TEMECULA: Temecula boy excels at Rubik’s Cube

Autistic youth recently won major competition


Max Park can solve the Rubik’s Cube faster than most people on the planet.

The fact that Max is 10 years old makes the feat remarkable. Add in that Max is autistic, and the accomplishment is amazing.

The Temecula boy solved a cube in 2 minutes, 57.66 seconds to win his division during a recent tournament in Diamond Bar. At the time, it was the 89th-fastest time in the world.

That time later fell to 111th place, which is still an astonishing feat for a youngster competing in his second tournament.

Rubik’s Cube is a three-dimensional flexible puzzle with six sides containing colored squares. The goal is to spin the sides so each ends up with the same color.

Schwan Park bought his son a cube a couple of years ago so Max could work on his motor skills. The youngster played with it a bit, but really became enthralled while watching YouTube videos of people solving the puzzle. He then challenged himself to match their speed.

The Parks went to a tournament in Los Angeles in August so Max could watch the competitors, and he ended up participating, finishing 23rd in a field of 45.

“We went because he loved it so much; he wanted to watch the other people,” Park said.

As Max watched the other competitors, he memorized their moves.

A standard cube has three rows of each color, but there are puzzles of various sizes, and at Diamond Bar on Oct. 14, it was with a six-by-six cube that Max excelled, topping the field by more than 3 seconds.

Now, he is hoping to compete in an international competition next summer in Las Vegas.

A fifth-grader at Julian Charter School, Max practices with the cube a couple of hours each day.

“He does it all the time, like kids playing video games,” Park said. “He’ll just do it, practicing in bits and pieces, 10 minutes at a time, 15 minutes at a time.”

As he works the puzzle, Max scrawls notes on paper to remind himself about what moves were made.

Solving the puzzle involves mathematics and memorization, Park said, both of which Max has seemed to have mastered.

Max also challenges himself by seeing how quickly he can stack cups and by playing Scrabble or Words With Friends, often defeating his mother’s friends.

He excels on the piano, as well.

“Piano is similar (to the cube) in the visual mechanics of it,” Park said. “Music is finite. If there’s a finite knowledge base, that is what he likes.”