Ballito’s speed cubing maestro

Jesse Tipton (26) is one of Africa’s premier talents in the weird and wonderful world of professional ‘cubing’.

For most of us, the humble Rubik’s Cube is a frustratingly entertaining hobby, but for Tipton and an increasingly large base of players, it represents a portal into international sporting competition.

In speed cubing people compete to solve randomly scrambled cubes as fast as they can.

It becomes increasingly more complex by adding more blocks to each cube, or by handicapping the solvers by blindfolding them or asking them to solve it with one hand, or even their feet.

Tipton’s speciality is called ‘skewb’, where the puzzle turns at its corners instead of at its faces.

Originally from Cape Town, the waiter at Burnedale’s Abbiocco Restaurant spent his final teen years in the UK, where he picked up his first cube at 17.

“I got my first cube right as we were learning about algorithms in Math, so I didn’t spend that much time intuitively trying to solve it since I knew there was a ‘recipe’,” said Tipton.

After solving a few cubes, he picked up the knack and began to time himself. In six months he was entering his first competition in Hertfordshire.

Competitions typically see solvers getting five chances at their chosen category, one of which will count as their fastest time and the three best as an average time.

By late 2014, Tipton had become legitimately competitive at skewb, developing a friendly rivalry with another South African in the UK.

“I felt like I had a chance to break some records, so flew back to Johannesburg for the first big South African competition. I was obviously full of nerves, but finished in 5.11 seconds to break the African record on my first go,” he said.

He was able to get that record down to 2.83 seconds, which remains a South African record, although Moroccan Hassen Kallala has since broken the continental mark.

Skewb also gave him his biggest international win, when his average of 5.04 seconds was enough for gold at the 2016 Irish Championships.

Since moving to Ballito in 2016, the sport has grown within South Africa, often pushed by Tipton himself.

KZN competitions take place all year round, largely thanks to the efforts of a small group of dedicated enthusiasts.

Tipton welcomed a son in 2020 and took a break from the sport. But he said he is now keen to claw back his previous records, which have been overtaken in the interim years.

To find out more about the sport, visit worldcubeassociation.org.

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