An 11 year old has been hailed a local cubing champion.

Joshua Willams, who goes to The Stanway School, is a proven wiz with a Rubiks cube.

He can solve a generic 3x3 Rubiks cube in 27.5 seconds using an advanced method and is one of the fasted in the world to solve a 2x2 cube- in less than a second.

The method he uses is called CFOP where, dividing the puzzle into layers, you solve the cube layer by layer using different algorithms for each step.

Joshua took part in the Cubing Championships last weekend in Danestrete in Stevenage.

He competed in four categories, 3x3, 2x2, pyramix and skewb.

Joshua said: “There were two venues, one for blindfolded cubing and one for normal cubing. A 9.15 I had my first competition, the 3x3 which I completed in 26.27 seconds.”

Times are calculated on an average of five with the fastest and slowest solves

being removed from the average.

“I would say my speciality is the 2x2,”

“It’s algorithmically based. I know around 100 algorithms. The key is not remembering the numbers it’s muscle memory. Muscle memory is much quicker.”

“It takes me around a day to learn a new one.”

Joshua’s interest in cubing started around six months ago, when he came across videos on YouTube of people solving the puzzles.

He said “I watch tutorials on the internet, and I have a couple of Rubiks cube books as well.”

Joshua hopes to compete in the UK Championships next year and a competition in Lincoln.