Older cubers discussions

[Old Tom]

@SpartanSailor: Question for you, or anyone. You mentioned grabbing a "competition kit." What sort of security is there for the competitors' stuff? Do you lug it around with you, or? I will just have two very nice Gan magnetic 3x3's, but would also like to bring along my old and VERY beat up 1981 cube, my only cube for 20 years, which may be of interest to you guys, plus my precious but sketchy notes, going back from then all the way to today.

 

[mark49152]

@Old Tom : I can't speak for US comps, but in the UK there is never any security. I have never come across any dishonesty either, and cubers seem generally decent people. The biggest risk is mixing up cubes, since there's a lot of them around and they tend to all look the same. I've had a few cubes wander afield or come home feeling slightly different (accidentally switched?) so I do prefer to put my cubes away when I'm not using them.

 

[openseas]

@Old Tom : I can't speak for US comps, but in the UK there is never any security. I have never come across any dishonesty either, and cubers seem generally decent people. The biggest risk is mixing up cubes, since there's a lot of them around and they tend to all look the same. I've had a few cubes wander afield or come home feeling slightly different (accidentally switched?) so I do prefer to put my cubes away when I'm not using them.

@Old Tom / Pretty much same here in US. Mixing & misplaced cubes are the most common reason you end up with someone else cube or vice versa. Not much to worry, cubers are kind and they only talk about cubes, solving cubes, not your ages. And just enjoy the comp!

 

[SpartanSailor]

I have a small bag that I keep my stuff in. I find cubers to be pretty decent folks and haven’t ever had an issue. I usually toss in all my cubes for the day plus one or two more and my timer. Then we add snacks for my son and myself.

I DO think people will seek you out when they see that cube from 1981...That’s a relic!!

 

[phreaker]

@OldTom A thought for you: There's an option in csTimer to disable the timer ticking in front of you on the screen. I found once I did that my "watching the timer" feelings started to go down.

The other thing that helped me adjust to the timer: Deleting my times, especially during warm-up. I know it isn't pure... but I want to know how I'm doing on a given day, and enjoy my practice. Not think "Darn, that messup of a G-perm cost me a PB AO5." Later I may stop caring... but for now. Meh. It's about having fun.

 

[Old Tom]

@OldTom A thought for you: There's an option in csTimer to disable the timer ticking in front of you on the screen. I found once I did that my "watching the timer" feelings started to go down.

The other thing that helped me adjust to the timer: Deleting my times, especially during warm-up. I know it isn't pure... but I want to know how I'm doing on a given day, and enjoy my practice. Not think "Darn, that messup of a G-perm cost me a PB AO5." Later I may stop caring... but for now. Meh. It's about having fun.

Disabling the timer might really help, thanks for that idea. I will check at the site if it can be done. I have never used a Stackmat. I'm using a (BIG!) stopwatch display on my ipad.

Starting to get used to it though! A lot less anxiety today.

 

[phreaker]

My updates:

BLD is moving along... slowly. Still need more practice, but my execution is there with M2/OP. Added edge flips recently, now I need to add corner twists, and then... I'll figure out the rest.

Set my 4x4 PB recently on my Gan 460M. I can't say it is better than a Wuque M. I can say, I enjoy turning it more. There's something about the cube that just makes me want to solve it. It's special that way.

Shadow M: Set my 6x6 PB. (Which is really slow.) Once setup this cube will be really stupidly good. More thinking on lube needed for this one.

Huanglong M: ZOMG is this cube smooth. No really... it is smoother than that. It needs setup out of the box, the corner cutting OOTB is just... horrible. But it is so smooth and has magnets, so I want to forgive it. I can't for OH though, alas.

GTS 3: This cube needs some setup, but if you told me it would be my 3x3 main once done, I'd believe you. The ridges are a bit funky for OH, you have to reach around them, but once you are there, they do help grip for OH. No doubting that. For BLD, the magnets really inspire confidence that you are doing what you think you are doing.

 

[phreaker]

Disabling the timer might really help, thanks for that idea. I will check at the site if it can be done. I have never used a Stackmat. I'm using a (BIG!) stopwatch display on my ipad.

Starting to get used to it though! A lot less anxiety today.

At the site they can't... but part of training without a timer in your face is just getting used to "If I look, there's no information." so it becomes habit not to look. Seeing the word "solve" doesn't tell me how my splits are doing .

 

[pglewis]

Less catastrophic failure on today's 5 cube attempt but only slightly. I made it through memo, finished execution on the third cube (cube 2), felt around to put it down and realized I somehow executed both cubes 1 & 2 on cube 1. Not quite a rage-quit but certainly an irritation-quit... to make it that far and fail in such a dumb way even when I thought I was being careful . I was cutting it close for execution time, ran into a trace mistake while reviewing and with extra review I was over 39 mins on memo.

Cube 5 was off by a 3-cycle of edges. My execution on mbld the past 2 days (with three attempts at 2 cubes yesterday and ignoring the cube I executed two memos on): 7/7 corners, 3/7 edges. Yeah, I'll be spamming sighted edge execution a pair at a time until further notice.

Every attempt is a good one: Memo felt easier than the first attempt and I had 100% confidence in retaining it. I was doing well on time until finding the trace mistake and that led to reviewing the others more closely than I would have / needed to. Rookie mistakes and execution are still the easiest things to fix despite the annoyance.

Huanglong M: ZOMG is this cube smooth. No really... it is smoother than that. It needs setup out of the box, the corner cutting OOTB is just... horrible. But it is so smooth and has magnets, so I want to forgive it. I can't for OH though, alas.

Agreed on the smooth feel, it's hard to put it into words. The GTS2 is really smooth too but the Huanglong has a unique feel.

GTS 3: This cube needs some setup, but if you told me it would be my 3x3 main once done, I'd believe you. The ridges are a bit funky for OH, you have to reach around them, but once you are there, they do help grip for OH. No doubting that. For BLD, the magnets really inspire confidence that you are doing what you think you are doing.

So far nothing has dethroned the GTS2M for me since it came out but the GTS3M will, both for 3x3 and 3bld, unless some fatal flaw is revealed over time. Just a lovely puzzle.

 

[h2f]

It looks like I've crossed sub-16 barrier globally. I did around 1000 4x4 solves in June. After last competition I'm back to Valk Power M stickerless and after around 500 solves suddenly all started looking simple: f2l is much easier, lookahead seems fine. I'm very glad.

 

[40yearstosolve]

F2L update... after two weeks (probably more judging by my last post on the subject) of shoehorning intuitive F2L into my solve and moving from the beginners method, I am now down from a stupid initial 15 minutes solve (lolz etc) then to 5 minutes and now just completed my first sub-2 minute. My average pre-F2L was somewhere around two and a half minutes, best was 1:38.

Thanks again for everyone’s insistence, persistence and pigheadedness in helping to motivate me to persevere.

Using F2L once it starts to become near-muscle memory you realise how few turns are required to solve.

I can almost get a sniff of what a ‘matter of seconds’ solver experiences. I am a long way off but have a small sense of what you mind goes through when solving in such a short period of time.

Let’s see when my next post is

Hope everyone is well, cheers guys.

 

[Old Tom]

F2L update... after two weeks (probably more judging by my last post on the subject) of shoehorning intuitive F2L into my solve and moving from the beginners method, I am now down from a stupid initial 15 minutes solve (lolz etc) then to 5 minutes and now just completed my first sub-2 minute. My average pre-F2L was somewhere around two and a half minutes, best was 1:38.

Thanks again for everyone’s insistence, persistence and pigheadedness in helping to motivate me to persevere.

Using F2L once it starts to become near-muscle memory you realise how few turns are required to solve.

I can almost get a sniff of what a ‘matter of seconds’ solver experiences. I am a long way off but have a small sense of what you mind goes through when solving in such a short period of time.

Let’s see when my next post is

Hope everyone is well, cheers guys.

Hey, great (and I was wondering where you had been). You seem to be about where I am right now with F2L, sub-2 on our best solves. Stick with it! I am still staying completely intuitive, but am seeing pieces and recognizing cases faster all the time. Was doing it untimed (I encourage that) until just this week, first competetion looming in two days! At this point I am still just systemizing and categorizing the cases, general strategies, etc., this is the fun part for me, reluctant to move on to the work part. After the comp I ought to start drill work, develop finger memory. I have my algs written down (almost all my own), but am leaving the execution memory to my fingers.

I suspect the big step will be look-ahead, but will first have to get more automatic with the sequence-at-hand.

 

[newtonbase]

First 4BLD attempt since 5th June. Very slow but got a success. I was pretty surprised to find it solved.

Good luck to everyone at the Euros.

 

[40yearstosolve]

Hey, great (and I was wondering where you had been). You seem to be about where I am right now with F2L, sub-2 on our best solves. Stick with it! I am still staying completely intuitive, but am seeing pieces and recognizing cases faster all the time. Was doing it untimed (I encourage that) until just this week, first competetion looming in two days! At this point I am still just systemizing and categorizing the cases, general strategies, etc., this is the fun part for me, reluctant to move on to the work part. After the comp I ought to start drill work, develop finger memory. I have my algs written down (almost all my own), but am leaving the execution memory to my fingers.

I suspect the big step will be look-ahead, but will first have to get more automatic with the sequence-at-hand.

Excellent, good luck in the comp.

In F2L I don’t use any algs. Should I be doing?

 

[40yearstosolve]

Hey, great (and I was wondering where you had been). You seem to be about where I am right now with F2L, sub-2 on our best solves. Stick with it! I am still staying completely intuitive, but am seeing pieces and recognizing cases faster all the time. Was doing it untimed (I encourage that) until just this week, first competetion looming in two days! At this point I am still just systemizing and categorizing the cases, general strategies, etc., this is the fun part for me, reluctant to move on to the work part. After the comp I ought to start drill work, develop finger memory. I have my algs written down (almost all my own), but am leaving the execution memory to my fingers.

I suspect the big step will be look-ahead, but will first have to get more automatic with the sequence-at-hand.

Also, what do you mean that you will move onto the “work part”?

I’ve done no strategies (or algs like I said) or fingers movements. I’m just crunching the cube repeatedly.

 

[Old Tom]

Also, what do you mean that you will move onto the “work part”?

I’ve done no strategies (or algs like I said) or fingers movements. I’m just crunching the cube repeatedly.

Work Part?

This is just my own plan, nobody has told me to do this. But:

I categorize F2L cases (situations), such as: the pair is joined up on the U face, there are I think six such situations, including the one ready to be inserted. Break them into: where is the white sticker? Further break into: are the other two colors on same face, or not?

Notice that there is, usually, a general approach to solving each sub case. Will leave that to you, better if left to you. I have started to draw rough cube sketches, and written my algs for reference, but not memorized them, and don't plan to.

Now, the work: manually create each of those cases on the cube, then drill: solve (just that pair, not the whole cube), restore, solve, restore, solve.... How many? I dunno, likely different for each person.

Then on to the next case. This is work! Basically, drill. And the results may not stick right away.

If others, all you experts, have better ways, or additional ways, would like to know. You could just keep on crunching, but I think it will be much faster if you systematize and drill.

​

 

[phreaker]

Work Part?

This is just my own plan, nobody has told me to do this. But:

I categorize F2L cases (situations), such as: the pair is joined up on the U face, there are I think six such situations, including the one ready to be inserted. Break them into: where is the white sticker? Further break into: are the other two colors on same face, or not?

...

Then on to the next case. This is work! Basically, drill. And the results may not stick right away.

If others, all you experts, have better ways, or additional ways, would like to know.

​

Have you seen videos on intuitive F2L? I learned from RiDO's hunting story, 2 part video.

Really, there's 3 cases total. Everything else is learning how to setup those cases. Try it out.

There's no doubt algorithmic F2L is better for hard cases, but for easy cases, there's no reason to learn it. Same as for BLD, you don't learn all the setup moves.. you learn how setup moves work, and then they make sense, then become muscle memory.

I still use the basics from RiDOs when I solve with ZZ One Handed today. And yes, the video is insanely cheesy. But it works.

I've heard good things about JPerm's video also:

Watching it, it looks pretty good... between them.. you should be F2L'n in no time flat .

Good luck!

 

[Old Tom]

Have you seen videos on intuitive F2L? I learned from RiDO's hunting story, 2 part video.

Really, there's 3 cases total. Everything else is learning how to setup those cases. Try it out.

There's no doubt algorithmic F2L is better for hard cases, but for easy cases, there's no reason to learn it. Same as for BLD, you don't learn all the setup moves.. you learn how setup moves work, and then they make sense, then become muscle memory.

I still use the basics from RiDOs when I solve with ZZ One Handed today. And yes, the video is insanely cheesy. But it works.

I've heard good things about JPerm's video also:

Watching it, it looks pretty good... between them.. you should be F2L'n in no time flat .

Good luck!

Yes, three main cases. And yes, it's all about converging on those cases. I'm doing that, definitely.

But, I'm subcategorizing the situation before that, thirty-plus cases, breaking them into types, and have noticed that there are common and intuitive paths within those types to get to the main three. That's what I'm working on now, recognizing them quickly and then (next step in plan) drilling to execute them quickly.

Hard cases, well yes, but at my level, not so much hard as long. I still do these cases intuitively, about 12 HMs or so. If I rote-memorize shorter but non-intuitive algs, I will save, what, maybe three or four HMs. I may get to where that's important, but not yet.

Videos are frustrating for me. I'm deaf, and most are not captioned, or are captioned poorly. Even when captioned well, I have to chose where to put my visual and mental energy: reading the captions, or watching the video, it all goes too fast to do both. Books and internet postings with text and diagrams are better for me. But thanks anyway.

 

[phreaker]

Yes, three main cases. And yes, it's all about converging on those cases. I'm doing that, definitely.

But, I'm subcategorizing the situation before that, thirty-plus cases, breaking them into types, and have noticed that there are common and intuitive paths within those types to get to the main three. That's what I'm working on now, recognizing them quickly and then (next step in plan) drilling to execute them quickly.

Hard cases, well yes, but at my level, not so much hard as long. I still do these cases intuitively, about 12 HMs or so. If I rote-memorize shorter but non-intuitive algs, I will save, what, maybe three or four HMs. I may get to where that's important, but not yet.

Man... I can't imagine what will happen when/if you take up blind solving... you've got the right attitude.

As far as hard cases go... I think the best advice I've seen: When you see you are about to create a hard case, make an extra move to avoid it. I've been trying to implement that, more and more recently.

 

[newtonbase]

Man... I can't imagine what will happen when/if you take up blind solving... you've got the right attitude.

I've thought the same. Might be worth going straight to comms.