Who is the greatest speedcuber of all time?

[Swordsman Kirby]

Gunnar Krig, Stefan Pochmann, and Chris Hardwick are the three greatest influences in my cubing career.

"Greatness" is a vaguely defined term.

 

[ShadenSmith]

I guess the definition will vary from cuber to cuber. To me, Harris Chan and Mike Hughey have always been my favorite, so they are the greatest in my mind.

 

[Radu]

i think it's too early to say give the crown. speedcubing (as we know today) is only a few years old...we have to wait more to see
until then..it's me

 

[Raffael]

I guess the definition will vary from cuber to cuber.

I agree with that.
For me the list would look sth like this:
(Of course, for most points, there scholud really be numerous names on the list)

Erno Rubik for inventing the cube.
Jessica Fridrich for inventing the method I use.
Erik for his F2L tutorial video on youtube.
Ron for all the Competition Stuff.
Edouard for having the best cubing style ever.
Dennis for his reactions.
Tim (and Dennis) for taking the multi in bld to a whole new level.
..I could imagine many more, but I don't have the time right now.
Just one last:
Me for having the best music in his cubing vids.

 

[Harry]

How about Jessica Fridrich and Lars Petrus?

I agree - I would also say Tyson / Toby Mao for bring the sport to a wider audience with various TV shows and the movie The Pursuit of Happyness - many people wouldnt even know it was a sport if it wasnt for this.

I agree as well, however, many people in my country haven't even knows about Rubik's cube....... Although some of the old people (my mom, etc) know about it......

 

[somerandomkidmike]

I would say, whoever it is that can pick up a rubik's cube, and find a near-opimal solution is actually the best at the rubik's cube, because they understand all the algorithms they use, and know more than just what they do, but understand why they do them. Had you asked who is the best at speedsolving, I'd have a different answer.

 

[qqwref]

Had you asked who is the best at speedsolving, I'd have a different answer.

Who is the greatest speedcuber of all time?

Anyway it's really hard for me to figure out what I would mean by "great". Would the greatest speedcuber be the fastest, or the one who's made the most contributions to speedcubing, or the most famous and well-known? And for each there are a bunch of possibilities... So many choices

I don't think we should say "of all time" yet though It's only been about five years since speedcubing was officially restarted; that's way too soon for being the best ever to be a true honor.

 

[Sin-H]

The greatest influence on my style of cubing had Erik, Doudou and Harris. So I wanna give some big credits to them!!!

Furthermore: Ron, Tyson, Toby, Stefan Pochmann and all the other WCA members who did so much for our shared passion!

And, never forget Jessica Fridrich, Gilles Roux, Lars Petrus, Ryan Heise etc. for their efforts to create and develop good methods.

And the most important one is of course Ernö Rubik for providing the possibility to create a sport around a cube by inventing that cube!
(and Jarry Nichols who first created a 2x2)

 

[Erik]

Ron! Guus! Chris! Ton! Joel! Stefan! Dan H!, those were the first speedcubers I heared of
To me the greatest cuber is actually Joel, he inspired me in the first place to start speedcubing
Speaking speed-wise blabla Matyas is definatly the one who set the bar high for a lot of events! No doubt about that for me.

 

[mrbiggs]

Who's even the best speedcuber now? I think Erik Akkersdijk and Yu Nakajima both have a decent claim to that title.

 

[KConny]

I started learning the Fridrich method way too early. Learning new algs was really hard back then, so I always needed inspiration to keep going. I often found it on Youtube looking att solves from Harris Chan, Dan Harris, Matyas Kuti, Chris Hardwick, Tyson Mao, Leyan Lo, Stefan Pochmann, Joël van Noort, Jean Pons, Jessica Fridrich.

Since about september of last year the biggest influence on what event to get good at was always Kåre Krig. All his records was in reach but Gunnar's felt like miles away.

The ones that keeps me going now are Team #!

 

[Gunnar]

Since about september of last year the biggest influence on what event to get good at was always Kåre Krig. All his records was in reach but Gunnar's felt like miles away.

Daniel, you did the right thing and started focusing on the BLD events. There were no really fast swede and now you are the best.

The greatest cuber, in the meaning of the biggest influence, for me is Ron van Bruchem. First for maintaining speedcubing.com which is where me and my brother Kåre discovered speedcubing back in 2002. But mostly for giving me the classic advice of "going slow". It was at my first competition outside Sweden and I was rushing which resulted in a lot of pops. Ron's advice instantly made me improve my times a lot and it was here I really started to get dedicated in speedcubing.

 

[cpt.Justice]

Who's even the best speedcuber now? I think Erik Akkersdijk and Yu Nakajima both have a decent claim to that title.

Nakaji isn't that great as an all-round cuber as Erik is, so my vote would go to Erik as the best all-round cuber these days. Matyas would also be a candidate tho, but...

 

[fanwuq]

First, I was amazed by Ryan Gossiaux with his 30 seconds solve and 5 minutes BLD at CTY. That got me into solving the cube.
I got on speedcubing.com and saw the names of many fast cubers from WC2007. I always confuse Harris Chan and Dan Harris.
Then, I got on the Internet and found speedsolving sites of Macky and Chris Hardwick. I realized the Chris was the original master of big cubes and OH. (But he is no longer considered very fast in these categories.) But now he is the best in big cubes BLD. He’s also very friendly.
Later, I got on youtube and found crazy sub-10 people like Harris, Erik, Nakajima, and this mysterious TDcuber person.
I soon found Gabbasoft and I was frustrated by the controls. I went on the UWR and emailed Phil Thomas. At that time, his time on 2x2 Gabbasoft was 6 seconds, I thought that was really amazing. He also suggested me to try IsoCubeSim. That’s when I found out about Michael Gottlieb. And he pretty much held the UWR for every computer cube!
I started to learn my PLLs and I found Lucas Garron’s, Bob Burton’s, and Lars V’s algs. I realized that Lucas’ algs were the best. So I learned them.
I found speedsolving.com (I joined when I saw that super long thread about Kuti) Later, I noticed Mike Hughey, Lofty, Dene, and AvGalen posted a lot. Mike is like Chris, only crazier.
Recently, I’m amazed by Dan Cohen and Derrick Eide; they are awesome at every puzzle.

There are too many awesome cubers, it’s hard to say who is the best.
But the best overall are Dan, Derrick, and Erik.

 

[Tyson]

There are more ways to measure 'the greatest' than simply ability and speed.

Who has influenced the sport the most etc?

Harris Chan is no doubt the best in that manner.
Harris Chan > Yu Nakajima.
Why?
He may not have official times faster than Yu, but he very friendly and actually is on the internet, while Yu does not reply to comments often or post here often. But this is getting off topic. I still respect Yu though xD

Not to belittle the accomplishments of Harris Chan (I would probably ask him out on a date if it weren't for the distance), but this whole "reply to comments" or "post often" thing that you say Yu Nakajima doesn't do is probably a language barrier. I'm pretty sure if you could read and write Japanese fluently, you'd have a good pen pal.

Update:

I'm an idiot. I saw the other posts after I posted this one. I would say that now because I have internet at home, I have less of an excuse not to be up to date on the forums but... I have yet to buy a chair.

 

[brunson]

Maybe someone with access to the raw data in the WCA database can do some creative querying. Come up with some subset of the events that would qualify someone as a well rounded cuber, say 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, Megaminx(?), BLD, OH and FMC, then find the 100 people with the lowest sum of their rankings in all of these events.

P.S. Is that data publicly accessible? Is it in a RDBMS? I think I could write that in a single SQL query, assuming the schema is well designed.

 

[brunson]

Harris Chan > Yu Nakajima.
Why?
He may not have official times faster than Yu, but he very friendly and actually is on the internet, while Yu does not reply to comments often or post here often. But this is getting off topic. I still respect Yu though xD

That's a terrible criteria to base a personal opinion on. By that rationale, the pope is an a-hole because he won't take my phone calls, doesn't participate on this forum and never posts comments on my youTube vids.

 

[Mike Hughey]

Maybe someone with access to the raw data in the WCA database can do some creative querying. Come up with some subset of the events that would qualify someone as a well rounded cuber, say 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, Megaminx(?), BLD, OH and FMC, then find the 100 people with the lowest sum of their rankings in all of these events.

P.S. Is that data publicly accessible? Is it in a RDBMS? I think I could write that in a single SQL query, assuming the schema is well designed.

Stefan did this a while ago - it's old data, though:
http://stefan-pochmann.info/misc/wca_rating_20080102.png

Stefan says he's working on providing the raw data, but it may take him a while to get it done.

 

[ExoCorsair]

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought of Macky, Chris, and Frank (not necessarily in that order).

Maybe that's just me though.

 

[Lofty]

Rama and Gilles vdp influenced me a lot because they would post nice comments and encouragements back when I was very slow at OH (barely under a minute) and wanted to be as fast as them.
But yea, I think the Japanese cubers at least know a little english. I used to frequently email back and forth with Tomy and his english wasnt the best but i could understand what he was saying.
Other than that my friends at school (who probably dont even cube anymore) pushed me in my initial getting faster as we would try to beat eachother and after that anyone who was in the chat around April 2007 helped me find all the resources and help I needed to really become a speedcuber.