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Older cubers discussions

SpartanSailor

Member
Joined
May 21, 2016
Messages
730
WCA
2016DUEH02
Another comp from this weekend. http://cubecomps.com/live.php?cid=3961&compid=48
Was happiest about sub-10:00 4BLD. Wasn't sure I could do that in comp.
Got a OPWR (old people world record) with a lucky skewb single (4.34). Had a +2 in the average.
A non-lucky sub-16 3x3 single, but sub-20 average still eludes me. Second round, did the wrong PLL on one solve, and put multiple F2L pairs in the wrong slot on two solves.
Had a decent 3BLD success. The two DNF's were in the 2:10's, one was 3 corners, one was 3 edges.
One bad round of clock, one good round of clock, 2nd best avg and single.
Still don't care about OH, but got PBs there.
If I managed a 4BLD success in ANY time, I’d be super excited. Well done. Looks like a decent overall weekend at the competition.
 

openseas

Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2015
Messages
425
WCA
2015PARK24
Another comp from this weekend. http://cubecomps.com/live.php?cid=3961&compid=48
Was happiest about sub-10:00 4BLD. Wasn't sure I could do that in comp.
Got a OPWR (old people world record) with a lucky skewb single (4.34). Had a +2 in the average.
A non-lucky sub-16 3x3 single, but sub-20 average still eludes me. Second round, did the wrong PLL on one solve, and put multiple F2L pairs in the wrong slot on two solves.
Had a decent 3BLD success. The two DNF's were in the 2:10's, one was 3 corners, one was 3 edges.
One bad round of clock, one good round of clock, 2nd best avg and single.
Still don't care about OH, but got PBs there.

Great job! and nice 4BLD result!
 

One Wheel

Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
2,883
Location
Wisconsin
WCA
2016BAIR04
My at-home 6x6 is making up for the official disappointment: Just finished a 4:10.02 Ao5 with a 4:06.34 Mo3.

1. (3:56.38) @2019-02-07 11:28:53
2. 4:06.57 @2019-02-07 11:36:34
3. 4:16.06 @2019-02-07 22:00:20
4. 4:07.43 @2019-02-07 22:05:58
5. (4:40.73) @2019-02-07 22:20:18

I just saw the Great Lakes Championship in May. It's sorely tempting. I am likely to be busy planting corn, or getting ready to, about then, but if I just took Friday I could 4BLD, 5BLD, FMC, and Feet. Surely I could get big blind down my then. It's probably not worth the $50 plus the trip to Madison, but it is tempting.
 

SpartanSailor

Member
Joined
May 21, 2016
Messages
730
WCA
2016DUEH02
had another opportunity to choke, I mean compete this weekend. Seems like it’s just my lot in life to have bad 3x3 and 4x4 performance in competition.

This weekend’s comp was a rare one I Which I competed in every event. I need to update my event preference on the WCA site, because I’m not terribly interested in skewb anymore and pyra just hasn’t become anything that I’ve decided to focus on (not yet anyway).

I think I’m going to take time off from my 4x4 focus. I’ve been wanting an official sub-1:10 average for awhile and can do it at home, but managed to screw it all up and get 1:20 yesterday. That’s fine, I’m not upset—my take away is I’ve been focusing on too many events to make any real improvements in the ones that are important to me.

With the updated qualifying times for US 2019 Nationals, I have qualifying times for a few events and in my “dream” world I’d also qualify in 3BLD, 444 and 555. Of those, there no way I can do 444 and 555. Honesty, 555 is completely out of the question and my recent 444 trend suggests the level of effort needed exceeds my capacity to prepare.

Leaving me with, my favourite anyway, 3BLD. Rather than chase arbitrary improvements in multiple events, I’ve decided that my real goal is to compete 3BLD at Nationals. With that in mind, I think you can guess where I will divert all my practice focus. I have a comp this weekend, Feb 16, with 3BLD. Three attempts. If not sub-3, there are 2 more comps in March within a drivable distance, March 16 and again March 30. That’s 6 weeks leading up to March 30. I’m pretty confident that I can get an official sub-3 with 3BLD by then.

That’s the goal!
 

SpartanSailor

Member
Joined
May 21, 2016
Messages
730
WCA
2016DUEH02
My at-home 6x6 is making up for the official disappointment: Just finished a 4:10.02 Ao5 with a 4:06.34 Mo3.

1. (3:56.38) @2019-02-07 11:28:53
2. 4:06.57 @2019-02-07 11:36:34
3. 4:16.06 @2019-02-07 22:00:20
4. 4:07.43 @2019-02-07 22:05:58
5. (4:40.73) @2019-02-07 22:20:18

I just saw the Great Lakes Championship in May. It's sorely tempting. I am likely to be busy planting corn, or getting ready to, about then, but if I just took Friday I could 4BLD, 5BLD, FMC, and Feet. Surely I could get big blind down my then. It's probably not worth the $50 plus the trip to Madison, but it is tempting.
Wow! That’s some good 6x6 work there! I struggle to get under 6:00 still. Someday I’ll take the time to get good with bigger cubes. I’d like to, it just takes SO long to practice those—especially when it takes so long to solve it just once.

Nice work. Any chance you’re going to Nationals in Baltimore this year?
 
Last edited:

One Wheel

Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
2,883
Location
Wisconsin
WCA
2016BAIR04
Any chance you’re going to Nationals in Baltimore this year?

No, I’m afraid. It’s hard enough to get away from the farm to go to a close by competition, Baltimore is much too far away to be worth it. That’s why I organize comps: so I can hold them close enough that I can get there to compete.
 

pglewis

Member
Joined
Sep 23, 2016
Messages
1,268
Location
Cincinnati
WCA
2016LEWI07
Life sometimes:

ao5.png

I've done some cross+1 drills over the past few days and I may already be seeing an impact on my fastest times. Those lousy solves were both botched crosses trying to look-ahead more. That 16 was a true full-step and just a product of finding all pairs quickly and friendly but 2 look LL.
 

xyzzy

Member
Joined
Dec 24, 2015
Messages
2,876
I figured out how to record me solving, so I recorded a fairly typical 6x6 solve. I’m surprised at my turning speed when I do turn, and at how long and frequent my pauses are.
If I were to reconstruct the full solve and analyse it in detail, I could probably find 20+ mistakes, but just watching this at normal speed, your solve seemed to be fine overall.

(i) For the last two centres, don't solve the inner bars first. Do a 2×4 on the left, then the remaining inner bar, then the remaining outer bar. This avoids the situation where you need to use multiple commutators to solve the stray centre pieces at the end.

(ii) During edge pairing, it looks like you're holding the cube with the sliced centres on the S slice (U, R, D, L) rather than the E slice (F, R, B, L). I don't know if this is just an artifact of the camera angle you used, though. In any case, S-slice is super bad because you have to rotate almost every time you insert an edge; with M-slice or E-slice edge pairing, you only need to rotate to deal with "misoriented" edges.

(iii) In L4E you're constantly rotating between having the edges on M and having the edges on S. As above, by sticking to E-only or M-only, you can reduce the number of rotations used a lot.

(iv) The FU moves on the last F2L pair are… interesting. I think most people would consider doing a y' rotation to convert it to RU 2-gen, but this isn't a big deal.

(v) Yikes, that U perm. Just because you can do M slices on magnetic big cubes doesn't mean you should. (I'm not sure if the R2 you did at the start was because you were going to execute the RU alg, but weren't confident in it.)
 

SpartanSailor

Member
Joined
May 21, 2016
Messages
730
WCA
2016DUEH02
Did some 3BLD practice last night. Had a string of DNFs... until I walk off and sat on the couch where I got a couple successes—but not timed.

The bad: all DNFs. Not really terrible, but I’d like a success

The good: everything was 2:30 except the one when I completely forgot my memo and stopped the timer at 1:50. The other “good” was most of those DNFs were a single flipped edge that I missed in memo. So, memo was good, tracing was the issue.

Next steps: focus on tracing and continue pushing memo.
 

SpartanSailor

Member
Joined
May 21, 2016
Messages
730
WCA
2016DUEH02
I figured out how to record me solving, so I recorded a fairly typical 6x6 solve. I’m surprised at my turning speed when I do turn, and at how long and frequent my pauses are.

Good job. Someday I’ll be able to solve 6x6 that fast, but for now, I’ll live vicariously through your speed improvements.
 

Sergey

Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2018
Messages
288
May anybody explain me "cumulative limit" at comps? The question is about what will be stored in WCA profile in case of not passing those limit. F.e. cumulative limit is 20 mins and attempts are 5:20-5:00-10:05, or 9:10-5:50-5:05.
 

SpartanSailor

Member
Joined
May 21, 2016
Messages
730
WCA
2016DUEH02
May anybody explain me "cumulative limit" at comps? The question is about what will be stored in WCA profile in case of not passing those limit. F.e. cumulative limit is 20 mins and attempts are 5:20-5:00-10:05, or 9:10-5:50-5:05.
The cumulative limit is the total time allowed for all attempts.

To follow your example, if the cumulative limit is 20 mins and your first two attempts are 5:20 and 5:00, then you only have 9:40 to complete your third attempt. In the case that it took 10:05, as your example, then you would be awarded a DNF for the third attempt.

Likewise for your second example, you would have missed by 5 seconds on the third attempt and would be awarded a DNF.

In neither example would you receive a mean of three due to the final being officially a DNF.

I don’t think the database distinguishes between running out of time and an unsuccessful attempt.

My local comps favour a 10 min cumulative 3BLD limit. Which is fine for me to get 2 valid attempts but adds a lot of pressure if I want to get a mean of 3. So, even if I get 3:30 and 3:30, I would then be allowed 3:00 for my final attempt. Anything more would DNF.
 

Sergey

Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2018
Messages
288
The cumulative limit is the total time allowed for all attempts.

To follow your example, if the cumulative limit is 20 mins and your first two attempts are 5:20 and 5:00, then you only have 9:40 to complete your third attempt. In the case that it took 10:05, as your example, then you would be awarded a DNF for the third attempt.

Likewise for your second example, you would have missed by 5 seconds on the third attempt and would be awarded a DNF.

In neither example would you receive a mean of three due to the final being officially a DNF.

I don’t think the database distinguishes between running out of time and an unsuccessful attempt.

My local comps favour a 10 min cumulative 3BLD limit. Which is fine for me to get 2 valid attempts but adds a lot of pressure if I want to get a mean of 3. So, even if I get 3:30 and 3:30, I would then be allowed 3:00 for my final attempt. Anything more would DNF.
Thanks! The meaning of the cumulative limit is quite understandable. Does this means that there will be single DNF for the event in the profile?
 
Last edited:

Sergey

Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2018
Messages
288
Thanks! The meaning of the cumulative limit is quite understandable. Does this means that there will be single DNF for the event in the profile?
I think yes. Similarly to the single attempt time limit. The difference is that you have an opportunity to maneuver to pass limit within several attempts instead of one.
 

One Wheel

Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
2,883
Location
Wisconsin
WCA
2016BAIR04
If I were to reconstruct the full solve and analyse it in detail, I could probably find 20+ mistakes, but just watching this at normal speed, your solve seemed to be fine overall.

(i) For the last two centres, don't solve the inner bars first. Do a 2×4 on the left, then the remaining inner bar, then the remaining outer bar. This avoids the situation where you need to use multiple commutators to solve the stray centre pieces at the end.

(ii) During edge pairing, it looks like you're holding the cube with the sliced centres on the S slice (U, R, D, L) rather than the E slice (F, R, B, L). I don't know if this is just an artifact of the camera angle you used, though. In any case, S-slice is super bad because you have to rotate almost every time you insert an edge; with M-slice or E-slice edge pairing, you only need to rotate to deal with "misoriented" edges.

(iii) In L4E you're constantly rotating between having the edges on M and having the edges on S. As above, by sticking to E-only or M-only, you can reduce the number of rotations used a lot.

(iv) The FU moves on the last F2L pair are… interesting. I think most people would consider doing a y' rotation to convert it to RU 2-gen, but this isn't a big deal.

(v) Yikes, that U perm. Just because you can do M slices on magnetic big cubes doesn't mean you should. (I'm not sure if the R2 you did at the start was because you were going to execute the RU alg, but weren't confident in it.)
Thanks! This is some fantastic feedback!

The S vs. E slice pairing is I think more an issue of rotating the cube to look for pieces, but I will try to pay more attention to that.

F-moves in F2L: an artifact of consciously trying to reduce cube rotations for 3x3. You’re right that a rotation is the better option here.

MU vs. RU U-perm: I use the MU Ua-perm for all cubes, but for 5-7 I usually use the RU Ub-perm. In this case I started the Ub, then realized it was the wrong one. I know the mirror for the RU Ua-perm, but not the inverse. I’ll time myself doing a few of each and see how much difference it makes.
 
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