Locally, that became evident recently when Kennedy Middle School 7th-grader Hanson So put together a Rubik's Cube tournament. Participants came to his Cupertino school from as far away as Santa Rosa and Emeryville to take up the challenge.

Thirty people attended the tournament, watching seventeen participants vie for the fastest time. Participants ranged in age from eight to forty years old.

And the winner was Lars Petrus of Mountain View with a time of 25.17 seconds. According to www.speedcubing.com Petrus is ranked 17th worldwide with a best competition time of 17.59 seconds; the site lists the top time ever recorded in competition at 12.11 seconds.

To build enthusiasm for the tournament, So decided to start a Rubik's Cube club at school. Members call themselves the "Kennedy Cube Freaks." There are currently twenty-six members, but So wants to get his whole school involved so they can get a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most people in a school solving the puzzle. The problem with achieving that goal, he says, is a lack of motivation.

"Some people aren't willing to memorize patterns." To keep momentum going, though, So plans to sponsor a tournament every quarter.

He is looking for sponsors to help pay for tournament equipment and prizes. He particularly needs lots of gizmos called StackMats. A StackMat looks like a big mouse pad with a timer embedded in it. So says, "You put your hands on it, then you pick-up the cube and start solving it and when you finish you put your hands back down. You get a more accurate time that way."

For some people, solving the puzzle would be enough. But for dedicated cubists like So, solving it quickly is what really matters. His fastest time so far is what he calls a "lucky" forty-two seconds, but on average he says it takes him about a minute. He's developed his own method for solving the puzzle, but he also relies on web sites that explain short cuts and techniques that boost speed.

So became interested in cubing when he was reading his favorite book, which happens to be the Guinness Book of World Records. That was when he was in fourth grade. He says, he was impressed when he came across a section that said the fastest time for solving the Rubik's Cube was 22.5 seconds. "Until then I didn't think the cube could be solved because I couldn't understand the directions," he says. I went on the Internet and started reading about it and was then able to solve the puzzle." He says the key is "patterns." There are five simple patterns he says a person needs to memorize to solve the puzzle in two to three minutes. "As you get more sophisticated, you memorize more patterns to get faster," So says.

The cube was originally developed by Hungarian Erno Rubik. In late 1974 he became obsessed with 3D geometry. Over the next few years Rubik developed the cube and got a patent for it. The first cubes hit stores in 1978, and the craze took hold by 1980. One hundred million of the odd puzzles had been sold by 1982. Today, about a half million are sold annually.

Aside from his interest in spreading cubism, So is writing a book. He describes it as a "mysterious conspiracy with magical elements." The twelve-year-old is unsure who his audience will be as the book is still in the development stage. So's desire to write seems natural because he's passionate about reading. He also plays the piano.

In the meantime, he's taught many of his classmates to complete the cube in about two minutes. He plans to continue teaching them to get faster and eventually wants to spread cubing to other Cupertino schools. He says, "The cubing community is very friendly. People are always willing to help each other and they don't keep all the secrets to themselves. So I wanted to help other people learn how to cube. I felt that if I helped spread that knowledge I would be making people happy."

To contact Hanson So or view more tournament photos, go to www.lewebcafe.com/rubik.