Block by block, 12-year-old Auldin Maxwell built his way into the Guinness World Records.
The Salmon Arm boy cemented his name in the record books by balancing the most Jenga blocks on one single, vertical block.
“His whole life, he has been stacking things,” said Kelly Murray, Auldin’s mom.
It took Maxwell 13 Jenga sets, three tries and an hour and five minutes to make history.
He filmed himself stacking 693 Jenga blocks in November, beating the previous record-holder, Tai Star Valianti from Arizona, who had placed 485 Jenga Blocks on an upright brick in July 2020.
“The only reason why I have that many Jenga blocks is because I normally build towers and stuff. But then I heard there’s a Jenga world record. I figured I have enough blocks; why don’t we do it?” said Maxwell.
Once the tower was built, Maxwell used two editions of Guinness World Record books to knock over the tower to celebrate his accomplishment.
“Auldin has wanted to earn a Guinness World Records title since he was six years old and has been balancing and stacking objects for as long as he can remember,” Guinness says in the record entry on its website.
“This is what made this record challenge such a natural fit for Auldin.”
The supporting block on which Maxwell built the record-breaker now sits proudly on a shelf in his bedroom as good luck.
Maxwell is on the Autism spectrum. His step-dad, David Murray, says that helped him break the record.
“Auldin gets his love of stacking things is because he is Autistic. He is a unique autistic person I would say that he is very social very empathetic and all those sorts of things,” said David Murray.
“But some of the traits of autism are you like to stack thigs and pattern things and be very rigid and persistent of those things. So he took some of the pluses of Autism to help him accomplish this.”
Jenga was created by Leslie Scott. It was created from a woodblock stacking game her family had created in Ghana in the 1970s, according to Jenga’s website.
It then became famous in 1982 after it was sold in Harrod’s Department Store in London, England, and was launched in North America in 1986.