Okay, I could not possibly be more excited:
7x7x7 BLD: 1:57:04.84 (57:45 memorization)!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had a Dennis-like reaction when I pulled off the blindfold. The only difference is that I did so relatively silently, so as not to wake up my daughters. I'm still in total disbelief.
I am truly sorry that since my wife has the video camera with her in China, there is no video. But our computer isn't up to the task of handling uploading it anyway, so I guess it doesn't really make much difference.
The funny thing is that when I was solving the first set of obliques, I had a horrible moment of doubt when I was convinced that the commutators I was using for the cases where all 3 pieces are on different faces, and two of them are on opposite faces, couldn't possibly work. On that particular commutator, I probably sat there for about ten minutes trying to figure out how it could work, and finally gave up and did a really crazy setup move to put them on adjacent faces, and solved it that way. When I got to the next oblique like that, I came to my senses and realized the commutators I had been using really did work after all, and I was good after that. I think I'm going to have to practice a bit to get more comfortable with them, though.
I regret that Arnaud had not posted the new competition when I last checked before starting the solve, so it doesn't count for the weekly competition.
Oh, well, I guess I'll just have to get another one this week.
I'm also excited because this means I can compete in 7x7x7 speed this week; now that I've solved it BLD, I can go ahead and solve it while looking at it too if I want. I still need a successful 6x6x6 BLD first if I want to do 6x6x6 speed, though.
The first successful solve on my first 7x7x7 cube was a BLD solve! Yes!
I got an eastsheen 4x4x4 yesterday and solved it blindfolded today, time was 11:32.86. Maybe sub-10 tomorrow.
But there was one major problem.
) But there was one major problem.
