Older cubers discussions

[Selkie]

@Shaky Hands, @mark49152 , @newtonbase - Awesome results guys. I've already Fb messaged Andy to congratulate him on the 4x4 average earlier when I spotted it. It seems commonplace for the wrinklies to make average cut by <1 second now. I have to confess I did not see @mark49152 4BLD time till now and am in awe of the time and the fact that an old timer is competing in time nationally, age withstanding. @newtonbase , a great consistent Pyra average there. Lots and lots of PBs and will be watching tomorrows results with great interest.

Just placed a couple of orders, one at Marty's store and one with Cubicle to include the following:-

Qiyi Wuji 7x7 Stickerless
Qiyi X-Man Design Tornado Stickerless (Another main duplicate to try a couple of mods on)
MoYu WeiShi 6x6 Stickerless
Qiyi X-Man Bell Magnetic Pyraminx
Cubicle Qiyi Valk-3 M

Though I cannot wait to try the Wuji, for me the Valk M is my most eagerly awaited delivery!

 

[pglewis]

I've nearly landed a 3-bld success today, I should be timing just to see how ridiculously long it takes just in case I stumble into one. I missed one with forgotten parity, another off by a pair of edges, and a third that would have been good but I blanked out on the last three corners. I opted to stop and check so I'd at least know if I was good to that point and, yup (bicycle, forgot the next was BICYCLE!). It has been at the expense of all my other practice list items but it was hard not to push ahead since I've had momentum.

No real sticking points so far, besides a glacial-paced memo. All my common issues are n00b related-- tracking solved/unsolved pieces, remembering where the current cycle started, knowing when I'm actually done, words for letter pairs-- all remedied with practice. I'm a bit shocked, I'd braced myself for it to possibly take weeks or months to get to this point.

 

[newtonbase]

Day 1 of Manchester was mixed but with a decent haul of PBs.
Missed sub 2mins in 4x4 as I tried a new variant in Hoya that I'd told myself to save for 5x5.
Missed my OH PB by 0.06s in 1 solve then equalled PB in the next solve. A rage quit in the last solve after yet another PLL error probably cost me a quicker average..
Improved in skewb having relearned it at the comp. My only timed solves are all official.
I'd entered 6x6 in error but @shakyhands lent me his Yuxin so I tried to beat the 10min hard cut. Decided to do Hoya but started with yellow and white centres for some reason so did full reduction. I hit OLL sub 9 mins but got a pop during parity that I couldn't fix and had to give the puzzle back in bits. Sorry Andy.
Well done to @mark49152 on his 4BLD silver and to @shakyhands on multiple PBs including a 4x4 average with a great reaction on solve 1.
Looking forward to day 2.

 

[Jason Green]

@Selkie I'll be anxious to see what you think of the Valk M, it's just what to me!

 

[h2f]

@mark49152 @newtonbase @Shaky Hands, congrats new pbs! And Mark - your 4bld is very impressive to me.

I have mixed feelings about yesterday's comp. First comp in the town where I grown up and I work. In 2x2 just bad solves but stopped to practice. Pb in pyra, Pb in OH but couldnt cross cutoffs. (I knew in pyra it would be hard but in OH was very close). In 3bld 3dnfs which happen to me. First solve was 1:06 [~22] and I'm happy with it though I didnt undo setup before last 2 3cycles and parity. In the second I didnt push and finished with 2 flipped edges (memo mistake). Third was a mess - scramble was bad and I didnt notice parity till corners. In 3bld my feelings is that sometimes it jus happens to me. I'm disappointed though I know there's constatnly sub1 on the horizon. Next comp in March.

In 3x3 new Pb - it would be better but I messed in last 2 solves. And in 4x4 I've advanced to 2nd round (first time) but next they cancelled the round due to schedule.

 

[mark49152]

I have to confess I did not see @mark49152 4BLD time till now and am in awe of the time and the fact that an old timer is competing in time nationally, age withstanding.

I just need to shave off another 2 minutes and I'll be up there with Callum and Matt .

Quick report: first attempt started well but on centres memo I got completely lost. After 5 mins I still couldn't get the targets to add up. It was frustrating me so I decided to stop memo and execute anyway, to help me warm up and calm down even though I knew it would be DNF. Second attempt success. Third attempt was also going well, could even have been a little faster, but while executing centres I realised I hit the same target twice. Executed to the end in the hope I'd recall my mistake and could go back and fix it, but nope, and there were other mistakes anyway. Scrambles were good and I felt on form so it was a good day. Many thanks @newtonbase for judging.

Cheers to all, and good luck to everyone competing today.

@pglewis: Yes it's just practice and it's a great feeling when you get that first success. I remember pulling up the blindfold and thinking "no way!"

@h2f: Bad luck on the DNFs, but your times are great. Fast DNF is better than slow success

 

[muchacho]

Congrats all!

PB on OH, Ao5: 25.361
I'm improving but only because of F2B, I have not learned more CMLL algs. Maybe that will be the last PB in many weeks, I've decided I'll try CP with last slot, I think I can "master" it sooner and will be less boring than learning algs (and easier to retain if I practice less OH in the future), and maybe I can get good enough times with it.

Spoiler

3282 15-ene-2017 11:11:14 00:25.920 F2 R2 U' R2 F2 D' B2 D' U' L2 B2 L B2 D L2 B' D2 F U' R' U2
3281 15-ene-2017 11:10:05 00:31.532 L2 D' F2 D2 F2 R2 D U2 R2 F2 U B' L U F2 R' U2 B L B R2 D2
3280 15-ene-2017 11:09:14 00:23.086 F2 R2 D' R2 F2 D2 L2 F2 U B2 U2 B L B' F' R' F' D2 U' L B'
3279 15-ene-2017 11:08:28 00:22.422 L2 B2 D2 F2 L2 D' B2 L2 B2 U' F2 L U F R F2 R2 L' D2 L2 F' U2
3278 15-ene-2017 11:07:41 00:27.077 F2 R2 U' L2 U' B2 U R2 L2 F2 U B D B2 L U' F' D' L' B L2 D

@h2f that's a 1 year delay 4x4BLD?

 

[h2f]

@h2f that's a 1 year delay 4x4BLD?

Yes. I've failed becasue during November I missed one word for edges. I wasnt sure if there' was that word and couldnt figure out where. It made me 3 edges off. I'm quite glad with it because I thought my edges memo in the middle is wrong - in fact whole memo was correct. I'll redo the scramble and the solution in the evening today. Of course without memo.

 

[mafergut]

Very nice comp results everybody!!! You are already veterans in competition with several experiencies. Does that reduce the comp nerves? Still not planning to attend one this year myself

 

[h2f]

You are already veterans in competition with several experiencies. Does that reduce the comp nerves? Still not planning to attend one this year myself

It pays off a lot even if one DNFs 3 times in 3bld. I'm planning to be at 10 competitions this year and it looks like 9 are on the horizion: 6 as GLS (Gdańsk's League of Speedcubing), Polish Nationals or Polish Open, FMC Europe. Possible comps: Kaliska and Gniezno. So it looks like busy year and many opportunities to get a good result in 3bld.

 

[mark49152]

It pays off a lot even if one DNFs 3 times in 3bld.

Well, my fortunes were the opposite today. Three DNFs, and they were slow, all 1:30-40 even without long pauses. I just was not on form at all! Next time

 

[mafergut]

I just watched a recent unboxing from @SpeedCubeReview with a "new WuQue" and he says it's much better than the other one he had. Just watching the video you can see that it's much faster than the one I have. Itt's stickerless, as mine, but with blue internals (mine has white internals). It doesn't look to come much looser than mine out of the box. I'm starting to think that I got one of the bad ones but, to be honest, I don't want to buy another one explicitly to SpeedCubeShop to make sure I get one of those.

 

[newtonbase]

Just home from day 2 of Manchester. This morning was poor with bad results in Clock (lack of practice), 5x5 (stupid mistakes) and 3x3 (dunno, just rubbish). Fortunately my brain kicked in just before 3BLD and I got 2:45, DNF (2:39 with a twisted corner) and 2:39. Not that fast but PBs and just a twisted corner away from the only average in the competition. Moved up one place in the rankings which cancels out the place I didn't know I'd dropped when a sneaky Brit competed in the USA last month.
Overall it was a well organised and enjoyable comp. Well done again to @mark49152 on his 4BLD and to @shakyhands on his plethora of PBs (13/18) and a place in the Clock final,and thanks for the generous gift.

 

[pglewis]

In 3x3 new Pb - it would be better but I messed in last 2 solves.

Dang that counting 21 but great job on the sub 19 average nonetheless.

Very nice comp results everybody!!! You are already veterans in competition with several experiencies. Does that reduce the comp nerves? Still not planning to attend one this year myself

What's keeping you from going to a comp? We need you representing the grey-hairs!

Fortunately my brain kicked in just before 3BLD and I got 2:45, DNF (2:39 with a twisted corner) and 2:39. Not that fast but PBs and just a twisted corner away from the only average in the competition.

Nearly a major coup there. Congrats also on a half-dozen PBs, plus @Shaky Hands showing the injury didn't seem to affect his comp results.

@pglewis: Yes it's just practice and it's a great feeling when you get that first success. I remember pulling up the blindfold and thinking "no way!"

Got that first one, 13:40, probably about ten mins of which was memo (I had splits setup in csTimer but forgot). Memo will improve with confidence and especially once I get some standard words for letter pairs... a lot of time burned coming up with words on the fly that wouldn't end up too ambiguous. My excitement was tempered a little bit by expectation; I'd already done it with training wheels on to make sure there weren't any lingering issues with mechanics/execution and I'd already had some near misses on full blind attempts. Still, it was worth a vigorous fist pump and a 'yes!' when I saw it. Wasn't exactly sure when I'd land that first one, only being able to make a few attempts in an hour. First one's the hardest.

 

[Dom]

I just watched a recent unboxing from @SpeedCubeReview with a "new WuQue" and he says it's much better than the other one he had. Just watching the video you can see that it's much faster than the one I have. Itt's stickerless, as mine, but with blue internals (mine has white internals). It doesn't look to come much looser than mine out of the box. I'm starting to think that I got one of the bad ones but, to be honest, I don't want to buy another one explicitly to SpeedCubeShop to make sure I get one of those.

The only way you can tell if you got a bad batch is to take it apart and inspect all the pieces. But I'm pretty sure that since he got his directly from QiYi as soon as it was released that it probably has mold defects.
However, I do believe that the blue plastic is maybe softer than the white and thats the main reason it's faster.
I got mine from Speedcubeshop and I got yellow internals. It's awesome!

 

[muchacho]

Soon I'll be the only old one that can't do BLD.

 

[Logiqx]

@Shaky Hands, @mark49152 , @newtonbase - good work guys!

I've had a busy weekend so I've only been able to check your results in the evenings.

Not much news from this end but I'm still plugging away at Skewb... Ao12 10.24, Ao50 12.22

 

[mark49152]

Great to catch up with @newtonbase and @Shaky Hands again this weekend. Congrats to all who competed and got what they wanted; commiserations to anyone disappointed.

I watched my 3BLD videos back, and my memo was consistently 43-44 seconds. Very disappointing given that I'm 25-30 at home and that I've put a lot of work into pushing memo. So memo will continue to be my focus for practice, and I might have to change how I train it. I won't be learning any new comms or execution tricks until I get my memo down to consistently sub-20 at home.

Here's my 4BLD...

 

[Shaky Hands]

Very nice comp results everybody!!! You are already veterans in competition with several experiencies. Does that reduce the comp nerves? Still not planning to attend one this year myself

More experience probably leads to less nerves. I'm more nervous in the events I care about and have a chance of doing well at. There's several events I enter just because I can solve them but am never going to be competitive at.

Just home from day 2 of Manchester. This morning was poor with bad results in Clock (lack of practice), 5x5 (stupid mistakes) and 3x3 (dunno, just rubbish). Fortunately my brain kicked in just before 3BLD and I got 2:45, DNF (2:39 with a twisted corner) and 2:39. Not that fast but PBs and just a twisted corner away from the only average in the competition. Moved up one place in the rankings which cancels out the place I didn't know I'd dropped when a sneaky Brit competed in the USA last month.
Overall it was a well organised and enjoyable comp. Well done again to @mark49152 on his 4BLD and to @shakyhands on his plethora of PBs (13/18) and a place in the Clock final,and thanks for the generous gift.

You did great with 3BLD Mark with 2 PB-level solves and, as you say, nearly a mean too. You're welcome to the gift. It was best going to someone that would make use of it.

Nearly a major coup there. Congrats also on a half-dozen PBs, plus @Shaky Hands showing the injury didn't seem to affect his comp results.
st.

Arm injury was fine for the most part, other than during 5x5 where it freaked out on me. More below.

@Shaky Hands, @mark49152 , @newtonbase - good work guys!

Cheers Mike.

...

So then, the usual post-comp report.

Saturday

• 2x2 - I didn't have the time to re-learn Ortega so just solved using LBL and managed PB single and average regardless, not that my times are in any way impressive. Rob Yau was judging one of my solves and pointed out a way I could have shaved a load of time off that particular solve. 2x2 is far from a learning priority for me, but it can be fascinating watch people that are fast at it.
• Pyraminx - My 2nd comp entering this. Another PB single and average combo, despite only relearning how to solve this on the day of the comp after not solving it at all since the Birmingham comp.
• 4x4 - With most of my practice having been on 5x5 and 6x6, I didn't start putting in any practice time on 4x4 until a couple of nights before the comp. I felt I had about a 50% chance of recording an average for this and was pleasantly surprised to beat the 1:30 cut with a 1:29:56 solve in the first scramble. I did a trademark jump out of the seat admittedly unable to contain my excitement (a shame @bubbagrub wasn't there to chuckle at me although it wasn't as loud as when I got the PB single on 3x3 at Guildford last year.) A couple of solves later I bettered this with a 1:24.45 (somehow just at the time that the Sun started blazing in my eyes) and finished it off with a 5th solve with my new official PB single of 1:21.18. Very happy to have got an average here on my 10th competition attempting to do so.
• 3x3 OH - Probably used the table more in this comp than in previous ones. I can do very few Last Layer algs with OH so as none of them came up for me it was a case of 5 solves using 4LLL. No PB's here for me.
• Skewb - First comp attempt. Surprised myself to start off with two 15.x solves, so an easy PB single and average combo for me here. Just using the very basic method. I have the stickerless magnetic Moyu but used a stickered non-magnetic Moyu as I just prefer the way it turns at the moment.
• 6x6 - This was an event that I considered a dead-certainty PB single for me if I could just avoid getting a pop. So what happened? I got a pop! But it was fixable and I got a PB anyway, with an improvement of 50 seconds to 5:49.15. Without the pop, I'd have been about 20-25 seconds faster. Happy with this and I think reaching the average cut of 5m is achievable for me in 2017.
• 7x7 - I haven't put as much practice into this as I did for 5x5 and 6x6 but still managed a 55 second improvement, down to 8:17.31. I could have done better here as there were a couple of times I wasted moves to give myself a case that I was more confident with, just to prevent messing up work I'd already done. Happy anyway.

Sunday

• Clock round 1 - PB average of 18.04. Consistency worked the magic for me.
• 5x5 - Shortly before this round I was remarking that solving Clock seems to use different muscles to solving cubes and indeed, my arm injury was feeling it. I went on to have a dismal performance in 5x5, with me literally exclaiming out loud in pain during my first solve's last layer and needing to walk it off. Took a break, came back for the second solve. The solve wasn't going well and I quit it when I realised I wasn't going to get a PB single. Disappointing really as I've done stacks of 5x5 practice lately and even got a sub-cut time earlier in the day. Just not meant to be this comp.
• 3x3 - PB average improved by about 1 second to 25.88 (27.07, 27.19, 23.37, 23.06, 28.74.) Still a bit above my averages at home but decent enough. I didn't make it through to round 2, although I have in some past comps with worse averages.
• 3x3 BLD - I forced myself to get a success before bed on the Saturday night but haven't been putting any regular BLD practice in. I got some Edge-only and Corners-only successes on the day of the event, but not in the comp itself. 1st solve seemed an easy scramble for my orientation (F: Green; U: Yellow.) Will be interested to see if @mark49152 concurs when the scramble is published. 2nd solve I had to rush the memo to try to get done within the time remaining. No successes. Another time.
• Clock Final - I hadn't even realised there was more than 1 round of Clock, so was happy to get into my first ever competition Final. I improved my PB single to 15.14 in the first solve but messing up the 3rd and 5th solves cost me the chance to improve my average from round 1. I had several 12.x solves when practicing for the Final, so I think I have the potential to continue to improve on my Clock results in the future.

All in all, a great comp. Lots of fun. Great to see @newtonbase and @mark49152 and hopefully I'll make it to the next UK comp as well (registered already but trying to get out of work for the weekend.)

 

[pglewis]

1st solve seemed an easy scramble for my orientation (F: Green; U: Yellow.)

As an aside, looks like I chose the same orientation you and @mark49152 use. The only "logic" behind it for me was that I solve white first sighted and green in front is just a z2 away from WCA scramble. Great comp report.