A Nova Scotia teenager has bounced his way to a Guinness World Record by solving more than 200 Rubik’s cubes while on a pogo stick.
Saul Hafting, a 16-year-old from Annapolis Royal, which is about two hours outside of Halifax, smashed the record back in October by completing 211 cubes in an hour and 12 minutes, but only learned this week that his attempt was successful.
He told Global News Morning he first became interested in the cube-shaped puzzles six years ago, when a friend showed him how to solve one while on a camping trip.
“I was absolutely mind-blown. I couldn’t comprehend that someone could solve a Rubik’s cube in like under a minute,” Hafting said.
Once he got back from the trip, he went to Walmart and got his own Rubik’s cube.
“After that I would do it like all day every day for like six years,” he said. “So here we are.”
Hafting said he’s held a lifelong interest in Guinness World Records and always knew he wanted to break one.
“But so many of those records are so crazy difficult to get, I didn’t think that I would ever be on a level where it would be possible for me to get a record,” he said.
“I knew that if I could incorporate Rubik’s cubes with something, I might be on that level where I could maybe break one.”
Initially, he tried to break the world record for completing a Rubik’s cube in the fastest time.
He said he did manage to break that one, “but then some other guy broke it before mine was official, so then this was the second try.”
Hafting, who taught himself how to pogo stick, trained for this record over the course of about three months — first by jumping on a pogo stick for as long as he could and later incorporating the Rubik’s cube.
“I would bounce on a pogo stick as long as I could, as many days of the week I could,” he said. “So (at first) I would bounce on it for 10 minutes, and that’s all I could do, and then I bounce on it the next day for a little longer.”
At one point, after he worked his way up to being able to stay on the pogo stick for 45 minutes, he developed blisters on his knees from where he was holding the pogo stick.
During his Guinness World Record attempt, he wore long pants with knee pads underneath to protect his legs from chafing.
Hafting says he doesn’t plan to break any other world records any time soon, but, “if this one gets broken, I’ll be getting it back.”