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Older cubers discussions

I've started doing regular practice of mbld. My goal is to get 10 cubes. First time for 2 years (omg) I did 7 cubes today. I wasnt expecting nothing great but it finished 3/4 (1 point). All mistakes were 3 cycles done wrong. It means I could memorize them well but failed in execution. In two cases it was lack of concetration. In one case - wrong direction of cycle. Quite good. Time 49 minutes.
 
mark49152 said:
You mean 4/7? Nice job. I enjoy MBLD. It's nice to do big blind challenges without one small mistake costing total failure :)
Click to expand...
Yeah, 4/7. :) I never liked mbld as much as 3bld or 4bld but now it seems more funny to me. I've memoed last 3 cubes in around 5-7 minutes and executing them first. All were fine. I must make 22 images for parity because my system I used so far doesnt make me feel comfortable.
 
h2f said:
I must make 22 images for parity because my system I used so far doesnt make me feel comfortable.
Click to expand...
I've changed my method for parity now that I'm working on comms. Rather than using an alg I'm switching BU with LU in edge memo if I have an odd number of corners and solve the last corner OP style. It's a lot easier than I thought and I use it regardless if whether I'm doing a comms solve or not.
 
My life has been incredibly stressful lately, for many reasons which I won't go into. Cubing is one of the few things that I do to unwind and just enjoy. I'll be attending my thirteenth competition tomorrow, and wonder why am I so stressed. So far I've gotten at least one PB every comp I've attended. The pressure mounts to keep improving those stats, but why do I care? If I don't break a comp PB tomorrow will future competitions be more enjoyable? If I do, will the pressure keep mounting? Why do I care? Hopefully I can just relax and have fun, but that usually only happens once a PB is broken. I'm curious how others feel about this. And why am I still practicing OH when there is no OH tomorrow?
 
CLL Smooth said:
My life has been incredibly stressful lately, for many reasons which I won't go into. Cubing is one of the few things that I do to unwind and just enjoy. I'll be attending my thirteenth competition tomorrow, and wonder why am I so stressed. So far I've gotten at least one PB every comp I've attended. The pressure mounts to keep improving those stats, but why do I care? If I don't break a comp PB tomorrow will future competitions be more enjoyable? If I do, will the pressure keep mounting? Why do I care? Hopefully I can just relax and have fun, but that usually only happens once a PB is broken. I'm curious how others feel about this. And why am I still practicing OH when there is no OH tomorrow?
Click to expand...
I do get somewhat stressed but it's enjoyable to me. So far I'm new enough that it's almost guaranteed I'll improve something. Like my last comp I had made huge jumps in 4x4 and OH so I almost had to get a PB. I was more nervous about qualifying for Nationals. On 3x3 I really only had a 50-50 shot of beating my 18.2 average so I was lucky.

You might be right if I had a comp with no PBs but was still improving, maybe I wouldn't worry about the streak. If I ever get to a point where I feel plataeud at every event it might not be fun. But I haven't even started blind so I'm sure that will never happen. :)
 
newtonbase said:
I've changed my method for parity now that I'm working on comms. Rather than using an alg I'm switching BU with LU in edge memo if I have an odd number of corners and solve the last corner OP style. It's a lot easier than I thought and I use it regardless if whether I'm doing a comms solve or not.
Click to expand...

I must try it. Normally I do corners first but I used to memorizing edges first and I do it in mbld. This leads to solving edges first in mbld and doing normal parity alg (D' L2 D M2 D' L2 D). For corners my system is ok because I used to use images with .Z which dont occur in my system for corners.
 
Working on bigger cubes...

I actually started timing 5x5 solves. I think I ALMOST can solve L2E, intuitive now, it is getting closer and closer, I only hit a parity I can't solve about one solve in 10 at most. (And I know 5x5 parity is much less frequent than that, I need to learn 5x5 parity for real.)

Time: 8:22. (Yes, I'm slow.) Using Freeslice. Really fun... but my TPS is slow, and I suspect I could do better in spots with making the centers in less moves. Though I will say my "look ahead" during centers is getting better and better... same with edges.

PB at 4x4 was set recently... Forget the number, but it was solidly sub 5m. (Realize I was 9m in January. So this is massive progress!)

Ironically, I can feel the impact on my 3x3 solving, because there's so much less to track and think about... things make more sense.

I have a 6x6 and 7x7 on order. (Wuhua and Wuji. I've been using the Qiyi series of cubes, and been happy.)

Magnetics: I have some nice magnets in stock. They really seem interesting. Need to do more research into how to use them best. I suspect I'll get some epoxy in so I have more time to get the magnets exactly where I want them on my 4x4.

We will see.

There's something about working with the large cubes... it seems to help my look ahead a bit on 3x3, there's something about the more pieces to track, and more going on that seems to help my brain. My 2H times, while not taken often, look encouraging. I need to decide if I want to transition to CFOP at some point, given that I use it for all my large cube work. (ZZ isn't quite working on 4x4+.)
 
phreaker said:
Working on bigger cubes...

Time: 8:22.
Click to expand...

Keep up the good work! I think I was about that speed maybe a little over a year ago, and I'm trying to decide whether to go to a nearby comp on July 1st, where my long-shot goal would be to make the 2:45 soft cut. My best single time is 2:44.99 iirc, so it would be a long shot, but . . .
 
phreaker said:
I think I ALMOST can solve L2E, intuitive now, it is getting closer and closer, I only hit a parity I can't solve about one solve in 10 at most. (And I know 5x5 parity is much less frequent than that, I need to learn 5x5 parity for real.)
Click to expand...
Huh? 5x5 parity less frequent than 1 in 10? Maybe I've misunderstood something. Probably have, since I didn't even know L2E was a thing I was supposed to learn... I know one parity alg (a crappy one, as it really is for 4x4) and I've been using that the few times I have solved my 5x5. But it seems that's fine, as apparently 5x5 also improves without practice. :) Just did an Ao5 and improved with about 45 seconds from the last attempts I did sometime last year. Ao5 4:40, best single 3:54. Perhaps I should practice some more and aim for sub-3.

Edit: A few more solves. Ao5 4:07.37, Single 3:37.95.
 
Last edited:
phreaker said:
Working on bigger cubes...

I actually started timing 5x5 solves. I think I ALMOST can solve L2E, intuitive now, it is getting closer and closer, I only hit a parity I can't solve about one solve in 10 at most. (And I know 5x5 parity is much less frequent than that, I need to learn 5x5 parity for real.)

....

There's something about working with the large cubes... it seems to help my look ahead a bit on 3x3, there's something about the more pieces to track, and more going on that seems to help my brain. My 2H times, while not taken often, look encouraging. I need to decide if I want to transition to CFOP at some point, given that I use it for all my large cube work. (ZZ isn't quite working on 4x4+.)
Click to expand...
With 5x5 2LE I only use 2 algs. The first is to swap to middle tredge pieces with each other with the outer edges oriented. It is the big cube H perm with wide turns...

- swap middle edges (on top)
0X0
X0X

Rw2 U2 Rw U2 Rw2 U2 Rw2 U2 Rw U2 Rw2

The other is the 4x4 parity alg which will flip a single middle edge. I use this one ..

Rw' U2 Lw F2 Lw' F2 Rw2 U2 Rw U2 Rw' U2 F2 Rw2 F2

I'd agree with your observation about bigger cubes helping look-ahead on smaller cubes. I really think that a good warm-up for a 3x3 competition would be to do a bunch of 4x4 or 5x5 solves just before competing. Pieces appear bigger and easier to find.
 
I finally learned a proper parity alg for 5x5 and did a couple of dozen solves in in the last days. Ao12 down to 3:53 and Ao5 at 3:45. Sub-3 seems very doable with practice. Successful scrambles seem impossible, though. I've been trying to do the scrambles from csTimer, but only once did I ever end up with the cube looking like csTimer draws it. If I ever go to a comp, I hope I won't be asked to scramble 5x5...
 
@JanW: Sub 3min 5x5 is certainly doable. Then you will want sub 2:30, which is doable. Then you'll want sub 2:00... that's harder, at least at our age but as @mark49152 (and also @Selkie) demonstrate it is possible. Congrats @mark49152 by the way! I've traveled that same path some months ago and my long averages are now stuck somewhere around sub 2:45 but not yet sub 2:30. Well, the fact I have been practising almost only OH lately might have something to do with lack of 5x5 progress, or so I hope.

And talking about OH, just a couple OLLs to go for full 1-look but still quite slow with recall of some cases and making some mistakes in execution. My last Ao100 is promising, around 35.50 (best Ao50 34.76). That's more than 2.5 seconds of improvement thanks to 1-look OLL but I won't count them as PBs 'cos I still need to stop some solves if I just can't recall the alg or delete them because I executed the wrong one, maybe a 10% of the time.

What I am counting is a new PB Ao5 of 31.60, as it was a legit streak of 5 solves. Got plenty of nice Ao12s as well in the 33-35 range but I'm pretty sure none of them was clean.
 
mafergut said:
Then you'll want sub 2:00... that's harder, at least at our age but as @mark49152 (and also @Selkie) demonstrate it is possible. Congrats @mark49152 by the way!
Click to expand...
Thanks - not quite demonstrated yet though, as my average was 2:00.55, half a second short of qualifying for Worlds! If only I had learned a proper big cube U perm ;)
 
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