By Greg Braxton, Herald Examiner Staff Writer

Published June 8th, 1982 – Herald Examiner, Los Angeles

When his classmates call Minh Ky Thai a blockhead, he looks them squarely in the eye and smiles. Their twisted humor doesn’t bother him at all.

Thai, a 17-year-old refugee from Vietnam, is now the undisputed “King of the Cubes” after spending only 22.95 seconds to solve the infamous Rubik’s Cube and win the world championship in Budapest, Hungary, last weekend.

The jubilant and personable Eagle Rock High School senior usually solves the puzzle at home in 15 seconds, all without pulling out his hair, biting his nails or flinging the colored block against the wall in utter frustration, as many “cube-aholics” have.

So beating out the champions of 18 other nations to win the gold-plated cube for the United States didn’t twist up Thai at all.

“I’m very, very happy,” Thai said yesterday as he was given a hero’s welcome at Los Angeles International Airport by a large entourage of friends and family, including his proud mother and father. “I just practiced a lot. I have the ability to just pick up things.”

What is his secret? Is it mathematical dexterity? Patience? Long fingernails or a quick wrist?

Thai laughed. “Concentration,” he replied.

The excited winner met personally with the inventor of the cube, Erno Rubik, a professor at the College of Applied Science at Budapest University, who he said was a
“very, very nice man.”

“He gave me this gift, which I didn’t know he would do,” he said, pointing to a packaged hand-crafted chess set.

The three-round completion took place in a large auditorium, and was watched by officials and a large crowd that included Rubik. Each contestant was given a scrambled cube to unravel.

Thai never took more than 27.90 seconds to unscramble the cube, although he said he was “very nervous” during the contest.

Accompanying Thai was Herbert Taylor, the co-author of a Rubik’s Cube solution book who was amazed when he saw the youth solve the puzzle in 1 minute, 10 seconds during a local competition last year.

Since then, he has served as Thai’s “coach,” clocking him, encouraging him and taking him to the Glendale Galleria “so he could get used to working the cube in front of crowds. He used to be very nervous.”

Most of the time, Thai’s audience consists of his mother, father, and three brothers and sisters. The family left Saigon in 1978 during the post-war chaos and took a boat to a Malaysian camp, where they stayed for four months. A sister of Thai Tong, the youth’s father, who lived in Highland Park, brought them to the states, and to a home in Eagle Rock.

Although none of the other members of his family speak English, Thai picked up the language “very quickly,” said his father. He and the youth’s mother, Chet Tran, encouraged the boy’s fascination with the cube.

“It’s something beside a toy,” said his father through an interpreter. “It takes a lot of knowledge to know how to solve it. We hope this is only the beginning. We hope that our son will contribute to the society of the United States.”

Thai, who said he is not a “genius, just an ordinary person,” is entering USC this fall on a scholarship and will major in electrical engineering. He also may tour for Ideal Toys, which manufactures and markets the cube.