Older cubers discussions

[newtonbase]

And denied; USPS literally lost the package. Never had that happen before, now the fun of waiting for a claim form, filling it out, returning it, and waiting to be reimbursed.

Unlucky

 

[pglewis]

Unlucky

Meanwhile I just re-ordered, best two out of three?

 

[pglewis]

I did a dozen timed EO+CFOP solves for the first time in a few days, with unlimited inspection time. Sitting close to :50 and should have had a couple sub 40 but I didn't manage a mistake-free solve in the bunch. The main bottleneck currently is planning the orientation fix-up, especially when there are 6 (the most common case). I aim to solve 6 via 3+4 but even after carefully triple-checking my plans I still manage to botch it 75% of the time for unknown reasons. Still, it's enough positive data to keep me practicing. A lot of potential there considering they were poor solves, I'm not even doing EOLine or using block-building yet, and my overall ZZ-style F2L is clumsy.

On the CFOP side I finally started seeing more mid 20s and better again last night. The lookahead aspect is so freakin' weird for me. During the recent regression I've been back to finding myself hunting for pieces. When things are flowing I just see stuff... it just seems to happen. I try to focus on that and remind myself when it happens but it doesn't seem to be something I can consciously command and it rarely sticks around for more than a half dozen solves at a time. Just missed a sub 30 Ao12 again last night, though, a couple disasters that resulted in a counting sup 40. A smooth full step :22.x mixed in, been a while since I've had one of those.

 

[mafergut]

Phil @pglewis that's exactly what happens to me. I just can't control when my lookahead is on or off. Even when I try to consciously concentrate it seems to be on and off at its own will and no more than a handful of solves in a row. I wish I could make it happen every solve. Still not timing a single 3x3 solves since like a week ago but not practising a lot of 3x3 lately tbh and, when I do it, mixing some 2H and OH.

 

[muchacho]

42870 14-abr-2017 15:21:51 00:19.774 F2 L2 U' L2 U' R2 D U R2 U F2 R' L2 B2 L' U B' L' B' U2 L'

First sub-20 with non matching blocks... probably also first sub-30, I almost never even try it, but this scramble was asking for it. I somehow managed to mess up F2B but luckily that led me to a CMLL skip.

 

[newtonbase]

Did a 3BLD MO3. 1st didn't time as I left the inspection time on but definitely sub 2mins. 2nd showed as 1:02! My daughter had seen my phone screen dim and tapped to wake it. That was probably sub 2mins too. 3rd was 2:29. I may be incapable of using my phone properly but definitely improving.

 

[Logiqx]

Nice 5x5 times for @mark49152 today!

5x5x5 Cube - Combined First - cut-off 2:30.00
2:13.44 2:11.62 2:01.86 2:30.21 2:16.16 PB 2:13.74 2:01.86

5x5x5 Cube - Second Round
1:59.60 2:03.23 1:57.79 2:09.27 1:58.82 PB 2:00.55 PB 1:57.79

 

[phreaker]

Practicing leading up to my 1st comp.

I'm feeling a bit burned out towards 3x3... so I ordered a new batch wuque, and a wushuang, both stickerless. (I love QiYi stickerless shades, and stickerless cubes... and I hate the thought of restickering a big cube... ugh!)

Man do I enjoy 4x4... I suck mightly at it. but I enjoy it. set my PB at... 6:11! (laughing) It was a HUGE drop from my previous PB which was like 9m+. If I learn things and take a break... I naturally seem to speed up and the ideas soak in.

The 5x5, that cube is butter out of the box. No regrets. I had to look up 5x5 edge algs to do the final 2 edges. I need to learn some simple algs, so I can 2-3 step that step, so I can carry a 5x5 without a booklet.

I'll say doing ZZ on the 5x5, 3x3 stage was cool.. and the OH algs I know seemed to work really well. (no M moves in my OLL/PLL, but I do use some w moves... I should learn the "Valk" G perms at some point, to replace my current ones.)

I won't even time myself on 5x5 until I can solve it without any assistance. it's a matter of time. But man.. it is fun to play with those two cubes.

 

[mafergut]

@phreaker Nice to see that you ventured into big cubes. You will not regret doing that and the cubes you got are the best you can buy right now in my opinion

You can do 5x5 last 2 edges with just an adapted 4x4 OLL parity alg. You can reduce any other cases to either solved edges or just one edge with parity.

I injured my right pinky yesterday while playing basketball with my son so I didn't feel like timing myself today at any events involving my right hand... so I did some OH, which I had not done in a long time, maybe months.

Did an Ao50 with my Yan3 and got PB single (26.85 full step, previous was 28.79 PLL skip), another sub 30 single, also full step and PB Ao5 34,71 (previous was 37.93). All previous PBs from August last year. Need some magnets Also I improved my Ao50 PB by 1 second down to 40,85.

 

[phreaker]

@phreaker Nice to see that you ventured into big cubes. You will not regret doing that and the cubes you got are the best you can buy right now in my opinion

You can do 5x5 last 2 edges with just an adapted 4x4 OLL parity alg. You can reduce any other cases to either solved edges or just one edge with parity.

If you have a reference for the needed alg, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to use my 4x4 knowledge if I can.

Also any advanced tips/techinques on larger cubes. I know some of this for 4x4... but well.. I can only guess 5x5+ is a bit different and pairing up one edge at a time can't be right .

 

[mark49152]

Nice 5x5 times for @mark49152 today!

Thanks - that 2:00.55 is not only my official PB by 16 seconds but overall ao5 PB by 6 seconds. And yet, I came away disappointed to miss Worlds qualification by 0.55 seconds.

5BLD was not good. I'm pretty sure all three were silly execution errors. I am averaging about 15 at home so I tried to push my speed to get in three attempts within the 45 minute time limit. The times were 15, 17 and 13.xx with the total about a minute over. I should have just done two attempts and gone for a safe sub-20.

Hoping to make it there tomorrow as well, at least for 3BLD.

 

[teacher77]

At last, I have a new PB (single) : 17.69 sec ! That's a 0,42s improvement over my previous record, which was almost 5 months old.

However, even though my PB doesn't seem to go down, my mo10 constently goes down. I dropped by 2+ seconds since the beggining of 2017. My PB for a mo10 is now 24.52 s (two weeks ago) and I keep beating it every month.

Anyone among the experienced cubers have seen something similar ? I mean an improving average without improvement on the PB single ? What can I understand from that ?

 

[h2f]

Thanks - that 2:00.55 is not only my official PB by 16 seconds but overall ao5 PB by 6 seconds. And yet, I came away disappointed to miss Worlds qualification by 0.55 seconds.

5BLD was not good. I'm pretty sure all three were silly execution errors. I am averaging about 15 at home so I tried to push my speed to get in three attempts within the 45 minute time limit. The times were 15, 17 and 13.xx with the total about a minute over. I should have just done two attempts and gone for a safe sub-20.

Hoping to make it there tomorrow as well, at least for 3BLD.

Very nice times. I'm sad about your 5bld but you know - it's the most difficult event. Congrats.

 

[pglewis]

The 5x5, that cube is butter out of the box. No regrets.

The stickerless WuShuang is definitely one of my favorite puzzles. I'm incredibly slow with 5x5 centers and don't practice 5x5 very much at all but I just love turning it.

Also any advanced tips/techinques on larger cubes. I know some of this for 4x4... but well.. I can only guess 5x5+ is a bit different and pairing up one edge at a time can't be right .

Here's a nice no frills reference for 5x5 last 2 edges and last 2 centers: http://meep.cubing.net/5x5.html

Anyone among the experienced cubers have seen something similar ? I mean an improving average without improvement on the PB single ? What can I understand from that ?

I'm not among the experienced but that fits the cycle I've personally experienced.

* Plateau. Averages hold reasonably steady and it's like there is a "wall" on my best solves, a few seconds faster than my ao5. PB single is an outlier and remains unthreatened.

* Fastest times begin to move. The previous "wall" on best solves seems to finally come down with a burst of solves below it. PB single starts getting threatened or beaten with faster outliers. Average moves some but not as much as the faster solves are moving, slower solves continue to drag the average down.

* Fastest times settle down to a new "wall", average starts leaping closer to the new wall as the slower solves become less frequent.

Repeat.

 

[One Wheel]

Anyone among the experienced cubers have seen something similar ? I mean an improving average without improvement on the PB single ? What can I understand from that ?

I've experienced the same thing. My PB single of 18.79 is about 13 months old. I've improved my average from about 42 to about 32-34, occasionally flirting with sub-30 but I've never yet strung together enough good solves to get more than a Mo3 sub-30. I attribute it to lack of practice on 3x3 and I just got really lucky on that one solve.

 

[JanW]

Anyone among the experienced cubers have seen something similar ? I mean an improving average without improvement on the PB single ? What can I understand from that ?

My PB single (14.06) is around 6 months old. Back then my previous pb single was 17.xx, I improved it by over 3 seconds. Since then I've done close to 5000 timed solves, improved my averages by several seconds, but only managed one more sub-15 solve.

The only thing to understand from this is that sometimes you get really lucky. My 14.06 was <40 moves with all F2L pairs immediately presenting themselves in easily solvable positions, an easy OLL and a PLL skip at the end. Solves like that happen occasionally, and you can't really influence the frequency of lucky solves with training. You can only try to stay focused at all times and make sure your execution of algs is solid, so that when the opportunity for a fast single comes, you don't waste it.

 

[h2f]

Anyone among the experienced cubers have seen something similar ? I mean an improving average without improvement on the PB single ? What can I understand from that ?

There's a simple explanation of it. Average number of moves needed to solve the cube is 56 if you use CFOP. The lowest number to solve the cube is 16 according to WCA scrambling rules but this cant happen with CFOP. With CFOP there can come solves with around 30 (or even less) moves to solve the cube. This means that in a single solve you can do it in 15 seconds (or less) when you turn a cube with only 2 TPS but in a long run your times will be over 25 seconds with the same TPS.

The second thing which explains it that your ability of solving the cube is not constant. It's up of the state of your mind, and even if you are relaxed and you solve fine your mind can be tired after bunch of solves and the ability goes down.

The best single solves means that you had a nice, short solution which met with your best actual ability of solving.

 

[JanW]

Another thing to keep in mind regarding improving singles vs improving averages is that learning new techniques is much more likely to improve your averages. Since my PB single I've learned full OLL and greatly improved recognition of the more difficult PLLs, which has no effect on a single solve with sune and PLL skip.

I copied my latest Ao1000 (22.50) into excel for some stats. It includes:

201 sub-20 solves
109 sub-19 solves
55 sub-18 solves
19 sub-17 solves
4 sub-16 solves
1 sub-15 solve

220 sup-25 solves
40 sup-30 solves

I remember saying around Christmas that the next milestone would be making sub-20s more frequent than sup-30s. I think I can safely say now that I've achieved that. Next step, make those sub-20s more frequent than sup-25s.

Even if it feels like I haven't improved much the past few months, these stats show me that I get sub-20s twice as often as at the start of the year. That's definitely an improvement! Not to mention that Ao1000 also is almost 2 seconds faster than it was at the end of last year.

 

[muchacho]

My last 1000 solves:

- Only 19 sup-30 solves... I was sure it was going to be much more than that o_O
- 4 DNFs
- Mean without DNFs: 20.160
- Best solve: 13.456 (PB is 11.801 from November)

 

[Lid]

Yet another sub10 single on Square-1
9.799 (-2, 0) / (5, -4) / (6, -3) / (0, -3) / (0, -2) / (6, -3) / (-4, -5) / (2, 0) / (0, -1) / (4, -5) / (5, 0) / (1, -3)
5,-3/-4,0/1,0/-2,0/-1,-2/-3,0/ : CS
-3,2/ : CO
1,-5/-3,0/-1,-1/4,1/ : EO
3,0/3,0/-1,-1/-2,1/5,0 : EP
So just a CP skip.

My main focus for next comp (6 wks) is of cause Sq-1 (goal sub20 avg, but preferly sub18), plus Megaminx (sub1:50avg), 4x4 (sub1 single) and OH (PB...say sub27avg & 20-21 single).