Penn State’s Stephen Nedoroscik, Rubik’s Cuber extraordinaire, solved the puzzle of Olympic stardom

PARIS — I needed a Rubik’s Cube-related quote from a post-pommel horse press conference. If that fact doesn’t clue you in to the manner in which Stephen Nedoroscik — Team USA gymnast, 2020 Penn State grad, two-time bronze medalist in these Olympics, wearer of Clark Kent-style eyeglasses, possessor of a limitless number of quirks, source of a limitless number of memes — has crashed through the freaking looking glass over the last few days here, maybe these aspects of his story will.

He has chatted up Hoda Kotb on the TODAY show. He has collected more than half a million followers on his Instagram and TikTok accounts. His girlfriend, Tess McCracken, has been profiled on E! Online (“Sorry Ladies, 2024 Olympian Stephen Nedoroscik Is Taken”) and in the New York Post (“Girlfriend … Swoons over Paris Olympics Triumph”). Nobody stoked the star-making machinery of these Olympics better than this heretofore (relatively) anonymous 25-year-old native of Worcester, Mass., and it’s hard to argue that he didn’t earn his time in the sun.

First, he helped the U.S. men medal in team artistic gymnastics for the first time in 16 years. Then, on Saturday at Bercy Arena — in the event that Nedoroscik, more than anyone on the planet, had lifted out of obscurity — he posted a score of 15.300 to finish third, no small achievement in what gold medalist Rhys McClenaghan called “the best pommel horse final in the history of gymnastics.” Actually, the invitation to contemplate whether this was indeed the best pommel horse final in the history of gymnastics is as much a testament to Nedoroscik’s rocket-rise to fame as anything. I mean, I’m sure the list of great pommel horse finals is long and the debate about them robust, but it’s not like Stephen A. Smith is yelling, “DON’T YOU DISRESPECT BART CONNER!” at Shannon Sharpe every morning.

There’s one subset of the global community, though, that is especially proud of and delighted for Nedoroscik: those who cube. Nedoroscik’s fondness for and proficiency with a Rubik’s Cube became an oft-mentioned detail in articles and features about him, and it was more than appropriate to mention it. It has been an inextricable part of Nedoroscik’s life and of his preparation for competition. He’s routine-oriented, and solving a Rubik’s Cube relaxes him.

For breakfast Saturday, he ate the same meal he’d had the morning of the team event — six slices of green apple and a chocolate muffin — then meditated, then solved a 3x3 cube in 9.707 seconds, posting the result on Instagram with the tagline “Good omen pt. 2.” He’d finished a cube in less than 10 seconds before the team event, too. Amid all the hubbub of the last week, Nedoroscik needed some quality “monotony,” he said, a state without distraction, and Hungarian professor Erno Rubik’s finest creation helped him find it.

“In the past,” he said, “I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is going to end up being the best thing I do today.’ It would freak me out. But after I solved it in under 10 seconds before team finals and solving it again today, I was like, ‘OK, we got this.’”

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The hobby has been more than a confidence-booster and time-filler for him, though. His personal best, posted in his TikTok bio, is 8.664 seconds. And April 2012, when he was 13, Nedoroscik entered an official World Cube Association cubing competition, held at the Harvard Science Center. The WCA, for the record, is the nonprofit organization that “governs competitions for mechanical puzzles that are operated by twisting groups of pieces, commonly known as ‘twisty puzzles.’” Nedoroscik finished 41st, with an average solving time of 29.24 seconds.

Even now, he’s not in the same league as Max Park, 22, of Cerritos, Calif., the world record holder in 3x3, who solved one at a WCA event in an astonishing 3.13 seconds. But Nedoroscik has come a long way — while at the same time, you know, winning two Olympic medals in gymnastics — and the cubing world has noticed.

“It’s very exciting for us to have a connection to the Olympics,” Tim Reynolds, Massachusetts’ delegate to the WCA, said via email. “It’s not often that someone who posted a video of themselves solving a Rubik’s Cube on Instagram gets in the news. And it’s really impressive how fast he is at cubing. Solving in under 10 seconds is quite an accomplishment that takes a lot of serious cubers years to reach.”

Cubing can tend to be a significant, even essential, aspect of a practitioner’s identity. Ron van Bruchem, the founder of WCA, uses Cubic regards, as the complimentary closing of his emails. He’s seen Nedoroscik solve cubes online. “His fingers are superfast,” said van Bruchem, who lives in the Netherlands. But the impression that every speedcuber is a neo-maxi-zoom dweebie who does nothing but spend all of his or her waking hours fiddling with a chunk of multicolored thermoplastic is way off the mark. Nedoroscik is just the best-known representative at the moment of the community’s diversity. Graham Lively, for example, the president of Penn State’s Rubik’s Cube Club, is a powerlifter who has also dabbled in fencing and figure skating.

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“Stephen is a great demonstrator to the general public of what speedcubing is about,” Lively, whose personal best with a 3x3 cube is 5.89 seconds, said in an email interview. “I have never met a speedcuber who does just cubing. Everyone I know is very intelligent in at least one other field, and it isn’t just math and science.

“Stephen’s incredible abilities as an athlete and his skill and interest in the Rubik’s Cube are likely not merely correlational but probably complement and corroborate each other. Having watched him solve it on social media, I can say with confidence that he has dedicated some time and effort to improving at the cube, and it isn’t just something he learned how to do as a party trick. I can imagine that drive to improve would carry over in some way to his skills as an athlete.”

Those skills were on full and breathtaking display Saturday as he twirled and rotated himself around that horse. It wasn’t enough to beat Ireland’s McClenaghan (15.533) or Kazakhstan’s Nariman Kurbanov (15.433), but it was enough to cement him as an all-time Summer Games folk hero. He will take a month off, he said, and the commercial and celebrity opportunities are sure to roll in. “I’m more proud of this right here,” he said, “than any opportunity.” As he spoke, the newest most famous Olympian lifted the medal dangling from his neck and cradled it in his hands, savoring his prize for solving the most demanding and rewarding twisty puzzle of his life.