Older cubers discussions

Whoohoo.. broke my Ao5 PB.. 15.58

17. 16.58 B U2 L2 D' B2 U2 B2 F2 R2 F2 D2 F D F2 U R' U F' R2
18. 16.78 U2 B' L2 D2 B D2 B L2 R2 F L' U' R2 F2 R2 B D' U' L R
19. 15.57 B' L2 B' U2 L2 U2 L2 B F R' F' L D2 U' L' U' B F2 U2
20. 15.84 U' R L2 D F U2 R' F R2 L F2 L D2 L2 U2 R' B2 U2 D2 B
21. 15.06 B' L' F R L' D' F' D' R U2 B' D2 F L2 F2 R2 F' D2 L2
22. 15.33 L2 F2 D U2 L2 F2 D B2 R2 B2 D2 R' D' B U2 B2 D' F' D' R2

I wish I had more time to continue this session.. Unfortunatly family matter come first now.. I can not even updat signature. (Btw, these 22 solve mean average is 18.68... meaning I am on fire..)

MarcelP said:

Whoohoo.. broke my Ao5 PB.. 15.58

17. 16.58 B U2 L2 D' B2 U2 B2 F2 R2 F2 D2 F D F2 U R' U F' R2
18. 16.78 U2 B' L2 D2 B D2 B L2 R2 F L' U' R2 F2 R2 B D' U' L R
19. 15.57 B' L2 B' U2 L2 U2 L2 B F R' F' L D2 U' L' U' B F2 U2
20. 15.84 U' R L2 D F U2 R' F R2 L F2 L D2 L2 U2 R' B2 U2 D2 B
21. 15.06 B' L' F R L' D' F' D' R U2 B' D2 F L2 F2 R2 F' D2 L2
22. 15.33 L2 F2 D U2 L2 F2 D B2 R2 B2 D2 R' D' B U2 B2 D' F' D' R2

I wish I had more time to continue this session.. Unfortunatly family matter come first now.. I can not even updat signature. (Btw, these 22 solve mean average is 18.68... meaning I am on fire..)

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Nice, PB are the best! That's maybe there only downside to improving, it's harder to get your next PB.

Jason Green said:

Nice, PB are the best! That's maybe there only downside to improving, it's harder to get your next PB.

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Yeah, but when you break PB's it is a clear sign of improvement

MarcelP said:

Whoohoo.. broke my Ao5 PB.. 15.58

17. 16.58 B U2 L2 D' B2 U2 B2 F2 R2 F2 D2 F D F2 U R' U F' R2
18. 16.78 U2 B' L2 D2 B D2 B L2 R2 F L' U' R2 F2 R2 B D' U' L R
19. 15.57 B' L2 B' U2 L2 U2 L2 B F R' F' L D2 U' L' U' B F2 U2
20. 15.84 U' R L2 D F U2 R' F R2 L F2 L D2 L2 U2 R' B2 U2 D2 B
21. 15.06 B' L' F R L' D' F' D' R U2 B' D2 F L2 F2 R2 F' D2 L2
22. 15.33 L2 F2 D U2 L2 F2 D B2 R2 B2 D2 R' D' B U2 B2 D' F' D' R2

I wish I had more time to continue this session.. Unfortunatly family matter come first now.. I can not even updat signature. (Btw, these 22 solve mean average is 18.68... meaning I am on fire..)

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You beat my PB Ao5 by almost half a second now! Congratulations!
The not so good part of seeing others improve is that I'm not improving at all lately. It looks more like I'm getting worse.

I also have decided to forget about recording solves. I did 50 solves with camera on: Ao50 = 21.26. I did another 50 solves without camera: Ao50 = 19.92, not very good for me but the difference speaks for itself. I tried another one with camera and I was around 21.95 Avg. when I abandoned.

Also the best time of all these solves was a 15.83 and only 3 16.xx in the whole "without-camera" Ao50 so very bad times. A month ago I would get like 12-15 sub-17s (from which usually 4-5 sub-16s) in an Ao100.

MarcelP said:

Whoohoo.. broke my Ao5 PB.. 15.58

17. 16.58 B U2 L2 D' B2 U2 B2 F2 R2 F2 D2 F D F2 U R' U F' R2
18. 16.78 U2 B' L2 D2 B D2 B L2 R2 F L' U' R2 F2 R2 B D' U' L R
19. 15.57 B' L2 B' U2 L2 U2 L2 B F R' F' L D2 U' L' U' B F2 U2
20. 15.84 U' R L2 D F U2 R' F R2 L F2 L D2 L2 U2 R' B2 U2 D2 B
21. 15.06 B' L' F R L' D' F' D' R U2 B' D2 F L2 F2 R2 F' D2 L2
22. 15.33 L2 F2 D U2 L2 F2 D B2 R2 B2 D2 R' D' B U2 B2 D' F' D' R2

I wish I had more time to continue this session.. Unfortunatly family matter come first now.. I can not even updat signature. (Btw, these 22 solve mean average is 18.68... meaning I am on fire..)

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Whoa! Nice.

On the other hand last week I've broken few times my pb but now it's only 19.14.

mafergut said:

You beat my PB Ao5 by almost half a second now! Congratulations!

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and mine by more than 2 seconds

Wow Marecel, where is your limit?

mafergut, I often get the feeling that I'm not improving and I can be 2 or 3 months without breaking any of my 3x3x3 PBs (mostly because I usually don't do big averages) but every time I check times from 6 months ago or a year ago, I'm faster by a visible margin so I have stopped worrying about PBs. And if you really feel bad about your lack of improvement just switch to another category and get back later (peacking of witch I finally broke the 2:50 barrier on 5x5, next stop 2:45)

mark49152 said:

First attempt at a CN ao12 - 34.55 with best 29.53. I went for any cross except white or yellow. Cross, OLL and PLL were all pretty easy, only F2L was hard. I found myself doing what you said, systematically finding a corner then an edge. I had to do it that way because I was picking out my cross colour first. I wasn't doing any of it by looking ahead though, it was all pause-and-search. I'm still not sure it's the same skill as look ahead, as in regular solves (when look ahead is working! ) I don't search systematically but just "see" the pairs emerge as the cube is moving. But it was fun anyway and I might do it again.

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I'm pretty sure that I also have corner bias in spotting pairs. I know which edges do not contain my cross colour/top colour but I prefer to track/spot corners first. Doing anything other than white/yellow does have a tendency to make me turn slowly and look ahead.

80-90% of my solves are probably a white/yellow cross but my fastest official solve was a green cross... https://youtu.be/nCcG3J954sE?t=163

I'm only CN for Pyra, 2x2 and CFOP on 3x3. I stick to white/yellow for methods with EO steps (Petrus, Roux, ZZ). I very occasionally do yellow cross when doing Yau on 4x4 but on the 5x5 I do white cross. Oh yes... and zero inspection solves on 3x3, I do white cross.

MarcelP said:

Whoohoo.. broke my Ao5 PB.. 15.58

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Nice, congrats!

mafergut said:

The not so good part of seeing others improve is that I'm not improving at all lately. It looks more like I'm getting worse.

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Don't worry, it will get better again. We all experience bad times after good times.

h2f said:

Whoa! Nice.

On the other hand last week I've broken few times my pb but now it's only 19.14.

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Yes, but you are improving allright. Not so very long ago you where sup 30..

moralsh said:

and mine by more than 2 seconds

Wow Marecel, where is your limit?

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I do not know, but it will not be a whole lot faster.

MarcelP said:

Whoohoo.. broke my Ao5 PB.. 15.58

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Awesome, nice one Marcel . That's a really consistent run of fast times. I don't think I've ever done six 15/16s in a row. There's always a crappy one in there.

Logiqx said:

I'm pretty sure that I also have corner bias in spotting pairs.

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Yeah I have read about corner bias before, and to be honest, I don't know what I do. I still feel like I just "see" the pair, as a pattern rather than one piece before the other. The exception would be where one or both pieces are in a slot, in which case I would see one first and search for the other, but of course it could be either corner or edge. There's a bit of Heisenberg in it - as soon as I try to think about how I'm doing it, I do it differently, so I'll never know

moralsh said:

On 5x5x5 practice I think I've found a wall, five sub 2:54 but sup 2:50 today, I'll be happy next week with a sub 3, getting 2:30 doesn't seem likely at all ...... I finally broke the 2:50 barrier on 5x5, next stop 2:45

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Logiqx said:

I also plan to make my 5x5 debut just to register a couple of singles.

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Great to see some interest in 5x5. A couple of days ago I had my first sub-2:30 so my dreams of making the cut and getting an average are still alive! It was 2:26, I've had a couple of other 2.3x solves too, and several 2.4x's. Generally though, I'm finding it very hard to improve my averages and I'd need a lot of luck and great form on the day to make cut at UKC.

Here's something really cool. I was thinking tonight about my 4BLD fail at Cuthberts' a week ago, and how a lot of the memo was still in my head. So I got the competition scramble, and without inspecting the cube, except to check the scramble and make sure I had the right orientation, I tried to solve it blindfold again relying on memory from the comp. Holy crap! Success! Can you believe that! And I even fixed the mistake (missing K) that failed me in the comp. It's amazing how effective letter pairs and images are at sticking in your head. I often find myself driving to the office and thinking about nuns with guns in the bathroom or something and chuckling how I remember that solve

mark49152 said:

I often find myself driving to the office and thinking about nuns with guns in the bathroom or something and chuckling how I remember that solve

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LOL.. those are pretty vivid images.

MarcelP said:

Yes, but you are improving allright. Not so very long ago you where sup 30..

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Slowly, slowly....

moralsh said:

mafergut, I often get the feeling that I'm not improving and I can be 2 or 3 months without breaking any of my 3x3x3 PBs (mostly because I usually don't do big averages) but every time I check times from 6 months ago or a year ago, I'm faster by a visible margin so I have stopped worrying about PBs. And if you really feel bad about your lack of improvement just switch to another category and get back later (peacking of witch I finally broke the 2:50 barrier on 5x5, next stop 2:45)

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Yeah, I have suffered plateaus before but this is more like a step back and then a plateau. I am already following your advice and stop focusing that much on 3x3 and try other events, where I have a lot of room for improvement. I am terribly bad at big cubes so some weeks ago I learned Yau and I'm going to do some 4x4 solves today. Let's see if I can get sub-2 in a month or so (yes, I'm that bad at 4x4).

EDIT: Wow. I had never done more than 3 or 4 solves of 4x4 in a row. No more than 20-30 in total but I didn't know I was THAT bad:

Generated By csTimer on 2015-10-4
avg of 12: 3:21.13

Time List:
3:35.58, (2:41.42), 3:21.23, 3:30.92, 2:59.13, 4:10.75, (4:33.64), 2:54.45, 3:20.12, 3:22.51, 2:57.18, 3:19.41

The worst thing of this Ao12 is that the 2:41.42 is actually my PB single

mafergut said:

I am terribly bad at big cubes so some weeks ago I learned Yau and I'm going to do some 4x4 solves today. Let's see if I can get sub-2 in a month or so (yes, I'm that bad at 4x4).

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One thing you can practice while you're doing the 3x3 stage on big cubes is look ahead. The big cubes already reduce your turning speed so you don't have to focus on turning slower and it's easier to reduce the pauses.

Yes, you are right, I will definitely get the time with 4x4 to practice that.

It was going to be EDIT2 in my original post but, right after that Ao12 and even though I almost spoil it trying to do a 1L OLL (of the ones I still don't have well re-muscle-memorized on big cubes) and having PLL parity after that... solve 13 was a new PB

13. 2:24.20 Rw2 Uw2 F U' R' Fw' F2 R Uw2 R2 L2 B' Rw' U Fw F' Uw2 Fw' L U' L D2 B2 F' R2 Fw Uw2 Fw2 Uw2 B2 R' Uw B' Fw F' Rw Fw' U2 D L2

Now I only have to shave off 30 more secs to get to my sub-2 target in the next month. I think I can manage to do that. Having a clear objective will help me focus on that and forget about my 3x3 frustration. Do you think it's feasible? Not sure about 4x4 PBs for people more or less my speed at 3x3 that actually have practiced big cubes.

Of course I mean sub-2 average, as I assume that a lucky single is just a matter of time (without the OLL mishap and the PLL parity this would have been already close to 2 minutes).

Sunday Single 7x7 in 7:42. Not a great solve for me but such is life sometimes.

Hello fellow older-folk,

I've started learning 4BLD, so I thought I'd post on here. I've decided (even though I'm sure everyone will tell me it's a bad idea) to go with an OP-style method I found here, at least for centres. I started reading about it on a plane trip today, and by the end of the flight I could pretty reliably do the memo (centres only, so far). The execution I was still making way too many mistakes on.

I still use OP for 3BLD and am much more interested in just getting some successes than being fast.

bubbagrub said:

Hello fellow older-folk,

I've started learning 4BLD, so I thought I'd post on here. I've decided (even though I'm sure everyone will tell me it's a bad idea) to go with an OP-style method I found here, at least for centres. I started reading about it on a plane trip today, and by the end of the flight I could pretty reliably do the memo (centres only, so far). The execution I was still making way too many mistakes on.

I still use OP for 3BLD and am much more interested in just getting some successes than being fast.

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I'm a medium advanced blinder and I do not recommend this method. It seems easy, but you need around 900 moves to solve the cube. The other easy method is U2 (centers)/r2(wings)/OP (corners) and with that combination you need a half of it to solve the cube. In blind events one wrong move casuses dnf of the solve. I know 2 speedcubers who did official solve with the method you mentioned. U2 for centers is much better - you need 3 or 4 moves for setup and only 1 move for switching pieces - it looks better than 14 moves fat Tperm. In U2 you have to learn only 3 extra alg for special cases (1 for bottom and 2 for top). It's not hard. The same situation is with wings, which you can solve with r2 and the r2 is R2 from 3bld.

If you dont know learn r2 (R2), you can solve wings with alg from the tutorial you mentioned, but U2 for centers is much better than fat Tperm.

This is only my opinion but I think U2/r2/OP is easier although you have to learn few more algs. Feel free about it.

OK -- I should read up on U2/r2... Thanks!

bubbagrub said:

OK -- I should read up on U2/r2... Thanks!

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I've learned from Noah Arturs' tutorial.

Here is about memorization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtuYHE2H3ig&index=24&list=PLJ1BFt1hZm2pocY5NpX-Kc5JABQ_jsaSh.

And here is about U2 and r2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcfpxhfA5jQ&index=25&list=PLJ1BFt1hZm2pocY5NpX-Kc5JABQ_jsaSh

bubbagrub said:

Hello fellow older-folk,

I've started learning 4BLD, so I thought I'd post on here. I've decided (even though I'm sure everyone will tell me it's a bad idea) to go with an OP-style method I found here, at least for centres. I started reading about it on a plane trip today, and by the end of the flight I could pretty reliably do the memo (centres only, so far). The execution I was still making way too many mistakes on.

I still use OP for 3BLD and am much more interested in just getting some successes than being fast.

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I had all my 4bld successes with that method,