DIVER John Jordan has set the world record for solving a Rubik’s cube in the quickest time – underwater.
The Denby Dale diver and a team of eight plunged 34m for the world record attempt.
They were on a trip to Belgium organised by Steve Bateman of Denby Dale-based diving school ProScuba.
John, an environmental management student, said: “I was taught to do the Rubik’s cube recently and wanted to break a record.
“ProScuba is a really sociable diving school – everyone wanted to do something a bit different and have a bit of fun so we decided on this.
“I solved it in about three minutes – there wasn’t a record attempt for it so we set the world record.
“It was very much a team effort – there were people shining specialist torches, holding cameras from different angles and making sure I was OK while I was concentrating on solving the Rubik’s cube.”
When under deep water divers can suffer from a condition known as nitrogen narcosi.
John explained: “It can make you feel drunk and drowsy and it’s hard to concentrate – that’s why I had people backing me up.
“But it took about three minutes at 34m deep.”
John has been diving for 15 years and made the trip with other members of the ProScuba diving school.
They carried out the feat at Nemo 33 in Brussels – the world’s deepest scuba pool at just over 34.6m deep.
Steve Bateman, who runs ProScuba, said: “I think most of us would struggle with a Rubik’s cube anyway, but to do it underwater, with the darkness and the pressures, makes it even harder.
“We just try to challenge ourselves and John has done really well.
“It’s really dark the further you go under water and John needed the lighting to be able to see the colours on the Rubik’s cube.
“We call it the Martini effect – being at that depth with the pressures is the equivalent of having five Martinis so you can see how difficult it may have been for John.”
It’s not the first record breaking challenge by the team – Steve himself set a record for the deepest underwater card trick at 50m at a North Wales quarry.
