If you’ve ever spent some time trying to figure out a Rubik’s Cube, chances are you gave up midway through, or once you finished it the first, second, or third time. Rubik’s Cubes, with their six sides and six colors are notoriously hard to complete for the average person. But as you’ll see in the video above, the competitor finishes the puzzle in just over 40 seconds, and not only does he do it fast, he does it blindfolded as well. How is this possible? One thing’s for sure; it’s not photographic memory like the video’s title suggests.

Photographic memory, which is also called eidetic memory, is the ability to recall images, sounds, and objects after only a few moments of exposure — such as in this video — however, it differs from what this man does because solving a Rubik’s Cube doesn’t necessitate being able to remember the most intricate details of childhood. As one commenter notes, the technique the man uses is called 3OP. And according to Shotaru Makisumi, who writes about the technique on CubeFreak.net, “all the necessary information can be memorized as 40 numbers. The actual memory burden can be significantly eased by memorizing visually, and is comparable to two 10-digit phone numbers.” There are only 20 movable pieces on the Cube, after all.

It gets pretty complicated from there, and involves memorizing the location and colors of either the corners or edges, and then using a couple of mathematical algorithms to twist and turn the Cube. This technique can be done in as little as a minute-and-a-half, Makisumi says, which means that for this guy to do it in 42 seconds, it’s quite a feat.