‘I couldn’t tell if they were kidding or not.’ 12-year-old wins contest to represent Boston in global LEGO competition. – The Boston Globe

Arlo, Boston’s newly crowned Mini Master Model Builder, spent about two months crafting a replica of the Tea Party scene for LEGO’s first global competition.

His creation, which features underwater and above-water scenes, will be sent to the LEGO House in Billund, Denmark, to vie against 27 other young regional winners from Shanghai to Arizona.

The Global Mini Master Model Builder will be announced in the fall.

“I‘m very excited,” Arlo said in a recent Zoom interview from his home in Dover, N.H., his shaggy blonde hair falling over his forehead. “This means a lot to me because I’ve been building LEGOs for a long time.”

A sixth grader at Dover Middle School, Arlo started playing with LEGOs when he was a toddler and has completed more than 100 LEGO sets.

Still, he never considered entering a LEGO competition until a late February visit to the LEGO Discovery Center Boston in Somerville.

He had decided to make a hand out of LEGOs, not just any hand but “a celestial hand emerging from the depths of our ocean,” when an employee approached him.

Impressed by his work, the employee told Arlo he should enter the regional Boston Mini Master Model Builder contest.

Arlo didn’t know what it was but accepted the challenge.

“So I was like, OK, yeah sure, I’ll enter into the tournament,” he recalled. “And I entered in, and I won.”

Kaleb Thome, the LEGO master builder at the Somerville LEGO center, said he saw Arlo’s hand depiction within a couple of weeks of the deadline for the Boston competition.

“He was one of the last ones to submit,” said Thome, 26. “I immediately knew this might be the one.”

The hand was a “very mature concept,” Thome said, but was “executed really well.” As artists know well, hands are a challenge to portray, Thome said.

“It’s this hand coming up from the ocean,” Thome said. “I was like, dude, that’s a sick concept.”

For Arlo, the hand was not a painstaking endeavor; it was simply another opportunity to “create anything,” the reason he was drawn to the building blocks in the first place.

“I think the fact that I could do anything,“ his imagination would allow, Arlo said, explaining his initial interest as a toddler.

When Thome, the judge for the Boston contest, selected Arlo on March 14 over some 50 other applicants across New England, Arlo was shocked.

“I couldn’t tell if they were kidding or not,” he said. “But I was definitely excited, no matter what.”

The win made Arlo Boston’s Mini Master Model Builder and catapulted him into LEGO’s first global competition.

His work had just begun.

From late March to May 31, Arlo spent one to two days a week working in the Somerville LEGO facility on his greatest creation — the Boston Tea Party. His mom or dad would typically drive him down from New Hampshire around noon on Saturday, and Arlo would stay in his workshop until closing.

His Boston Tea Party includes sea creatures, a scene from Spongebob’s Bikini Bottom, and people throwing tea into the harbor. It’s about 10 inches by 20 inches (1 x 2 base plates in LEGO math) and even has a character named Arlo in a red shirt.

Arlo meticulously placed every piece, and Thome said its scale was “the most impressive thing.”

“How much brick and plate he was able to put down,” Thome said. “He really set out some big expectations and goals for himself, and I think he achieved them.”

Besides size, the main rule for global competition is that the building represent the city or region the builder is from.

Arlo, a lover of history LEGO sets, jumped at the opportunity.

“The fact that sometimes they can be like small, little scenes cut into history,” Arlo said of historical LEGO sets. ”So you basically have your own history book without even having to read.”

Arlo said he spent a long time coming up his idea, deciding between Paul Revere’s ride and the Boston Tea Party, he eventually landed on the Harbor scene because of its size. Once he had the idea, he started and didn’t stop.

“If I have an idea, I’m gonna just put it down,” Arlo said. “Once that’s done, I’ll just continue. So I’ll legitimately just build.”

His project will be sent to Denmark after June 30 for the LEGO masters to decide its fate. Until then, it will be on display in Somerville.

The honor of Boston’s Mini Master Builder has required some sacrifices. Arlo didn’t play lacrosse this spring to focus on the LEGO project and has been busy at school, with lot of homework in his favorite subject, science. But his mom, Lindsay Humphreys said it’s been worth it.

“It required the commitment, but knowing that it was such a big deal and probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, for sure, we were supportive of it,” Humphreys said.

Outside of LEGOs, Arlo enjoys video games and playing with his dog Bruno, a beagle and pug mix called a “puggle.”

But LEGOs are his guiding passion.

He wants to be a LEGO master like Thome one day. His dream car, a Volkswagen bus, is from his favorite LEGO set.

Will he get the car one day?

“Maybe if he can get a job and work towards it,” Arlo’s mom said, drawing a grin from Arlo.

Ava Berger can be reached at ava.berger@globe.com. Follow her @Ava_Berger_.