300 solves, Jesse said he felt excited. But it was still just an attempt.

In October, it became official: Jesse was notified that he had broken the record.

"I'm really excited. It's kind of hard to believe," he said. "I never thought that I'd be able to do this."