The Cubist

Photograph by Max S. Gerber

There are five Rubik's Cubes on the table and one in Dan Knights's hands. There's always one in his hands, unless his hands are in his pockets, in which case there's usually a cube in his pocket. That's the Braille cube, which he made, using tape and a pen to poke formations of raised bubbles on each of the cube's sides. He likes to mix it up, shove it in his pocket, and let his fingers do the rest. But now, in this San Francisco coffee shop, the Braille cube is on the table along with others of varying shapes and sizes and a silver cube from last year's Rubik's Cube World Championship. All participants got that prize. Knights also received a $3,500 check and a trophy for winning the speed competition.

Nineteen seconds ago, the cube in his hands was completely mixed up, a rainbow-colored checkerboard on all sides. Nineteen seconds ago, the two men at the neighboring table, watching in a not-so-subtle manner, had their jaws closed. Nineteen seconds ago, Knights picked up the standard cube and, now, with one final theatrical movement of his right hand, he slams the final piece into place, looks up, and asks, "What's my time?" At the next table, jaws drop.

Knights, class of 2001, says that his infatuation with the Rubik's Cube began during his days at Middlebury. His roommate could solve the puzzle in about a minute, and Knights, always up for a challenge, decided he wanted to give it a try. He went to Starr Library, checked out Conquer that Cube, and with the solution book in his lap, solved the puzzle in four minutes. A month later, he caught up to his roommate's time.

"You have to see a pattern [in the cube] you recognize," says Knights, who memorized the formulas from the book. (Memorization was never a problem for him, having once been able to spit out the first 500 digits of Pi.) Soon, it was just his eyes and fingers working on the cube, his brain in a trance. He brought it to class and worked on it with one hand, while taking notes with the other. "People knew I was the guy with the cube," he says. "It was addictive."

 Nineteen seconds is slow for Knights, and he apologizes for this. His best average for 10 consecutive trials is 16.8 seconds, but you'll have to forgive him today, he explains. He's been out of practice since the competition, and the carpal tunnel syndrome makes it even harder. It's from the countless hours spent on the computer each day as a tech-support engineer for a software company, not from the hours he spends with the cube, he insists. He's been doing the cube for years and only after taking this job with OSIsoft have his hands begun to hurt. That's why, when the world championship was approaching last year, Knights knew that he would have to beat his competition with mental strength, since he didn't have the edge physically.

The only way to prepare for the nervous state that would come with the championship, he reasoned, would be by getting used to it. So, Knights took his cube to San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, put out a hat, and began performing.

"When I did it in any public place, people would inevitably watch," he says. And that, at first, could make him nervous. But Knights was still solving the cube in amazing times, almost always under 20 seconds, and he was getting more and more media attention. With a camera crew following him for a television show called Hopelessly Devoted, Knights decided he would try solving the Rubik's Cube while skydiving.

To prepare for the 130-mile-per-hour free fall, Knights tried to solve the cube while hanging out of a car window, a friend behind the wheel speeding down the highway. He was told that he would have 40 seconds, at most, of free fall in which to solve the puzzle. For the dive, he affixed a thin tether to the cube, tied it around his wrist, and, attached to an instructor, jumped out of a plane for the first time in his life. "I wasn't too scared," Knights says. "Doing the cube actually made [skydiving] easier."

Wind blowing in his face, hands shaking, it took Knights 30 seconds to solve the puzzle. At 32 seconds, the instructor pulled the rip cord.

"It was a nice confidence booster," says Knights, who admits that word got out, and the story intimidated the other competitors at the world championship.

Three weeks before the competition, Knights was doing his final prep work while riding around the city on public transportation, when he met hypnotherapist Andrea Spence.

Spence recalls looking over at Knights and asking, "Can you actually solve that thing?"

"Yeah," he replied. "In about 17 seconds." Knights proceeded to tell her that he was worried about nerves  slowing him down for the championship. Spence told him that she trains people to perform better under stress using hypnotherapy; for $70, she could give him an hour-long session and record it on a CD. "I had my doubts," Knights says, "but I figured I'd pay 70 bucks just in case."

They met up at Spence's private practice, and she learned about Knights's fight-or-flight response when he's in front of a crowd; so, Spence taught him some deep breathing and focus exercises.

"He knew exactly what he was looking for," says Spence, who studied cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, and then was certified at the Palo Alto School of Hypnotherapy. She put him in a relaxed state and recorded the conversation on the CD. "When you're relaxed, you're more open to suggestion," Spence says. Her suggestions were to help him perform to his capabilities.

For the next three weeks, Knights listened to that CD, training himself to relax. Again, word leaked to his competitors, and when Knights missed his airline flight the day before the competition and wasn't around the hotel at first, a rumor spread that he had locked himself in his hotel room and was meditating.

There were more than 100 competitors at the championships in Toronto. In the semifinals, Knights finished sixth out of eight, to advance to the finals. But in the finals, where the score is based on the average of five tries, nerves took hold of Knights, and he finished with an average of 20.0 seconds.

"I thought there was no way I could win," he says. But his average was the fastest. When they called off his name as the official world champion, a shocked Knights went on stage to collect the trophy and his check.

Now, six months later in the San Francisco coffee shop, a young woman approaches Knights, mentioning that she has seen him on TV and she thinks he's amazing. Graciously, he thanks her, fixing the last Rubik's Cube on the table before he can leave.

"You can't leave it unsolved," he says.

Brian Eule is a writer in San Francisco and the author of Basketball for Fun.He has never been able to solve the cube; in 19 seconds he manages to make it even more of a mess, though.