A Maine teenager has broken a LEGOS Guinness World Record

CUMBERLAND, Maine — Cooper Wright first started building with LEGOS when he was three or four years old.

His parents gave him a LEGO Star Wars Death Star set for Christmas, and by the time he finished putting it together, he was hooked.

“We had to help him sometimes,” said Cooper’s father, Craig Wright. “If he put the wrong piece together, we would have to help him take it apart, but he pretty much built it himself.”

“I remember putting it on the dinner table with my parents,” Cooper said. “The assembly aspect was very interesting.”

Over the years, Cooper’s love for LEGO collections grew. A number of the different models he built can be found throughout his home in Cumberland. His parents have even started building a LEGO room for him in their basement, with the walls lined with shelves full of Cooper’s creations. They range from small complex structures to large castles and stadiums.

“I really enjoy putting things together, and building is a lot of fun,” Cooper said. “I like having a collection, like trying to get all the Star Wars stuff or all the Harry Potter stuff.

Cooper, who is 13, recently took on LEGO’s biggest challenge yet, completing a LEGO world map for a Guinness World Record entry. It consists of 11,695 parts and is not a regular 3D model, but instead a flat mosaic. The beating time was 12 hours. Cooper completed the map in 9 hours, 14 minutes and 49 seconds.

“I think it was harder than any other I’ve done,” Cooper said. “It’s not like they’re like different ways and shapes, it’s one board and you put them in like pegs. So it’s different.”

He thinks he could have completed it even faster if his desk hadn’t partially fallen apart during assembly. Cooper was more than halfway through the map when he said one of the table’s legs gave way and the bowls of pieces fell to the ground.

“I was a little nervous, I thought I wasn’t going to win,” Cooper said. “I didn’t really look at the timer because I was scared.”

Still, under 10 hours is just as impressive. Cooper said he completed the map while watching Marvel and Star Wars movies. He took a few breaks here and there to eat and said he only went to the bathroom once.

“My strategy was to build it as quickly as possible,” Cooper said. “It was fun, but it was very long and tiring.”

In December, Cooper received official information from Guinness that he holds the record for “Fastest Time to Complete a LEGO World Map.”

“I was so happy,” Cooper said. “I was jumping up and down.”

“He told me he would do it in less than 10 hours,” Craig Wright said. “It’s very cool that a 13-year-old broke the world record. I don’t know anyone who is in the Guinness Book of Records.”

Well, what’s next? Cooper said he already has his sights set on breaking the record for the “fastest time” to complete a LEGO Eiffel Tower.

“I just finished building it and it took about nine hours total, I didn’t do it all at once, I did it in a couple of days,” Cooper said. “But yeah, I could probably beat that record, I think.”