Cups World Records

Zach Neal bounced 52 table tennis balls into cups in one minute. Stride’s setting 100 records in 100 days. At the end of 100 days, we’ll verify if you are the standing Record Holder. If you are, you’ll get $500 for each record you managed to hold with your guile, talent, and sheer will. General caution and common sense required. We show the Stride Team at work, but recommend that these challenges be done at home.

Niels Duinker threw eight juggling cups and caught them with one hand.

Niels Duinker juggled 14 cups.

Eliza N. drank 15 different beverages in 30 seconds.

Hailey G. held her left foot over her head for one minute, 22.97 seconds while singing Cups.

Alldyn Gotora sat at a desk in Schenectady and flipped a single-serve Kraft mac and cheese cup 61 times in one minute, tossing it into the air with one hand and landing it upright on the tabletop again and again. A phone stopwatch runs in frame for the whole continuous take, and an on-screen counter tallies each landing at a pace of about one flip per second. As Alldyn put it, you can do anything you put your mind to, even flipping a cup of mac and cheese.

Yanhao Deng of Chenzhou, Hunan, balanced a stack of 44 round crackers on the base of an upside-down clear cup held by its rim in the teeth. Seated at a classroom desk with head tipped back, Yanhao sets the stack on the cup, straightens it with both hands, then lets go and keeps both hands away for about a second and a half while the tower stays balanced. RecordSetter checked the count of 44 against the ridged edges of the stack, which comes off the cup in one piece and is held up to the camera at the end. Forty-four crackers, one cup, no hands.

In a classroom in Chenzhou, Hunan, Yanhao Deng leans back against the wall and bites the rim of an upside-down clear cup while a classmate stands an AA battery on end on the cup's base. From the moment the classmate's fingers leave the battery, it stays upright for 1 minute 11 seconds with the cup held by the teeth alone, until it tips off the base. There's no stopwatch in the shot, so RecordSetter timed the hold frame by frame from the continuous video, from the last touch to the fall. Classmates keep wandering over to check whether it's still standing.

In a classroom in Chenzhou, Hunan, Yanhao Deng leans back against the wall and bites the rim of an upside-down clear cup while a classmate stands an AA battery and an AAA battery on end, side by side, on the cup's base. From the moment the classmate's hand leaves them, both batteries stay upright for 1 minute 20 seconds with the cup held by the teeth alone, until the AAA tips off and the AA slides after it. There's no stopwatch in the shot, so RecordSetter checked the time frame by frame against the continuous video, from the last touch to the first battery falling. One classmate settles in on the desk to watch, and another leans right up to the cup for a closer look.