Feliks Zemdegs holds 12 world speedcubing titles. Credit:Damien Pleming In 2008, aged 12, after chancing upon some speedcubing videos on YouTube, Zemdegs bought his first Rubik's Cube. He returned home from the shops and had solved the puzzle in less than an hour. Within four weeks, he was clocking times of about half a minute. In less than two years, with a blistering solve of 6.77s seconds, he'd broken his first world record, blasting past the previous record of 7.08 seconds. One year later, he simultaneously held 12 world records across a variety of cube sizes and categories. It's a remarkable story, but Zemdegs dismisses it as nothing particularly special. This turns out to be a trademark of his, diverting praise from his achievements. Zemdegs is warm, clearly smart and very polite. Like the puzzle, his bio joins up and follows logic. A gifted student, Zemdegs was moved up a grade at primary school but later repeated year 6 to re-synch with his peers. He attended the Catholic boys' school St Kevin's in Toorak (finishing with an ATAR of 99.90) and is now a second-year commerce student at the University of Melbourne. He lives at home in the affluent inner-Melbourne suburb of Armadale with his father, David, an IT consultant, and mother, Rita, a dentist. He has a younger brother, Oskar, 17, who can solve the cube but has no interest in speedcubing. "We're really different," says Feliks. "He's really loud."

Zemdegs bought his first Rubik's Cube aged 12. Credit:Damien Pleming Zemdegs is dressed in a favourite orange hoodie, navy track pants and light blue trainers. He looks younger than his 19 years. You wouldn't know it if you saw him on the street, but in the speedcubing world, he's a rock star. In a line along the function room's back wall are five "solving" stations, each with a digital clock facing the audience. The all-important timers are connected to what is essentially a starting block for the hands. Competitors place both hands on a touch-pad device, and the clock is triggered when they lift their hands to solve the cube as quickly as possible. Both hands must return to the touch-pad to record a finishing time. Feliks Zemdegs retains his title at the world championships in Brazil in July. Ray Li is the organiser of the Canberra speedcubing event. He's a big guy with long, shaggy black hair, and wouldn't look out of place in a Seth Rogen stoner movie. He's studying for a PhD in mathematics. I ask Li about the age range of competitors. Nine is the youngest, he thinks, before telling me a little sheepishly that, at 25, he might just be the oldest.

Most speedcubers are teenagers: no other demographic has the free time for this obsessive pursuit, so the theory goes. Girls are very much a minority, and not a solitary one has entered the Canberra event. Zemdegs is well-liked and his mates have got his back. There's a keenness to ensure he isn't stereotyped as a one-dimensional genius. The rank and file of the speedcube set do have a "look". Yes, they probably are a bit geeky, thank you very much; they're primarily the kind of boys you'd expect to find at the top of their science class, or to be dedicated fans of Star Wars and Marvel comics. One boy wanders past wearing a red hoodie emblazoned with a large "pi" symbol and a GoPro camera mounted to his head. "Feliks is just like any other uni student," says Paddy Timms, a close friend from high school days. "We'll go to student parties and he'll get on the beers. Rubik's Cubing is just a side to him." Zemdegs' sense of humour is described as sharp, witty and observational. Timms tells how, in year 7, Zemdegs made a short, self-deprecating, satirical video about "how to be cool", which unintentionally, and embarrassingly for its maker, went viral in the school yard, to much hilarity.

Zemdegs is well-liked and his mates have got his back. There's a keenness to ensure he isn't stereotyped as a one-dimensional genius. "Feliks wants to go to the footy, do as well at uni as he can while doing as little as he can, go to the pub and hang out with his mates," says long-time pal Alex Spencer. "If I was meeting new friends, I'd always be happy to have him there because he's interesting." Over the two-day Canberra event, only a handful of outsiders bother wandering in to check out what's happening. To witness Rubik's Cubes being routinely solved in less than 10 seconds is fascinating and thrilling. And like any form of artistry that pivots on mental prowess and sleight of hand, it leaves you astonished and feeling, well, a little inadequate. With six coloured sides and a total of 54 squares, there are 43 quintillion (that's 18 zeroes) possible configurations of the 3x3 Rubik's Cube. There's a sense of magic to this and, right now, few in the world can conjure up more magic than Zemdegs. A small crowd jockeys for position around solving station 4 as Zemdegs sits down, shuffles his chair closer to the table and sets up his GoPro on a mini tripod. Nearby, his father, David, moves in to shoot from another angle with a handy cam. If a world record is beaten, the video clip will be posted to the 82,000 subscribers on Zemdegs' YouTube channel. The Rubik's Cube has already been prepared by expert "scramblers" and sits hidden, underneath a bucket-like cover, on a solving mat. A judge removes the cover, which now gives Zemdegs a maximum of 15 seconds to analyse the puzzle.

The room falls silent, but for that noise of other cubes. At this point, cubers are looking for tell-tale patterns and potential solutions. For countless hours, they have studied and practised a vast library of algorithms to crack the problem as efficiently as possible. Zemdegs turns the cube over in his hands, as if scanning an apple for the tiniest of blemishes. He returns it to the mat and rests both hands on the timing device, either side of the cube. Hands poised, it suddenly feels as if John Wayne is about to reach for his pair of Colt revolvers. The Rubik's Cube puzzle was launched in 1980 and quickly became a global sensation and must-have toy for the next few years. More than 350 million have been sold worldwide, making it the biggest-selling toy of all time. The first Rubik's Cube World Championship was held in 1982 in Budapest, a location to honour the cube's inventor, a Hungarian architect called Erno Rubik. Soon after, the popularity of the craze began to fade. Yet it enjoyed a renaissance through the rise of the internet, which allowed cubers to connect, share and learn new solving methods. The race to become the fastest cuber in the world was reinvigorated. Twenty-one years after that first world championship, the event was reincarnated, this time in Toronto, Canada. American Dan Knights, then a 24-year-old, won with a time of 20.00 seconds. Knights was also the first person to ever solve a Rubik's Cube blindfolded (first official time of 4 minutes 38 seconds; cubers memorise the pattern before donning the blindfold). Now a computer science professor at the University of Minnesota, he explains what makes a great cuber.

Speedcubers are gifted problem-solvers, he tells me in a phone interview, and display heightened levels of spatial intelligence. But it's more than just a mental game. Deft hand speed is vital, stresses Knights. He likens the finger movement of top speedcubers, such as Zemdegs, to that of a concert pianist. Above all, the mind must be able to function in a very calm, detached manner. "Your conscious thought is not focused on the manoeuvre you are executing but is tracking other pieces of the cube – the pieces you are not solving," says Knights. "You're predicting where pieces are going so that you can start the next manoeuvre right away, with no pause in between." In other words, advanced muscle memory, a term more commonly associated with pro athletes. Immediately after his 2003 triumph, Knights joined the notoriously reclusive Erno Rubik, now 71, on a promotional roadshow. "He's a fascinating individual," recalls Knights. "He doesn't seem to really be a 'people person' but he was very thoughtful, gentle and pithy." The Rubik's Cube World Championship has been a regular biennial event since 2003. As Zemdegs reaches for the cube, the timer starts. Everything begins to move impossibly fast. His long, lean fingers are literally a blur, manipulating, rotating and turning the cube with what can only be described as machine-like speed and precision. Muscles and tendons in his forearms pop and contort, but the rest of him, from the elbows up, is completely still. His head is cocked to one side, the eyes are focused and lips ever so slightly pursed.

Goodness knows what is going on inside his brain. Incredibly, Zemdegs' movements accelerate further as "the solve" progresses. Solid blocks of colour begin to appear on the cube. And then, suddenly, like a time-lapse trick of the camera, it's over. The finished cube is dropped to the mat and his hands reach for the timing pad. The clock reads 6.94 seconds. It's Saturday night after day one of the competition and we're in the bar of the hotel where Zemdegs and his father are staying. Zemdegs, a die-hard fan of AFL club Essendon, checks the scores on his phone. The Bombers are getting hammered. David Zemdegs remembers his older son as a quiet kid with a perfectionist streak. Feliks Zemdegs wasn't one to harbour boyhood dreams of becoming an astronaut or fireman. He was an avid reader and learnt piano and saxophone. His high-school music teacher, Loretta Sayers, says nobody ever had a bad word to say about Zemdegs and remembers his single-minded work ethic. "He excelled at anything he put his mind to," she says. Zemdegs' Twitter profile says he's obsessed with the Rubik's Cube. He owns about 80 cubes and reckons he practises around an hour each day. It sounds suspiciously like an underestimation. His dad bursts into laughter as Zemdegs bites his nails and struggles to recall the last day when he didn't touch a cube. "One day in the last couple of weeks I may not have picked it up," he speculates. "If I'm home for more than half an hour, I'll definitely pick up a cube." In his bedroom, Zemdegs posts cubing videos to his popular YouTube channel (total views: 35,340,000), which makes him a few hundred bucks each month through ads served by Google. There is also a small amount of prize money available at certain competitions. Zemdegs calculates he has won about $15,000. Last year, because of his A-list status in the speedcubing world, Zemdegs was flown by competition organisers to compete in Cape Town and New York. Speedcubing is most popular in the US, Europe, China and India. Australia, a relative late starter with its first event in 2010, now hosts about a dozen annual events.

Zemdegs has a small sponsorship deal with an Australian Rubik's Cube supplier. "It's enough to keep me out of a part-time retail job," he says. As for future career aspirations, he says he's not thought beyond university studies. At our table in the bar, David is discussing the 10,000-hour rule: the theory suggesting that you can become an expert at anything through 10,000 hours of practice. Zemdegs is aghast at the insinuation. "I don't think I've spent 10,000 hours on the cube!" So, I ask, who is Zemdegs outside the world of speedcubing? The question takes him by surprise. Instinctively, he says, "Probably ask my dad." Then he gathers himself. He lists his likes as skiing, AFL, golf and hanging out with friends. And dating? His dad chuckles, and announces he'll leave so Zemdegs can speak freely. Mildly embarrassed, perhaps more by his dad than the question, Zemdegs composes himself. "I have time for everything, but I'm not dating at the moment." He says, socially, he tries to avoid being known as "that cube guy". That could be wishful thinking. At July's 2015 Rubik's Cube World Championship in Brazil, Zemdegs successfully defended the 3x3 Rubik's Cube world title he won in Las Vegas in 2013. No one had ever achieved this feat before. Zemdegs dominated all comers at the São Paulo event, claiming a total of five world titles and arguably becoming the greatest speedcuber in history. On the final afternoon of the Canberra event, a cheer erupts from around station 1. Zemdegs stands, with one fist raised triumphantly above his head. Someone exclaims, "World record! World record!" A circle of competitors surrounds him, clapping. Excited chatter ripples through the room. Zemdegs is beaming, and he exchanges a high-five with someone. The red clock reads 6.88. He's just annihilated the 3x3 one-handed world record by 1.39 seconds – a quantum leap in speedcubing time. "Someone's going to get a surprise when they wake up in China," one boy says to another, referring to Haixin Yang, whose record has just been destroyed.

By the end of the weekend, along with the world record, Zemdegs has also set six new Oceania records. I ask Zemdegs if he foresees a time when he puts the cube down for good and stops competing. He pauses. The cogs inside his head churn, turning over those prolific powers of logic. "I think it will always be a part of me," he nods. The puzzle is beautifully simple, yet profoundly perplexing. As Erno Rubik, once famously declared: "We turn the cube and it twists us."