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Older cubers discussions

Nir1213

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Hi Guys,

My name is Marcel, 42 years old. I have learned to solve the cube at age 11 - 12 or so. I had not touched a cube a maybe 15 - 20 years. A few weeks ago I solved a cube and found it very nice to see that I still knew how to do that. When I looked at youtube I found amazing stuff from you speedsolvers. I thought it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. I solved the cube in a layer by layer which could take up to 10 minutes.

So when I decided that I want to be much faster. I ordered a few cubes. The Dayan Zhianchi and Guhong. I looked at these video's:



And in one week I went from solving times of 10 minutes to below 2 minutes. In fact I have a video of a 1.30 solve:


My goal is to get below one minute. Right now I have not focussed on OLL and PLL. I just need to get the 2FL much quicker. I recon in a few weeks times must be a lot better.

Cheers!
Funny, because i have the same goal. Im trying to get sub 1 minute average, my average right now i 1 min and 30 sec. My PB is 1 minute and 12 sec.
anyway, I hope you achieve your goal! Keep practicing! :)
 

Jason Green

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Funny, because i have the same goal. Im trying to get sub 1 minute average, my average right now i 1 min and 30 sec. My PB is 1 minute and 12 sec.
anyway, I hope you achieve your goal! Keep practicing! :)
Marcel got to about a 17 second average I believe. This thread was a huge inspiration to many of us older cubers, but there is a lot more activity on the Senior Cubers Worldwide Facebook group now a days!
 

Nmile7300

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Im not solving here or anything, im just saying congrats! :)
Ok I quoted the wrong post, this is what I meant to quote:
Funny, because i have the same goal. Im trying to get sub 1 minute average, my average right now i 1 min and 30 sec. My PB is 1 minute and 12 sec.
anyway, I hope you achieve your goal! Keep practicing! :)
This doesn't belong in the thread, please just don't post here.

EDIT: Yes this is kind of hypocritical for me to post here telling this person not to, but @Nir1213 you are not an older cuber and therefore you should be having discussions in a different thread.
 
Last edited:

zinzan8

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I finally had time to sit down and figure out what I did to get the PLL skip. It's just one of those lucky things where A) I saw my pairs quickly without much pausing and B) my odd, accidental choice of dealing with the third pair was key to getting the lucky skip.

B2 F2 R2 U2 B2 U2 B2 R' U2 R D2 U F R F' L F D F // Scramble
x2 // Inspection


L D' (L R') F2 D' // Cross
U L U' L' U' L U2 L' // First pair
U R U' R' y U R U' R' // Second pair
U L U2 L' y' U L' U2 L // Third pair *
U2 (R U' R') U2 (R U' R') // Last pair
U M' U' R U R' U' R' F R F' U2 M // AUF/OLL
U2 // AUF

Thanks for this. I am a just a sub50 54yo cuber, and I need to do more of this—checking out other people’s solves, particular on cross and F2L. This was a good one.
 

pglewis

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Thanks for this. I am a just a sub50 54yo cuber, and I need to do more of this—checking out other people’s solves, particular on cross and F2L. This was a good one.

I'm 52 and was averaging in the :50s when I discovered this thread and I have stubbornly worked my way down to the low :20s now. I can't say my solve is a great example solve, especially that 3rd F2L pair. Like a lot of personal best singles it was luck and a little bit of a fluke.

Do you do F2L or layer by layer? If you do F2L I can definitely suggest learning the very basics of edge orientation if you don't already. Recognizing the orientation of the edge in your pair is the best way I know to determine if you should rotate or not. Besides the lucky PLL skip, the one good thing I can say about my reconstruction is I only had two rotations during the solve.
 

zinzan8

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I'm 52 and was averaging in the :50s when I discovered this thread and I have stubbornly worked my way down to the low :20s now. I can't say my solve is a great example solve, especially that 3rd F2L pair. Like a lot of personal best singles it was luck and a little bit of a fluke.

Do you do F2L or layer by layer? If you do F2L I can definitely suggest learning the very basics of edge orientation if you don't already. Recognizing the orientation of the edge in your pair is the best way I know to determine if you should rotate or not. Besides the lucky PLL skip, the one good thing I can say about my reconstruction is I only had two rotations during the solve.

Yeah, I get that you missed the easier/faster 3rd pair, and stumbled into good fortune. I just meant following along with someone can help me see through others eyes, and what they see next, and that will help me in my own pair recognition. And yep, seeing how you avoided rotations is also very educational for me.

I use CFOP. I do one look PLLs, but mostly 2L OLLs. Just picking up some add’l algs here and there.

You’re quite a success story in my book. I’ll be pleased when I get my first sub 30 solve, and my goal is a sub 35 avg with regular sub 30s.
 

pglewis

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Yeah, I get that you missed the easier/faster 3rd pair, and stumbled into good fortune. I just meant following along with someone can help me see through others eyes, and what they see next, and that will help me in my own pair recognition. And yep, seeing how you avoided rotations is also very educational for me.

I use CFOP. I do one look PLLs, but mostly 2L OLLs. Just picking up some add’l algs here and there.

You’re quite a success story in my book. I’ll be pleased when I get my first sub 30 solve, and my goal is a sub 35 avg with regular sub 30s.

You're in a good place as far as algorithms learned. I'm only recently able to say I know full OLL-- for about the fourth time since I continually forget a few-- and when the timer is running I still sometimes resort to 2-look on a handful of cases that cause me to pause for memory recall.

The good news: you'll probably find sub :30 to be very achievable if you stick with it. Sub :20 seemed like an insane goal for me way back when and now I view it as inevitable if I can keep my practice routine and patiently hammer away at it.

The bad news: the goalposts just never stop moving :D. I'm not even reliably sub :20 and I'm already looking forward to attacking sub :15. It takes a :16 or better to even get a reaction nowadays and yet I can still vividly remember jumping out of my chair over my first sub :30. Welcome to our little insanity!
 

pglewis

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By the way @zinzan8: there is a Facebook group named "Senior Cubers Worldwide" that is very active right now. I still love this thread and keep an eye on notifications but much of the activity that used to take place here has moved over there.
 

StanMan

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Is there a specific age limit for this forum? I'm in my mid 40's, old enough to remember the early years of the cubing fad. That probably makes me old by cubing standards. Picked it up pretty much for the first time 2 years ago and haven't stopped since.
 

zinzan8

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Is there a specific age limit for this forum? I'm in my mid 40's, old enough to remember the early years of the cubing fad. That probably makes me old by cubing standards. Picked it up pretty much for the first time 2 years ago and haven't stopped since.

The OP of this thread was 42 when he created it many years ago. Yes, by cubing standards, you are on the older side... but nothing wrong with that! Your times are impressive to me! I’m averaging sub-50, shooting for sub-30, but I’ve got a long way to go.
 

One Wheel

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Is there a specific age limit for this forum? I'm in my mid 40's, old enough to remember the early years of the cubing fad. That probably makes me old by cubing standards. Picked it up pretty much for the first time 2 years ago and haven't stopped since.
I'm 33, which puts me between most of the guys on this thread and most cubers. Nobody's kicked me out of here yet!
 

StanMan

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Alright, thanks, I'll stick around. Yes, thanks zinzan8, I'm currently pursuing the goal of generally doing sub-20s solves. I only completed the process of learning the full set of CFOP algs recently, over the summer, a task that took me about a year to complete. That helps considerably with solve times, allowing me to focus on refining my F2L and cross solves and my lookahead. And having done that I can say with confidence that I'm a speedcuber... not sure how specifically it's defined but to me that was the key step. How far along are you in the solving journey as far as method is concerned? I don't personally know anyone who is faster than myself, but I have a nephew I taught a bit and encouraged to do so, who is learning the full CFOP and he will almost certainly surpass me before long. He's schoolaged so he can pull off the "certifiable genius" effect in his solves, which are just past sub-60s currently.
However, I'm currently "laying off" on my cubing somewhat, treating it as more of an aside, because I've already achieved my personal goals in the matter and it's a path of diminishing returns.
Thought I'd check out the solving community a bit since I hadn't done that yet. Every now and then I'd bump into a speedcuber in a mall or on public transit who'd see me solving and we'd have an enthusiastic chat. Only one of whom was in the 20s range. He had a backpack full of cubes and said he competed sometimes.
 

One Wheel

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How far along are you in the solving journey as far as method is concerned?

I use intuitive f2l, 1.7 look OLL, and full PLL with a few alternate algs. I really want to get better at blind solving, and have all the theoretical knowledge to solve everything at least up to 5x5 blindfolded, but my 3BLD success rate is between 10-20%, depending on the day, and I've only gotten a few 4BLD successes. Mostly I solve big cubes, especially 6x6.
 

StanMan

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Blindfolded, hey. That's quite the challenge. It involves its own set of algs, doesn't it. I've always wondered if anyone does 3x3 using CFOP blindfolded, kind of with "photographic memory".
 

One Wheel

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Blindfolded, hey. That's quite the challenge. It involves its own set of algs, doesn't it. I've always wondered if anyone does 3x3 using CFOP blindfolded, kind of with "photographic memory".
It's been done, but it's much harder. The basic beginner's "OP" method just uses PLL algorithms with setup moves, and it's really not that hard to learn. M2 is worth learning for edges, though.
 

pglewis

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The over-forty contingent (I'm 52) is obviously much smaller than the youth contingent in this hobby but it has become increasingly active in the past year or two.

As far as what qualifies one as a "speedsolver", the only requirement to me is that someone is regularly timing their solves with the goal of getting faster vs. a casual solver who could care less about their times or improving their method. Neither is more or less valid to me, this is a hobby and we do it to have fun, it's all about what you enjoy.

Blindfolded, hey. That's quite the challenge. It involves its own set of algs, doesn't it. I've always wondered if anyone does 3x3 using CFOP blindfolded, kind of with "photographic memory".

This thread has become a lot less active since the inception of the "Senior Cubers Worldwide" group on Facebook but it used to be relatively heavy with blindfold discussion. I had no interest in blindfold solving when I first jumped in here but the conversation eventually stoked enough interest for me to tackle it. Even though I haven't done a blind solve in AGES I still consider two of my biggest accomplishments in this hobby to be my first successful 3-bld solve and my one and only official 3-bld success at a competition.
 
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