Time to bring the quality of this competition down.
Sorry, Michael, but I can't resist a competition, no matter how bad I am at it.
I did them all!
2x2x2: 1:07.78, 1:11.26, 48.98, (2:07.97), 39.48, 47.50, 1:16.81, 1:40.33, 36.16, 49.58, (26.95), 27.17 =
56.505
Comment: Yes! Sub-minute! On a 2x2x2. How pathetic. It's starting to get a little better, though.
3x3x3: 2:14.87, (4:06.47), 2:44.69, 1:32.06, 1:47.47, 1:50.95, 1:49.61, 1:55.42, (1:30.89), 2:28.94, 1:40.66, 1:32.11 =
1:57.678
Comment: Not even any real sign of improvement. Very sad.
4x4x4: (9:54.93), 6:03.01, 9:17.83 (OP), 8:46.38 (OP), (5:01.07) =
8:02.406
Comment: My first 5 successful 4x4x4 computer solves ever, I think. Wow, 7x7x7 is going to take a LOOOOONG time!
(And I shudder to think what gigaminx will be like.)
5x5x5: (14:09.66), 11:00.63, 9:59.76, (8:45.14), 9:19.95 =
10:06.78
Comment: Aww, almost sub-10.
6x6x6: 25:13.94, 20:49.05 (P), (17:33.76), 18:07.20 (P), (26:24.24) (OP) =
21:23.3967
Comment: I thought I was starting to get better at it, and then I hit OLL parity on the last solve. It took me four tries to get it right.
7x7x7: (30:32.69), 23:32.51, 21:33.77, 20:21.75, (18:24.67) =
21:49.3433
Comment: Aww, almost beat my 6x6x6 time! Since the color schemes are so unfamiliar to me, evens are much harder for me than odds. And I finally started figuring out a good way to avoid handshifting, which really sped me up. After all this practice on the big cubes, my 3x3x3 times are going to be LOTS better next month!
3x3x3 BLD: DNF, 8:45.77, 6:15.32 (2:41), 5:50.32 (2:30), DNF =
5:50.32
Comment: I used Ryan Heise's old simulator that supports BLD. It was very frustrating to use because there's no way to see where you went wrong when you mess up. But it sure is thrilling when it lights up after you successfully solve it! I did about 7 DNFs before I finally got a succesful solve (until I got one, I was starting to think maybe it was broken - "Surely that one wasn't a DNF!"
), and after that first successful solve, I did these five. It's also much harder not having a way to do a B or B' turn. That really hurts.
Clock (3x3): (1:18.58), 1:01.73, 59.27, 48.58, 53.48, 50.41, 45.37, 36.58, 44.31, 38.87, 39.00, (34.20) =
47.76
Comment: At least I improved as I went.
Clock (5x5): (10:53.16), 7:09.27, 5:11.70, 3:35.71, 2:48.06, 2:31.53, 2:39.25, 2:39.93, 2:33.68, (2:06.40), 2:23.38, 2:24.00 =
3:23.651
Comment: Umm, so you can see I actually figured out how to solve the thing around solve 5. As you can probably guess, these were my first 12 ever 5x5 clock attempts.
Dino Cube: (9:45), 9:03, 3:09, 2:03, 2:57, 6:14, 1:47, 1:34, 1:20, 1:03, 2:51, (37) =
3:12.10
Comment: My first 12 tries at a dino cube. I finally started to understand a proper way to solve it towards the end. I still get so confused with which direction it's going to turn when I click it.
Gigaminx: 59:48, 44:31, 38:45 =
47:41.333
Comment: Wow, this wasn't as hard as I expected it to be. I quickly discovered that AVG edgematching works fantastically well on gigaminx; that made it so easy. The problem was I was trying to do it the same way you do AVG on 5x5x5, which is a mistake because it's so hard to find those little middle edge pieces. I realize now I should do things with a floating buffer, so I don't have to look for the little bitty pieces. (Pick a middle edge, then find the wing to go with it.) I was very happy though that I got 8th place on gelatinbrain for fewest moves; AVG is very efficient on gigaminx!
Helicopter Cube: (56:49), 15:55, 9:02, (8:05), 10:19 =
11:50.333
Comment: Wow - being able to throw out first and last really helps on this one! I'm afraid I'll forget all my algorithms by next month.
Megaminx: (36:20), 13:09, 12:03, 12:23, (10:44) =
12:31.667
Comment: I did the first one with jfly's sim. Then I realized I couldn't handle that, and besides, if there's any hope of me doing gigaminx, it will be with gelatinbrain, so I might as well get used to it, so I switched to gelatinbrain. As frustrating as it is that the mouse clicks on gelatinbrain seem intuitively backwards to me (Was it written by a left-hander? It seems like I choose the wrong direction 90% of the time, unless I consciously think about it), I'm still much better with the mouse than with the keyboard. I noticed that my last time would put me 26th if I had logged in and submitted it (I guess I should have done that - I'll start doing it now), and my move count was actually 232 - 16th place!
Pyraminx: 7:30.98, 1:13.83, 50.84, 2:39.60, 27.41, (6.44), 2:51.51, 54.93, 16.56, 2:55.28, 1:53.43, (DNS) =
2:09.437
Comment: I felt like I needed to use jfly's sim because it felt like cheating to not use the tips. (I know Michael said it was okay, but I still wanted to do the tips.) But I have a terrible time being unable to rotate it. For Pyraminx, I just can't think through them; all my algorithms are in muscle memory only, since I practice it so little. The sub-minute solves required the algorithms I know how to do with fixed orientation; the others required me using the mouse to drag the puzzle into a position where I could see it, and then playing with the keys until I could figure out which key went with which tip.
Skewb: (49:31), 43:54, 36:42, 3:49, 3:25, 2:04, 1:34, 3:12, 2:21, (1:15), 2:05, 1:21 =
10:02.70
Comment: Guess where I finally figured out a system?
I knew from something I had heard before that skewb was a lot like pyraminx. I really just lucked into the first solve - I solved 4 corners plus centers (like I would on a pyraminx), and the other 4 corners just happened to be right. Really outrageously lucky. For the second solve, I knew how to solve the first 4 corners plus centers right away, but didn't get lucky. So for a while I just scrambled and tried again, over and over. By the end of that solve, I figured out how to do 2 2-cycles of the remaining corners, ignoring orientation. So then I got lucky and the orientation eventually came out. On the third one, I finally decided I needed to find a way to twist two corners when I had just two corners twisted. So I started trying things and eventually found a long, tedious algorithm for that. After that, it was easy.
Now I guess I need to learn a more speedsolving-friendly way to solve it. But it was fun figuring it out.
Square-1: (4:35.96), 2:06.34, 1:57.85, (1:35.84), 4:09.94 (P) =
2:44.71
Comment: Wow, square-1 actually isn't all that hard to do on a computer! Much easier than a 3x3x3, in my opinion. I made mistakes on algorithms in the two bad solves and had to essentially solve twice. With a little practice, I might be as good here as on the physical puzzle.
Super-X: (1:07.00), 25:45 (P), 18:19, 20:13 (P), (8:41) =
21:25.667
Comment: Whew - I'm glad I managed that. It was really scary for a while - it took me a while to see the 3-piece commutators. But once I saw them, it wasn't too bad. For parity, I guessed right away that if I just did a quarter turn of a face and then solved again piece by piece, it would fix the parity, so I just did that. I can see why Ethan might call it annoying.
