Older cubers discussions

[newtonbase]

@newtonbase Forget U2 and just watch Daniel Sheppard videos on centre comms, do some sighted solves and you're good to go. If you don't want to go to the easiest comms you have on any cube, at least go directly with advanced U2 (setting up the hardest centre to UFL and execute the resulting comm with U2 as interchange and the other centre set up as insertion.

About tracking remaining edges, I usually go face by face checking if I've used the letter, the first times it takes some time, but with some practice it's almost immediate.

I've watched Dan's video before. I even have a vague memory of discussing it with him in the pub but I was pretty drunk at the time. I've just watched it again plus some of Ollie's stuff. Advanced U2 sounds good. There are no resources but it's the same concept as advanced M2 and R2 which I'm comfortable with so thanks for the tip.

 

[newtonbase]

As Grzegorz said, it's just practice. My approach is as follows: I don't count wing targets up front because that wastes time. I start tracing straight away, and mentally keep an eye on the pieces I like to start new cycles on (A, L, R, J, T). If I hit a break and one or more of those pieces hasn't yet been covered, I start a new cycle there immediately. That is usually enough to get me to a point where there are only a few pieces left, maybe 5 or less. For example if I hit the second break after 20 targets, I know there are 4 pieces left. Then I look for solved pieces and deduct those. So let's say I find two pieces solved, I know there are two remaining, which must be swapped. Finding those final pieces is just practice.

Note that the nice thing about wings is that they can never be flipped .

For centres I use mostly advanced U2 with a handful of comms. Some people say start with comms, which is fair enough, as they are not difficult, but my philosophy is the same as M2 for edges - advanced U2 is a kind of restricted comms, which are almost as move efficient as unrestricted comms, and a good stepping stone for incrementally adding other comms. But, unlike comms, U2 is brainless and easier to plough through without pausing. I guess it depends how much patience you have - your accuracy will improve faster and times will drop faster with U2 but comms will pay off better in the long run.

I like the idea of tracking favourite pieces. Thanks.

 

[mark49152]

I like the idea of tracking favourite pieces. Thanks.

Great to see you trying 4BLD by the way, it's such a fun event. Good luck and hope to see you competing soon!

Another tip on wings: One of the things I found hardest was avoiding mixing up the adjacent stickers on each edge, like for L mistakenly looking at the opposite sticker on the F piece. I settled on a method of checking every target by imagining rotating its dedge to either the DF or UB dedge and checking which sticker corresponds to DFr or UBr. For example, the L and F dedge can be moved to DF with an F' move, and it's the lower piece whose sticker would coincide with DFr, so I know the lower wing is F and the upper wing L. After a few hundred solves you don't think about it any more, of course

 

[chtiger]

Ok. I've updated the SQL scripts to support an actual DOB... if disclosed or freely available in the public domain.

Everyone now has a virtual birthday of 31st December which means their results are unchanged.

Gilles however has a proper DOB - freely available on Wikipedia + Speedsolving Wiki.

Net result... Gilles is now harder to catch in the oldies rankings!

Since you volunteered to do that, I might as well have an accurate birthday on there. September 11th for me.

 

[pglewis]

Ok. I've updated the SQL scripts to support an actual DOB... if disclosed or freely available in the public domain.

Jan 20th here.

 

[newtonbase]

Great to see you trying 4BLD by the way, it's such a fun event. Good luck and hope to see you competing soon!

Another tip on wings: One of the things I found hardest was avoiding mixing up the adjacent stickers on each edge, like for L mistakenly looking at the opposite sticker on the F piece. I settled on a method of checking every target by imagining rotating its dedge to either the DF or UB dedge and checking which sticker corresponds to DFr or UBr. For example, the L and F dedge can be moved to DF with an F' move, and it's the lower piece whose sticker would coincide with DFr, so I know the lower wing is F and the upper wing L. After a few hundred solves you don't think about it any more, of course

My current method is to trace clockwise around the face looking for the 2nd piece of each pair. Your method will help more with set ups and basic comms so I'll try it.

Since you volunteered to do that, I might as well have an accurate birthday on there. September 11th for me.

My brother's birthday! He's 43. You?

 

[mark49152]

I might as well get some over-50 scores on the board . June 1st, roughly.

 

[chtiger]

My brother's birthday! He's 43. You?

Me too. Was he born at 3:50 PM GMT?

 

[Jason Green]

My birthday is September 18, I am 42. So you are about 51 weeks older than me.

First sub 1 4x4, I knew it would be soon! It was a great solve and I managed to resist looking at the time and then had easy OLL and PLL skip.

 

[newtonbase]

Me too. Was he born at 3:50 PM GMT?

Cool. No idea what time he was born but I'll find out.

My birthday is 6th June.

 

[muchacho]

20th June

 

[moralsh]

20th June

6 days earlier, lots of gemini around here!

On big cubes, I mostly do comms that have the the E layers as interchange layer so I also try to compromise a bit of efficiency for an easier comm. Most of the cases can be done with 1-2 setup moves at most and I try not to rotate. One piece of advice when doing comms, don't be afraid of moving the buffer as a setup move and always try to move the layers consistently, I mean, if you need a 2 move setup which moves both targets, always move target 1 first (or otherwise) to be able to undo setup without thinking.

I'm due for my day 3 recap, I'll try to do it in a while

 

[Logiqx]

Since you volunteered to do that, I might as well have an accurate birthday on there. September 11th for me.

Jan 20th here.

I might as well get some over-50 scores on the board . June 1st, roughly.

Done. I've also added comments to the code to ensure the pubic source or personal request is recorded:

https://github.com/Logiqx/wca-ipy/blob/master/Over 40s.ipynb

 

[newtonbase]

6 days earlier, lots of gemini around here!

On big cubes, I mostly do comms that have the the E layers as interchange layer so I also try to compromise a bit of efficiency for an easier comm. Most of the cases can be done with 1-2 setup moves at most and I try not to rotate. One piece of advice when doing comms, don't be afraid of moving the buffer as a setup move and always try to move the layers consistently, I mean, if you need a 2 move setup which moves both targets, always move target 1 first (or otherwise) to be able to undo setup without thinking.

I'm due for my day 3 recap, I'll try to do it in a while

I was thinking about setup order as I do tend to have trouble remembering them and can panic if there's more than one needed. I had considered doing them in the order of speffz faces but your method sounds better. Thanks.

 

[Logiqx]

@muchacho @moralsh - updated

This had a material affect for @moralsh in some events such as clock.

 

[NewbieCuber]

Progress Report: What is it, 6, 7 weeks of cubing? I don't know :confused:

My F2L is SOOOO SLOOOOW! I'm really trying to get it under my fingers but I'm still taking 45 to 50 seconds just to finish my cross and F2L. I may be at the point where I just need to crank out an hour of timed speed solves every day until it becomes 2nd nature. I'm also going to really start focusing on visualizing the cross moves before I start solving. I can usually pre-define the moves for 2 edges, I'll push that to 3 edges and then to 4. But wow, even though I seem to understand basic F2l, it just takes me forever to see the pairs.

I am, however, back down to the 1:10 range. When I started F2l my times went up to almost 2 minutes so there is improvement. But it's frustrating when I finish my F2L and look up and see the timer at 50 seconds already.

 

[Shaky Hands]

@NewbieCuber - improvement will come in time, I assure you. I'd suggest turning the timer off for at least part of your practicing to reduce the pressure and allow you to concentrate on the mechanics of improvement.

Good luck and well done for sticking with it.

 

[JanW]

@NewbieCuber, I agree with Shaky Hands, turn off the timer for a while. When you are learning new things your full focus should be on those, not looking up to the timer. Whatever times you are doing now doesn't really matter, since you will so soon be doing a lot faster times anyway. When learning F2L, you could devote most of your cubing time to that stage. Just slow turning focused F2L solving, then rescramble once F2L is done.

 

[pglewis]

Progress Report: What is it, 6, 7 weeks of cubing? I don't know :confused:

My F2L is SOOOO SLOOOOW! I'm really trying to get it under my fingers but I'm still taking 45 to 50 seconds just to finish my cross and F2L. I may be at the point where I just need to crank out an hour of timed speed solves every day until it becomes 2nd nature. I'm also going to really start focusing on visualizing the cross moves before I start solving. I can usually pre-define the moves for 2 edges, I'll push that to 3 edges and then to 4. But wow, even though I seem to understand basic F2l, it just takes me forever to see the pairs.

I am, however, back down to the 1:10 range. When I started F2l my times went up to almost 2 minutes so there is improvement. But it's frustrating when I finish my F2L and look up and see the timer at 50 seconds already.

It's a lot more cases to cope with than beginners' method so it just takes practice. It probably took me 3 months to get consistently in the 1:30 range, I'm not really a natural but I'm stubborn!

I'm continually at a state where there are new things that slow me down but will help in the long run. I know about half of OLL at this point and 2-looking is usually faster for me right now, with extra recognition time needed to determine if it's a 1-look case I know. Shutting the timer off for a week or two can be good if I'm allowing it to pressure me into comfortable old habits rather than exercising new ones. I'm also getting a lot better at not letting the timer control me. Sometimes when I start to feel timer pressure it's a satisfying assertion to finish a solve and deliberately sit there for 2 more seconds before stopping the timer.

Casual "low attention" solves are great IMO, just solving a bunch while watching TV or whatever without thinking a lot about all the dos and don'ts. You want to reach the state where solving your pairs is just something you do without thinking. A few days of subconscious solves followed by more targeted, focused practice can yield surprising progress.

 

[moralsh]

@muchacho @moralsh - updated

This had a material affect for @moralsh in some events such as clock.

Thanks! That's my only PB from 2013, I didn't even notice it wasn't there, that's how much I care for clock

Ok, I'll try to do day 3 Now.

Day 3, Saturday.

I started the day with 5DNFs and no other results at worlds, I was going to compete in 2x2 (probably just 2 solves), 3x3 and 3BLD so depending on Blind I could end a competition with more DNFs than ok solves, I needed at least to solve one cube blindfolded.

Day started with 2x2 first round, the 6 seconds cut off was a bit harsh, and as I imagined I didn't make it, a 7.xx and a 10.xx, few people made it in the groups I was judging earlier, seems like all of the guys of the same level where grouped there . After 2x2 I wen't upstairs for the last MBLD attempt, everybody in the same room this time, Maskow, Kamil, Mark Boyanowski and Shivam where the biggest attempts and all of them started very well, solving almost every cube in the first 5-10 minutes of solving but in the end Shivam's consistency paid off and he won with equal points as Maskow's second attempt but a few seconds less (also a few less solved cubes, but that's how the event works) I was also keeping an eye on Mark's attempt on 16 cubes, but unluckily only 12 were solved at the end.

Tight staff schedule only allowed me 15 minutes to have lunch as we started 3x3, the main Event, Mark and I were in the same group and both had a crappy round, I was lucky enough to end it with two high 16 that at least allowed me to have a sub 20 average, I would have preferred sub 19 but couldn't do it.

Then came OH in which I didn't qualify and Pyra in which I didn't bother to register, there were quite a few who didn't make the 10 seconds cut off there.

To end the competitive part of the day, we had 3BLD I had tried 3-4 times that morning and the day before and all were DNFs with my memory nowhere to be seen, so I decided to stop trying . First attempt, I reviewed like 1 thousand times, and at least it wasn't DNF but it was too slow. Second attempt was the easiest scramble of our group but I managed to DNF it in 1:4x after a 20 second pause trying to recall, third one was still over reviewed but it went smoother and was my final 2:09, that's a year and a half without sub 2 for me, hope to fix that later this year. Mark got a 1:01 with all the pressure after a double DNF and made it to the second round, I, of course, didn't, but at least I was going to end the competition with more solved cubes than DNFs, yay!

Then we had the awesome nations cup, a bit slow at first (a broken timer helped to make it slow) but very exciting to watch as the rounds went on. Canada (with Bill Wang, Antoine Cantin and Kian Mansour) started very strong and were only bested by the Champions, Germany (The Weyer brothers and Cornelius) on the other side Australia edged USA who also looked favourites. The final was for Germany, pretty exciting to watch and I hope we can see it again in other worlds.

it ended quite late (around 23h) so a very late dinner and some chat with friends prior to the last day of the competition.