Hououin Kyouma
Regular
I'm seeing a lot of people laughing at the idea of a sub-minute 7^3 solve as if it were LITERALLY impossible, comical to even contemplate regarding. Respectfully, I'm certain they will be proven wrong, but probably not until they have possibly lost interest in cubing anyway and consequently never hear about it. Here are some important, telling facts:
• People said the same thing about a sub-minute 5^3 single solve until Feliks did it. That was only around ten years ago (if you think ten years is a particularly long time, it's probably because you're on the younger side; in the overall scheme of things it's simply not, at all).
• Then people said, "Okay, yeah. We misjudged THIS time but obviously this could ACTUALLY never happen on a 6^3 though! We were barely wrong about 5^3 and that's only BARELY possible as is! Doing it on a 6^3 is just dumb to even think about!"
Max Park has entered the chat. Happened. Not just one "impossibility" but the next "impossibility". Both of these things happened in about a decade, all while perfectly logical and knowledgeable cubers felt it would outright never happen, and with some solid reasoning.
• Sub-20 4^3 single times were once called impossible. The AVERAGE is now sub-20. If someone had claimed to have something like a 14-second single on video back then, people wouldn't have even asked for proof because they would have felt the idea was SO farfetched that they could outright dismiss it, not unlike how we might react to someone claiming to have a sub-1 3^3 single today; it just seems obviously impossible, but that's how this did indeed seem at one point as well.
• I remember about 5 or 6 years before Lucas got the first sub-5 3^3 single world record. I was watching a video of some very experienced cubers and (if I recall) WCA delegates answering questions. One of the questions pertained to how low they saw the 3^3 single record ultimately going, even if in the very, very distant future. One of the older guys said something like, "Oh, I don't even like answering those type of questions anymore! LOL. We're always wrong, every single time. But you know what? I am willing to say no one will ever get under 5 seconds, in a competition at least, unless a totally new method comes along or something. Maybe close, but it's just too many moves. You know?"
There was a time when that was the general consensus. We now live in a world where low 2-second solves are starting to happen and a sub-5 AVERAGE (forget single) is slowly replacing the benchmark that sub-6 once was, just as sub-6 did sub-7.
I remember a time when Mats Valk was the second fastest in the world and hadn't even gotten sub-7 yet. We now live in a world where top-level cubers might even scowl at a high 4 if they feel like they messed something up. If I could go back in time just 10 years and tell people all this, they would think I was utterly insane. Or, perhaps more generously, they would have said they could see it, but not for another hundred years.
• As recently as during Felik's reign, the second fastest person was also once Alexander Lau. He's not even in the top 100 anymore. The entire top 100 is comprised of people who would have been considered at least second best in the world less than a decade ago. Let that sink in. Now imagine that Tymon and/or Max aren't/isn't even in the top 100 anymore and tell me what that future leaderboard must look like then.
Many people haven't seen things like this happen so many times and don't understand that speedcubing is actually still in its infancy, but the feeling of being close to the limit is how we have ALWAYS felt because even what we see in whatever current present seems so insane without anything better to compare it to. It's recency bias.
Technique for guitar playing has been developing for way longer and yet the same thing is still happening. Every generation is faster than the last and at the top we have people doing things once thought impossible like playing 32 notes per second, kids in their bedrooms that could take touring prodigies at the top of their game from 20 years ago to school.
Cubing is nowhere close to finished developing, especially not on bigger cubes where we're going to eventually see a bunch of fine motor skill prodigies in the same way we do in technical guitar and classical piano/violin. We'll also eventually encounter several savants. It's inevitable. There will be people simultaneously with much higher TPS than Ruihang and better lookahead than Max who solve more efficiently than Tymon because when they first picked up a cube, it was already outright EXPECTED that you start learning ZBLL, advanced pseudoslotting, etc. as early as you can if you even want a chance to be world class. It becomes a common goal like OLL and PLL instead of it being a newer phenomenon mostly explored only by the top cubers. Kids are already growing up idolizing Max and Tymon the same way those two would have looked at Feliks when they started. Every generation is boosted by the achievements of that before it. We stand on the shoulders of giants standing on the shoulders of giants, etc.
There are two things I can guarantee you. A sub-minute 7^3 will eventually happen, and so will a sub-4 3^3 average. I feel utterly crazy even saying it myself, but when I look at the history, statistics, and trajectory, if I treat it how I would any other prediction based in maths, I'm forced to see how foolish and arrogant it would be to decide we're finally right THIS time when we go through this over and OVER. People simply forget somehow. Until we're talking about times as insane as what a 20-move solve would look like with 15TPS or so, we really have no idea where times will go for now besides that they're definitely not going up.
As hard as it is to imagine, and a little sad to accept in a way, the top 10 probably won't even be in the top 100 within 20 years at this rate, and I think both of these things will happen well before that. It's just the beginning.
• People said the same thing about a sub-minute 5^3 single solve until Feliks did it. That was only around ten years ago (if you think ten years is a particularly long time, it's probably because you're on the younger side; in the overall scheme of things it's simply not, at all).
• Then people said, "Okay, yeah. We misjudged THIS time but obviously this could ACTUALLY never happen on a 6^3 though! We were barely wrong about 5^3 and that's only BARELY possible as is! Doing it on a 6^3 is just dumb to even think about!"
Max Park has entered the chat. Happened. Not just one "impossibility" but the next "impossibility". Both of these things happened in about a decade, all while perfectly logical and knowledgeable cubers felt it would outright never happen, and with some solid reasoning.
• Sub-20 4^3 single times were once called impossible. The AVERAGE is now sub-20. If someone had claimed to have something like a 14-second single on video back then, people wouldn't have even asked for proof because they would have felt the idea was SO farfetched that they could outright dismiss it, not unlike how we might react to someone claiming to have a sub-1 3^3 single today; it just seems obviously impossible, but that's how this did indeed seem at one point as well.
• I remember about 5 or 6 years before Lucas got the first sub-5 3^3 single world record. I was watching a video of some very experienced cubers and (if I recall) WCA delegates answering questions. One of the questions pertained to how low they saw the 3^3 single record ultimately going, even if in the very, very distant future. One of the older guys said something like, "Oh, I don't even like answering those type of questions anymore! LOL. We're always wrong, every single time. But you know what? I am willing to say no one will ever get under 5 seconds, in a competition at least, unless a totally new method comes along or something. Maybe close, but it's just too many moves. You know?"
There was a time when that was the general consensus. We now live in a world where low 2-second solves are starting to happen and a sub-5 AVERAGE (forget single) is slowly replacing the benchmark that sub-6 once was, just as sub-6 did sub-7.
I remember a time when Mats Valk was the second fastest in the world and hadn't even gotten sub-7 yet. We now live in a world where top-level cubers might even scowl at a high 4 if they feel like they messed something up. If I could go back in time just 10 years and tell people all this, they would think I was utterly insane. Or, perhaps more generously, they would have said they could see it, but not for another hundred years.
• As recently as during Felik's reign, the second fastest person was also once Alexander Lau. He's not even in the top 100 anymore. The entire top 100 is comprised of people who would have been considered at least second best in the world less than a decade ago. Let that sink in. Now imagine that Tymon and/or Max aren't/isn't even in the top 100 anymore and tell me what that future leaderboard must look like then.
Many people haven't seen things like this happen so many times and don't understand that speedcubing is actually still in its infancy, but the feeling of being close to the limit is how we have ALWAYS felt because even what we see in whatever current present seems so insane without anything better to compare it to. It's recency bias.
Technique for guitar playing has been developing for way longer and yet the same thing is still happening. Every generation is faster than the last and at the top we have people doing things once thought impossible like playing 32 notes per second, kids in their bedrooms that could take touring prodigies at the top of their game from 20 years ago to school.
Cubing is nowhere close to finished developing, especially not on bigger cubes where we're going to eventually see a bunch of fine motor skill prodigies in the same way we do in technical guitar and classical piano/violin. We'll also eventually encounter several savants. It's inevitable. There will be people simultaneously with much higher TPS than Ruihang and better lookahead than Max who solve more efficiently than Tymon because when they first picked up a cube, it was already outright EXPECTED that you start learning ZBLL, advanced pseudoslotting, etc. as early as you can if you even want a chance to be world class. It becomes a common goal like OLL and PLL instead of it being a newer phenomenon mostly explored only by the top cubers. Kids are already growing up idolizing Max and Tymon the same way those two would have looked at Feliks when they started. Every generation is boosted by the achievements of that before it. We stand on the shoulders of giants standing on the shoulders of giants, etc.
There are two things I can guarantee you. A sub-minute 7^3 will eventually happen, and so will a sub-4 3^3 average. I feel utterly crazy even saying it myself, but when I look at the history, statistics, and trajectory, if I treat it how I would any other prediction based in maths, I'm forced to see how foolish and arrogant it would be to decide we're finally right THIS time when we go through this over and OVER. People simply forget somehow. Until we're talking about times as insane as what a 20-move solve would look like with 15TPS or so, we really have no idea where times will go for now besides that they're definitely not going up.
As hard as it is to imagine, and a little sad to accept in a way, the top 10 probably won't even be in the top 100 within 20 years at this rate, and I think both of these things will happen well before that. It's just the beginning.
