"IT’S VERY BASIC,” Akash Rupela said, fiddling with a scrambled Rubik’s Cube. “There are millions of algorithms to solve a cube. You have to choose the one which suits you best.” Less than 15 seconds and a series of colourful blurs later, he set the cube on the table between us, each face a uniform colour.

Rupela holds the Indian national speed-cubing record in four categories, including the best single solve time for the three-by-three Rubik’s Cube—the standard kind, with nine colourful squares to each face. We spoke in late March, outside a café at Delhi’s Indian Institute of Technology, where he studies mathematics and computing. Rupela is 21 years old, short, and with a head of messy curls. At the Indian Nationals in Mumbai last year, he solved a randomised three-by-three cube in 6.91 seconds, cementing his fame on India’s growing and fanatical speed-cubing scene.

About two weeks later, I met Rupela again at the National Cubing Region Open 2015, one of the country’s largest speed-cubing events. Over a hundred participants from across India crowded into a dim temple hall in Malviya Nagar, a cramped residential area in south Delhi. Most looked in their mid teens or younger, and twiddled obsessively with a bewildering variety of multi-colour blocks—cubes and cuboids large and small, triangular pyramids, icosahedrons. The event was sanctioned by the World Cube Association, speed-cubing’s global governing body, and Rupela was its official delegate for the occasion.