Learning from the Pros: What data can tell us about solving the cube efficiently and fast

[abunickabhi]

https://speedcubedb.com/features/4/

Except from the article: Solving the cube as a craft has evolved over the past 40 years and as people have studied and trained to solve it ever faster, a body of knowledge has started to take shape. The past 10 years have seen the time necessary to solve the cube plunge to a handful of seconds, while the amount of know-how has skyrocketed. A body of data has started to form, as databases of algorithms, but also reconstructions of eminent solves have been gathered into repositories for the cubing community. Foremost among these, www.speedcubedb.com now comprises thousands of algorithms for many puzzles and events, and several thousands of solves by the fastest cubers in the world. Read the full article here.

Amazing work by Basilio Noris, Gils, Stuart, Anto, Ben, Feliks and Phillip. Many more cool cubing tools to come on speedcubedb.com

Happy Cubing!

 

[Cubing Forever]

I have one contradiction to this. When you're using an already efficient method such as Roux, you can be faster while being efficient.
Other than that, Nice article!!

 

[Kit Clement]

I have one contradiction to this. When you're using an already efficient method such as Roux, you can be faster while being efficient.
Other than that, Nice article!!

This analysis is only looking at CFOP solves, so that's not really a contradiction to the conclusions they are making.

 

[Cubing Forever]

Alright I have another one. Why is BR the most preferred first pair when it clearly should be BL?

 

[qwr]

I saw @SpeedCubeReview posted about this and I love stats like this.

The most interesting takeaway I think is the one about keeping simple inserts into F2L. I see a lot of F2L tricks to avoid rotations, some of which are kind of ridiculous to recognize and execute quickly. I think there was a Jayden video where he said it's ok to rotate if it's necessary. I sometimes try to incorporate wide f inserts but I am much slower at doing that and maybe it's not worth it. Jayden also has a quote like "why do a quick insert and a dot OLL when you can do complex edge-control and lockup and a not much faster non-dot OLL" which is funny and rings true here.



Some of the data visualizations are a little questionable. Like was this pie chart really meaningful?

And who tf got a 6-7 sec solve with <2 tps?? That's like a 13 move solution. I genuinely think that's a mistake.

 

[scrubizilla]

I have a question, what does all the "gen" mean

 

[DNF_Cuber]

I have a question, what does all the "gen" mean

how many sides get moved in a solve/alg like RU is 2 gen and RUF is 3 gen (But RUD and others can be too

 

[abunickabhi]

I saw @SpeedCubeReview posted about this and I love stats like this.

The most interesting takeaway I think is the one about keeping simple inserts into F2L. I see a lot of F2L tricks to avoid rotations, some of which are kind of ridiculous to recognize and execute quickly. I think there was a Jayden video where he said it's ok to rotate if it's necessary. I sometimes try to incorporate wide f inserts but I am much slower at doing that and maybe it's not worth it. Jayden also has a quote like "why do a quick insert and a dot OLL when you can do complex edge-control and lockup and a not much faster non-dot OLL" which is funny and rings true here.



Some of the data visualizations are a little questionable. Like was this pie chart really meaningful?
View attachment 15175

And who tf got a 6-7 sec solve with <2 tps?? That's like a 13 move solution. I genuinely think that's a mistake.

View attachment 15177

Yes some of the visualization is not neat and questionable. There is definitely room for improvement before the author makes his second post.

 

[Kit Clement]

And who tf got a 6-7 sec solve with <2 tps?? That's like a 13 move solution. I genuinely think that's a mistake.

Yup, they confirmed it was an entry error:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cubers/comments/m53pt7/_/gqypyyf

 

[qwr]

yeah that's the good thing about catching outliers. you either fix a mistake or get an example of a truly exceptional solve!