Older cubers discussions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQbdeE8K-LU

Today was my first major timed session doing 3x3 OH and this 53.94s solve was one of the better ones. My mean of 32 solves was 1:11s. OH still feels very awkward for me but it took months just to be able to do more than a few simple turns without my hand cramping up. Cube used was a MoYu Mini WeiLong.

Cool. Nice to see someone else in this thread doing OH practice. :)

Your times will get faster pretty quickly as a result of improvements to your turning.

I also use the Mini WeiLong V2 for OH. It's a really awesome cube of OH!
 
So who is the guy next to you in black? LOL

Magician. :) He's really great guy.

Nice photos! That memo is fast. Any tips?

I think - nothing but practice. I try to make 30 minutes practice session every day. I dont really know how I dropped my times down. Once memo was around 4-5 minutes and after few months it was around 1:30 -2:00. Next, around 1 minute. I did few practice sessions for corners only - memorize last, execute first - so I figure out it will help.

I think maybe mbld helps a lot. When you memorize few cubes (5, 7 or 9) in the same time, some letter pairs and words become more natural and you must figure out nice images for hard letter pairs. For example in Polish it is hard to make good word for OI, OU, UO... etc. so I had to change it into strange words and images which are not obvious. And your mind during mblds gets used to natural flow to memorize (it is hard for me to translate what i think about it). But I'm not advanced blinder so maybe I'm wrong.

And I agree - memo time is a first stage you can drop down to drop your whole time down.
 
I'm finally back home after my 3 day Spanish nationals in Granada, a rally nice experience.

It's been a good enough comp for me, here's what I did:

Day 1:

Little, I did a 6x6 solve after not touching a 6x6 or 7x7 for 5-6 months hoping to avoid OLL parity as I have it completely mechanized on 4x4 and I was afraid I was going to fail it. No luck, I found it and fortunately I solved it doing the parity I use on 5x5 for swapped wings, it was a 7:25, slow but good for me.

I also tried a 5 multi attempt and it was horrible, only 1 cube solved, back to school for MultiBLD before I compete again.

Skewb: good single (11.15), bad average (19.53). That was it for the day

Day 2:

Very busy day, with overall bad results, let's see

FMC: First and second of the 3 DNFs, promising starts that led to nowhere
2x2: 8.62 average with 7.00 single, bad but good enough to make it to the second round later that day which was quite similar (8.65 Avg, 6.72 single)
3x3 Blind: I did an extra memo attempt to be sure, it was 2:35 which would have not been enough to make it to the finals, I then did an 1:50.21 (with a ten second pause) which is my new official PB, and tried to get the mean but failed because I forgot to orient 2 corners with a double sune.
3x3OH: disastrous, I was doing sub 40 averages after lunch and I ended doing a 53 Avg, I nearly missed the 1 minute cut off. no look ahead and botched LL
5x5: my other bad attempt of the day, I bested my PB with a 3:03, but I had hoped for a sub 2:50 so I wasn't happy
4x4Blind: Bad first attempt, not even close
3x3x3: spent all the round looking for my look ahead with no luck, 25 average with a 22 single, Eww

Day 3:

A good day
Started early with 4x4 first round, a 1:30 cut off that I passed with a 1:26 single but a poor average (1:31). Later that day, I got better singles (two 1:13) and better average (1:23) on the second round, I'm happy with those.
3x3 OH second round: 47 average with a 42 single, my poorest event in the nationals, I was hopping to break PBs by a lot and didn't even get close.
4x4 Blind: Good safe memo, did centers ok, but messed it up during edges execution.
3x3 Second round: A good average (20.40) in which my worst solve was a 21.36 and an awesome 15.33 full step single which I'll try to reconstruct when I get the scramble, sub 10 F2L and my average Last layer.

3x3 Blind final: 1:51, followed by a 2:06 in which I did a non existent parity (was off by that), and 2:03 single. Again missed the average by something stupid but I was quite happy with the round nevertheless, placed 8th which was my best result at the comp.

Grzegorz, nice 3BLD and 4BLD singles, I'll re read the thread later today, just in case I've missed anything else,
 
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Cool. Nice to see someone else in this thread doing OH practice. :)

Your times will get faster pretty quickly as a result of improvements to your turning.

I also use the Mini WeiLong V2 for OH. It's a really awesome cube of OH!

Thanks!

Right now the cube rotations are horrible. Do you learn to reduce those over time? I do feel like OH practice is forcing me to be more efficient with my cross and F2L.

So far I've also tried the Mini ShuangRen and AoLong but I like the WeiLong best for OH so far. I'll probably try the ZhanChi next.
 
Thanks!

Right now the cube rotations are horrible. Do you learn to reduce those over time? I do feel like OH practice is forcing me to be more efficient with my cross and F2L.

So far I've also tried the Mini ShuangRen and AoLong but I like the WeiLong best for OH so far. I'll probably try the ZhanChi next.

I think we have a very similar OH style. I just seem to have practiced a bit more and, it's true, your times will get faster as soon as you gain dexterity and strength in your left hand.
I just was inspired by you and decided to record some solves. At the end of the session I got what could be considered my PB Ao5 if you are a bit generous with my 4th solve which should probably be a DNF or at least a +2. With the +2 it still would be my PB Ao5.

I will cut these 5 solves (4, in fact as there is another DNF in between), edit the video and upload it as soon as I can for all of you to criticise (and have a good laugh with the DNF and most of the PLLs' 2-3 last moves, where I see the time is decent, try to push it and fail miserably every time. The 1st solve should have been easy a 35 or so. I'm sure, without cam it would have been sub-40, which would have been great for me at this stage.

Here is the Ao5:

Generated By csTimer on 2015-10-12
avg of 5: 40.58

Time List:
1. 39.89 R2 U' F2 D' L2 U2 R2 F2 L2 R' B' L F2 D R2 U R' U L2
2. 39.86 R2 B' F2 U2 R2 U2 L2 B2 D2 B' U2 R D' F U L2 U R' D B
3. (DNF(13.80)) D2 B2 D R2 D2 L2 B2 D' B2 D2 U' R' D' B2 D R2 F' L U R2 F'
4. (39.49) U2 L2 F U2 F L2 U2 B2 D2 U F L U' L2 U2 L2 B F2 U
5. 42.00 U2 F2 L2 U L2 F2 L2 D2 B2 U' B L' B D' L R F' U B2 L'
 
Right now the cube rotations are horrible. Do you learn to reduce those over time? I do feel like OH practice is forcing me to be more efficient with my cross and F2L.

You'll naturally start to do things which suit OH solves. I'm assuming you can already recognise "good/bad" edges based on their stickers. Use of empty slots and 2-gen solutions can avoid unnecessary rotations (i.e. solving an F2L pair with a "good" edge without any rotations).

I found that it took me a while to get used to OH solving and I needed to watch what I was doing until I developed muscle memory for the F2L cases. Once you don't have to think about what you are doing for each pair you'll find the extra time during OH solves gives you better look-ahead. That will enable you to select the "best" F2L pair and postpone any rotations until later, hopefully meaning you'll do less of them during the solve.

Edit: Planning the cross is even more critical during OH. Move optimal solutions may be slower than longer but more ergonomic solutions. :)
 
You'll naturally start to do things which suit OH solves. I'm assuming you can already recognise "good/bad" edges based on their stickers. Use of empty slots and 2-gen solutions can avoid unnecessary rotations (i.e. solving an F2L pair with a "good" edge without any rotations).

I found that it took me a while to get used to OH solving and I needed to watch what I was doing until I developed muscle memory for the F2L cases. Once you don't have to think about what you are doing for each pair you'll find the extra time during OH solves gives you better look-ahead. That will enable you to select the "best" F2L pair and postpone any rotations until later, hopefully meaning you'll do less of them during the solve.

Edit: Planning the cross is even more critical during OH. Move optimal solutions may be slower than longer but more ergonomic solutions. :)

I need to learn so much in all those areas that you just mentioned...

Well, the video finally went up. Here it is:

 
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I need to learn so much in all those areas that you just mentioned...

OH is fun :)

Timed all my OH PLLs tonight:

You can tell I really hate Fperms :p

Code:
Mean: 3.12

Aa 2.71
Ab 2.54
E 3.72
Ua 1.68
Ub 1.77
Z 2.39
H 3.46
Ja 2.82
Jb 2.88
Ra 3.10
Rb 3.13
F 4.28
T 3.50
Ga 3.42
Gb 3.13
Gc 3.46
Gd 2.96
V 4.07
Na 3.57
Nb 4.03
Y 2.95

And finally the stickerless bright AoFu GT is availible, which means I can get back to 7x7 real soon. (Will get even more stickerless puzzles at the same time, QiYi Pyraminx, YuXin 5x5.)
 
OH is fun :)

Timed all my OH PLLs tonight:

You can tell I really hate Fperms :p

I've never timed mine but I'd say the proportions are similar to yours... yeah, F-perm is nasty!

PLLs put me right off OH. Whenever I've had a go I end up reverting to 2H for anything outside Us and As.

Just go for 2-look PLL if you already know the U's and A. The RU Z-perm is pretty nice to execute and RU H-perm is long but easy to remember. ;)
 
Raul, nice single and nice 3BLD times - congrats!

And I agree - memo time is a first stage you can drop down to drop your whole time down.
A few pages ago in this thread, someone (Raul?) suggested timing just tracing cycles without trying to memo anything. I've done that again since and have come down from about 1:20 to 1:00 with practice. That's still pretty shocking though, being more than half my memo time (~2:00) and I figure that it is perhaps a good thing to practise more. My aim is to trace cycles in 30 secs. That's still 1.5 secs per piece and it seems reasonable to achieve that... doesn't it?
 
A few pages ago in this thread, someone (Raul?) suggested timing just tracing cycles without trying to memo anything. I've done that again since and have come down from about 1:20 to 1:00 with practice. That's still pretty shocking though, being more than half my memo time (~2:00) and I figure that it is perhaps a good thing to practise more. My aim is to trace cycles in 30 secs. That's still 1.5 secs per piece and it seems reasonable to achieve that... doesn't it?

I think you are right - pracitcing edges or corners without memo is a good way to practice blind events. But doing it without memo means you need time to recognize stickers. It takes time and make it a little slower than execution in full blind solve. In blind solve the look forward is very important - when you got it, your solve is fluent and natural and you got better time. For example: I did now some times without memo and they were between 32 and 47 (with some mistakes). With memo I got 31 - first solve, 28 next and 21 - last. The last one had 12 targets. This is beceasue i didnt had to recognize stickers. Just execution.

But now I do the same learing Turbo. I do sighted edges practice to get some experience in it - I wann switch to full comms now with UF as a buffer. Maskow and Jałocha suggested that move and that buffer. So I think it is usefull though it doesnt contains look forward which is similiar to look ahead in normal solve.
 
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Yes Mark, I think it was me who said that. the piece-letter-next piece cycle has to be very fast and very precise, the faster your memo is the easier the solve will get.

For me the problem is execution, I can memo sub 50 90-95% of the time and sub 40 half of the times, my execution sucks and my solves end being 1:40-2:15 most of the time, I need to practice a lot, I guess.
 
But doing it without memo means you need time to recognize stickers. It takes time and make it a little slower than execution in full blind solve.
I mean tracing the cycles only, including recognizing stickers. So count targets, count breaks, find new cycles, find flipped, twisted and solved pieces. No memo, no execution.

For me the problem is execution, I can memo sub 50 90-95% of the time and sub 40 half of the times, my execution sucks and my solves end being 1:40-2:15 most of the time, I need to practice a lot, I guess.
Given that it take me a minute just to find all the pieces, I cannot understand how Maskow and Ollie and others finish memo in 8 seconds. You guys are impressive, those guys are amazing :D
 
I mean tracing the cycles only, including recognizing stickers. So count targets, count breaks, find new cycles, find flipped, twisted and solved pieces. No memo, no execution.


Given that it take me a minute just to find all the pieces, I cannot understand how Maskow and Ollie and others finish memo in 8 seconds. You guys are impressive, those guys are amazing :D

Ah, I've misunderstood your post. :)

How to be fast - belive me or not, I know I can do memo under 20 seconds. And I know everyone can do it - it is the same like being sub-20. It's only a matter of practice. At the moment I can be sub 30 with memo after some practice but a year ago my memo was around 3 minutes. I did nothing but solves only solves...
 
I did nothing but solves only solves...
Some people say that works for them, but personally I don't improve unless I'm pushing myself somehow. That applies to all events. On 3x3 if I just solve, I settle into a way of solving and will do 1000s of solves at steady average. To improve, I need to push limits or force myself to try new techniques, which is why I find targeted practice useful.

I'm finding BLD hard because what does "pushing" mean with memo? It's kind of hard to force your memory to work faster. I can pull down the blindfold earlier and skip another review, but at the end of the solve, it's success or fail, and if I ended memo too early I don't learn anything from that. I guess with memory it does just come down to doing it 1000s of times.

When I'm looking for something to push faster during memo, it's definitely the tracing. I can consciously try to trace around the cube as fast as I can, and if I don't, I lapse back to a relaxed pace, which is no good for improvement.
 
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