Louise Derizhy

When I was in junior high school at SMP Putra Batam, there was one game that suddenly became a huge trend, the Rubik's Cube. Everyone was playing it. As someone who's always late to trends, I only started learning when people had already begun to lose interest. Rexy, one of my friends who was really good at solving it, taught me how to play.

After about a week of learning step by step, I finally managed to solve it for the first time. It felt amazing, that small moment of victory over something that once looked impossible. I remember when I was little, the only way I could “solve” a Rubik's Cube was by taking it apart and putting it back together again.

The Rubik's Cube trend eventually faded, but one day a friend suddenly brought one to school. Feeling excited, I borrowed it and tried to solve it using whatever I could still remember.

Then, one of my seniors came over and asked, “How fast can you solve it?” I confidently replied, “Two minutes.” He pulled out his watch and started timing me. But it turned out that the cube was defective. One of the pieces had been put in the wrong place, so I couldn't finish it. He laughed and said I was too much talk because I couldn't solve it.

I was really upset, and right then I decided to buy my own Rubik's Cube from a toy shop near the school. At first, I practiced by watching my classmates who could solve it in about a minute which was considered pretty fast at that time.

Later, I started learning the advanced CFOP method, developed by Jessica Fridrich, to improve my speed. Every day, I memorized algorithms for different cases, one by one, determined to get faster and prove myself.

I started looking for people faster than me and challenged them to Rubik's Cube duels. Back then, Rubik duels were a lot of fun, everyone was doing them to prove who was the fastest. Not long after, I managed to bring my solve time down to one minute, then fifty seconds, and eventually forty. That made me one of the fastest solvers in my school.

My friends, seeing how quickly I was improving, didn't want to be left behind. They started learning more advanced methods too. Soon, I became the second fastest in school, with an average time close to thirty seconds.

Eventually, I became the fastest one in my school, mastering almost all of the CFOP algorithms and solving in around twenty seconds. I finally beat the fastest solver in school. And the best part? The senior who once mocked me was there watching as I finished the cube in seconds. I couldn't help but smile, not out of arrogance, but out of pure satisfaction.

When I entered high school, my improvement started to slow down. Even after switching to more expensive cubes, my speed only improved by a second or two. Eventually, I managed to reach an average solve time of around ten seconds.

As time went on, I had less and less time to practice because of other activities. Still, I decided to join a competition held by the World Cube Association (WCA) after moving to Medan. There, I met incredible cubers, people far faster than me, some even competing at the world championship level. It was both humbling and inspiring to see how much further the limits could be pushed.

Check out my official WCA record and competition stats Louise Derizhy (張家誠) | World Cube Association