I gave up speedcubing 5 years ago. Now I'm back and I need your help.

6. Practise one event and become a beast in it. Practising everything just for satisfaction is a waste of time. I mean, really.. if you will practise everything you will accomplish nothing. Feliks is the exception ;)

Man, I don't want to be rude but Lucas's only achievement was 5x5 CR which stood like 2 weeks. And Rob's was 4x4 CR 6 years ago. Yu is maybe the other exception.

You're right. The only practice I had that was worth something is the time I got Skewb WR Average!
 
Thank you every one for your kind replies.
I read all your answers and I'm going to use this thread a source to a lot of things I'm going to do.
I tried to solve the cube, I could do the F2L slowly, and couldn't even remember the PLL and 2L OLL :( but I'm going to learn them gradually.
Thanks for the Alg pages and all the resources.
I got every answer I needed and I'm shocked!!
It's very strange to me that the reduction method is not popular on 4x4 any more!
people are learning 1LLL? wtf?!! I wish I had never gave up :( I don't even know how I memorized PLLs! I think I was younger and had more energy :D (was 19 at that time haha) :P
I checked the records page and all the top100 are sub erik 7.08 lol ! I always thought the magic should be removed.
There are A LOT of cubes!!!! maybe it's the good new cubes that helped a lot of people getting to sub10 avg easier. why are they all having Asian names? lol ! I think I have to see a lot of cube reviews which is the part I hate :|
 
There are A LOT of cubes!!!! maybe it's the good new cubes that helped a lot of people getting to sub10 avg easier. why are they all having Asian names? lol ! I think I have to see a lot of cube reviews which is the part I hate :|

There are a lot of cubes. Why the Asian names? Because they were made in China... The names all mean something in Chinese

that's what I was thinking about :D does anyone else agree?

Yep... If I had the money
 
It's very strange to me that the reduction method is not popular on 4x4 any more!
Well, both Hoya and Yau are a form of reduction really.

The only method which is not a reduction method which has gained any popularily is K4 so you may want to look that up as it's and interesting method.
people are learning 1LLL? wtf?!! I wish I had never gave up :( I don't even know how I memorized PLLs!

TBH it's only bindedsa who is learning it (and most people still have the same reaction as you when they hear about him) and I think he's over a quarter of the way through.

There are quite a few people learning full ZBLL tho which I still think is too much :p
 
Hi, OP!

One week ago, I was exactly in your shoes. When I was younger, around 13-14, I was hooked, and got as fast as ~18 averages. Haven't cubed since 2008-ish. I left a cube at my office desk, and a few people asked me to demonstrate. After a little bit of practice, I could get to frequent sub-20s again, and just like that I'm hooked again. I think in the last week, I dropped maybe around ~$70 on cubes already...

Let me give you a summary of how I felt coming back. Firstly, I'm assuming you're interested in hardware. When I was at my prime, Cube4You was leading with some of their new Type A-D, and DIY's were just starting to fall off. These days, all of the main manufacturers are Chinese and seem to have comparable competitive "flagship" cubes, and even some of the slightly cheaper ones compete. From what I've seen in the community, here's kind of a "Tier List" I've made, and maybe some popular cubers that use them. I think a lot of what's in Tier S/A are debatable and are personal preference, so I weighted them by popularity/release date.
-------------------Tier List-------------------
3X3
*Newer cube, so tier placement may be up for debate
Tier S - Gans 356 (Feliks Zemdegs), Aolong V2 (very popular community choice)
Tier A - Thunderclap*, Congs Meiying*, Hualong, Weilong, Yuxin 3X3 (Collin Burns), Tanglong (Saw Collin and Kennan Lejeune testing solves on it recently)
Tier B - Gans 357, Aolong V1, Fangshi Guangying, Dayan Zhanchi (one of the most popular but older cubes), Congs Yueying, YJ Yulong

Bigger cubes are a little bit more clearcut with less choices:
4X4 - Moyu Aosu, Yuxin 4X4, Cyclone Boys, Shengshou
5X5 - Yuxin, Huachuang are the clear leaders, and other popular choices are Cyclone Boys, Shengshou, Aochuang
-----------------------------------------------

It's amazing to see all the rising talents in the competitive scene. When I started, big names were Andrew Kang, Yu Nakajima, Harris Chan, Chris Hardwick, Jason Baum, and slightly before them with Leyan Lo, Toby Mao, Dan Harris, Macky, and so many others. The fact that <7 averages are frequent just blows my mind. CFOP still seems to be the leading competitive solving method, although a few cubers have gotten quite low with ZZ/Roux. However, these days, the best cubers supplement CFOP with X-Cross, ZBLL, Winter Variation, COLL, VLS, ELL, and other various algs and sets to cut down times and cases. Going through example solves of people like Feliks, Collin Burns, Kennan Lejeune, they all seem to incorporate various algs from these techniques/sets.

Lastly, I want to say, holy crap Feliks is inhuman. I can't believe I'm witnessing someone who is near-genius level in terms of comprehending how to approach speedcubing as a science. This guy is like the Michael Phelps of cubing, he can go into any major competition with the chance of breaking a WR in any major category. The guy has what I think is the best combination of pure mechanics (turn speed, finger tricks) and solving efficiency (color neutrality, x-cross, LL recognition, etc.). I've learned a lot about what is seperates him and others in the last week from his channel and his blog, so maybe that's something you want to check out.

Anyway, it's great to have you back! I'm super excited to be involved in this scene again, it's absolutely fascinating how far the speedsolving has come over the years. Cheers!
 
Hi, OP!

One week ago, I was exactly in your shoes....

This was really cool to read. I've only been cubing for 3 and a half years or so (which I guess is a while now), but it's so cool to see how long time cubers feel about its progress. I can hardly imagine how crazy it would be to leave something like cubing and then come back to it to see its insane progress...
 
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