Older cubers discussions

[muchacho]

Congrats!

I tried the scramble, and did almost the same solution... but I was a bit luckier

Spoiler

11.376 (it would be PB by 0.5 seconds)
z y
R2 U M' L U' L'
U' Rw U Rw' M' Rw' U' Rw
U2 U' R U R' U' R' F R F'
M2 U M' M U2 M U2 M2

It could have been 30 STM, well 29, or 28 I guess.

 

[phreaker]

Interesting thought... When I was at the competition. Parents seemed intimidated by the cube. (The irony of that isn't lost on me.)

A bit of me wondered is it worth one of us oldies putting together a 1 day "Learn how to cube" course. BYOC, opposite the competition. I don't know if other people have done this. Is it a bad idea.. etc? Also I could see running 2-3 different classes over time... But that's me thinking aloud. I suspect people could be taught beginners in a day... Though I have no proof. I do think an older cuber, would do "better" here because well.. a parent may take instruction easier from a guy/gal who can drink . Ageism works both ways. :/ Once they go further and have some confidence, I suspect that they'll be able to use stuff like cubeskills etc. (Maybe this is something to do working with cubeskills.. who knows.)

 

[mafergut]

That was 1000 solves ago. For comparison, here are the stats for the next 1000 solves:
Ao1000: 21.47 (>1 second improvement!) [...]

Progress has been so slow lately that it feels like it has stagnated. However, those numbers don't lie. There's definitely steady improvement! If I can keep this up, then I only need a couple of thousand solves more and maybe I can finally call myself a sub-20 solver.

A new single pb is definitely overdue. Yesterday I already got a sub-15 full-step solve (14.84, Sune + U-perm). With a good F2L, it would even be possible to break my 6 months old pb without any skips. With a good F2L and some skip, I bet a 12.xx is possible, if not even a sub-12.

Talking about slow improvement... Looking at my statistics of long averages, more or less two years ago (April 2015) I got my 1st ever sub-20 Ao100 (19.96). More or less 1 year later (May 2016) I set a new PB Ao100 of 18.48 so 1.5 seconds in one year, not bad.

One year later I did today my first timed Ao100 after 1 month where I have not timed my 3x3 solves and just did either slow / untimed solves or other events, mainly OH and 4x4 to 6x6. Got a new PB but the effect of the slow solving practice was not as noticeable as I expected, to be honest I have not done enough focused practice to improve efficiency, cross to f2l transition, etc. just lookahead. New PB Ao100 is 18.41, just 0.07. Ao50 improved a bit more, from 18.39 to 18.19 but even that is just 0.2 seconds in one year!!! I'm either doing something wrong with my training or I'm getting old and my hands lose what my lookahead gains. Not going to get to sub-15 (not even close to sub-17) any time soon unless I change something, probably never tbh.

On a different note, the average was done with my new stickerless GTS2. Very nice cube, from all the modern cubes with squared-off corners, it's for sure the less catchy of all and on par in smoothness with the Valk. Algs flow pretty fast on it... when done right, because it's less stable than the Valk so things can go wrong more easily. I can imagine magnets transforming it in the best cube ever for both 2H and OH. Willing to spend the $50 required to get one.

 

[Malkom]

Interesting thought... When I was at the competition. Parents seemed intimidated by the cube. (The irony of that isn't lost on me.)

A bit of me wondered is it worth one of us oldies putting together a 1 day "Learn how to cube" course. BYOC, opposite the competition. I don't know if other people have done this. Is it a bad idea.. etc? Also I could see running 2-3 different classes over time... But that's me thinking aloud. I suspect people could be taught beginners in a day... Though I have no proof. I do think an older cuber, would do "better" here because well.. a parent may take instruction easier from a guy/gal who can drink . Ageism works both ways. :/ Once they go further and have some confidence, I suspect that they'll be able to use stuff like cubeskills etc. (Maybe this is something to do working with cubeskills.. who knows.)

At a comp I went to there was a few cubes, printed guides and a human guide sitting at a table to teach parents how to solve the cube. It seemed pretty popular, altough most people just fiddled a little with the cube without really learning anything.

 

[JanW]

Talking about slow improvement... Looking at my statistics of long averages, more or less two years ago (April 2015) I got my 1st ever sub-20 Ao100 (19.96). More or less 1 year later (May 2016) I set a new PB Ao100 of 18.48 so 1.5 seconds in one year, not bad.

One year later I did today my first timed Ao100 after 1 month where I have not timed my 3x3 solves and just did either slow / untimed solves or other events, mainly OH and 4x4 to 6x6. Got a new PB but the effect of the slow solving practice was not as noticeable as I expected, to be honest I have not done enough focused practice to improve efficiency, cross to f2l transition, etc. just lookahead. New PB Ao100 is 18.41, just 0.07. Ao50 improved a bit more, from 18.39 to 18.19 but even that is just 0.2 seconds in one year!!! I'm either doing something wrong with my training or I'm getting old and my hands lose what my lookahead gains. Not going to get to sub-15 (not even close to sub-17) any time soon unless I change something, probably never tbh.

I'm sure you can still improve a lot with the enough (and right kind of) practice. But it does indeed get slower the faster you get. And usually, at least for me, the less improvement there is, the less kicks I get out of practicing, which means less practicing and I start focusing on something else instead.

Lately I've seen some nice improvement, which inspired me to do a ton of solves today. Normally I can't focus at all after 100 or so solves, today I kept going and eventually got on a hot streak for my first sub-20 Ao50! New Ao50 pb, 19.87, is half a second faster than my previous best. Couldn't keep it up for the full Ao100 though, only shaved a couple of tenths off that average.

 

[mafergut]

@JanW, thanks for the encouragement. But what you say is very true, as my progress is slower I end up losing motivation and focusing in other things, like big cubes At least I'm not slower than 1 year ago, which is okay but they key is "the right kind of practice" as you say. Will have to find out what that is in my case.

 

[mafergut]

Found this funny video from some weeks ago of Chris Pratt solving a Rubik's cube while being interviewed. I was surprised that he knew basic F2L but then he just started spamming Sune and Niklas to solve last layer and finished orienting corners. Looks like my Megaminx LL "strategy"

 

[muchacho]

Someone should tell him to join this thread

 

[JanW]

BOOM!!

Time List:
1. 12.99 D2 F2 U B U F' D' R' L' F L2 U' B2 L2 U' F2 D L2 U' F2 U'

x2 // inspection
D R' F L R U' R y R U R // XCross (and bring out first F2L pair I saw)
U2 R U' R' y R U R' // F2L 2
L' U2 L U R' U' R // F2L 3
U' L' U' L d' L U L' // F2L 4
R U R' U' R' F R F' // OLL
U // AUF

41 moves, 3.16 moves/second

Beat my old record by 1.07 seconds. Let's see if this new pb single also will hold up for over 6 months. I hope not!

Edit: Had a look back in this thread for my old pb single. Apparently it was set on October 6th last year. That solve was also 41 moves, like this one, and ended with the same OLL as this one. Interestingly, in that same post I mention I also got my first sub-25 Ao50. Yesterday I got my first sub-20 Ao50. Took me 5 seconds of overall improvement to beat that single!

 

[pipkiksass]

Nice easy double x-cross for you all:

U2 L2 B' L2 U2 L2 B2 R2 U2 B' R B2 R2 U L U' F D2 L'

Note made orange/blue and orange/green pairs.

My solution started Y' (can never remember which way Y goes, but orange to front, white top), then B' F2 M2 for double X cross at the back.

12.669, only my 3rd best time of the day, but should've been better. Got checkerboard OLL, which I don't particularly love.

Let me know what you can do with it?!

 

[muchacho]

12.149, nice scramble also for Roux.

 

[mafergut]

What a scramble! Got 11.06 but after trying again, as the 1st time around I fumbled the OLL. Not only the double x-cross but the two other F2L pairs are easy, last layer was just meh or else it would have been close to sub-10.

 

[mafergut]

Continued my Ao100 from Wednesday up to 200 solves but changed this time from GTS2 to Valk3 to take advantage of the additional stability. As I expected, I got less super-good singles but a lot more consistency and I must have been also more relaxed as I was not paying attention to the times and rolling average and just focusing on lookahead and wow!

I got my PB Ao50 and 100 down to 17.81 and 18.04 respectively. Finally sub-18 Ao50!!! So that's almost 0.5 seconds improvement from last year Ao100 and even more in Ao50. Well, this is still slow improvement but I'm very happy

And, as a bonus, PB Ao5 15.54 (finally beating my 15.58 from more than 1.5 years ago, back in Oct 2015!!!!) and PB Ao12 16.66 (finally sub-17 Ao12, old PB was 17.09 from Oct 2016). In fact I kept rolling Ao12 below 17 seconds for another 10 more solves.

 

[JanW]

Really nice results @mafergut! If you keep doing a few Ao100s/week, I'm sure you'll see even more improvement.

I got my first sub-17 Ao5 today. I didn't even notice when it happened. Just kept solving and at some point I noticed I had managed a 16.96 Ao5. Also shaved a few hundreds off Ao50 and 0.1 seconds of Ao100. Ao100 should have been much better, but as soon as rolling Ao100 got close to my previous pb, I started messing up and did some sup-22 Ao12s...

 

[Bart Van Eynde]

I'm still a real noob in this speedcubing thing, but recently i started to film my solves. When you look back at them you can see your weaknesses yourself. It really helped me finding my working points. No real surprises though (F2L like most people) but it's confronting cus you can really see how bad you are at it
Just for info:
PB's:
single: 43.112
ao5: 55.052
ao12: 59.393
next goal: sub 60 on ao50 and ao100 and improving my lookahead (or better start with lookahead)

 

[Bart Van Eynde]

Got some new PBs

ao5: 23.74, ao12: 24.95, ao50: 26.86

This might be a good time to start learning CMLL, though it does look like a lot of work to get all those algs down.

So you use the roux method?

 

[David Zemdegs]

In my second competition today I went from a 2:08 avg to 1:35! Got alot of good crosses and two corner LL skips.
Next is Worlds!

 

[h2f]

http://cubecomps.com/live.php?cid=2192&compid=46

Im quite happy about the results:
- in 4x4 in 2nd solve should be 1:05 but I didnt notice it's a diagonal parity swap. Anyway I did cutoff and made ao5 which is comparable with my ao100 in home. I feel a great potence in my solves and I know 1:0x is a achievable in a couple of months. I did only practice 4x4 for a week.
- in OH I knew cutoff will be hard.
- in 3x3 I've made a lot of mistakes. During warmup my avgs were around 17-18. In 2nd round I've saved sub20 in a last solve which was with Na perm in the end.
- 5x5 - I didnt even practice but saw Maciek Czapiewski winning with Yau5. I love Yau so I think, Ill try.

 

[mark49152]

Congrats Grzegorz. No BLD at this comp?

 

[Fyzzna]

So you use the roux method?

I do, yes. After I got the Beginners method down I looked at this thread to decide which Speedsolving method to use. Turns out I really enjoy blockbuilding and Petrus has some awkward moves so the decision wasn't all that hard.