The Top 99 Things All Cubers Should Know

[teller]

Low movecount + Sexycution = Win. A lot of optimal algs are terrible, but with some effort and persistence...

+1 for Conrad's alg rotator. I use it TO DEATH when I'm mining and designing.

 

[qqwref]

Everything already mentioned in this thread, and
CFOP is called CFOP, not Fridrich. It is not the "Fridrich method," as she did not invent, but just popularised it. Calling it the Fridrich method is like calling Roux the Waffle method. >.>

Yeah? It wasn't invented by Mr./Mrs. Cfop either. I kind of like calling it Fridrich, because I think her website was an amazing service to the early cubing community.

 

[Lucas Garron]

- It used to be impolite not to clap at a sub-15 solve.

- I think the 7.08 is slowly being forgotten due to Feliks. It beat 8.72 as the world record, and stood for two years. The rest of the world caught up, but no one actually beat it for the longest time.

- Newcomers also don't realize how long the V-Cubes took to arrive. We were promised "Olympicubes" for years, and they *did* arrive eventually. People who are dismissive of V-Cubes forget how hard and long Verdes had to try to bring us those designs (from Greece, no less).

- This one from Clancy: New cubers come and go – just because someone is fast at the moment doesn't necessarily mean they're the best cuber ever. That said, you should know who Macky, Frank Morris, Kuti, Nakajima, and Feliks are. * Also, you should understand that Feliks is quite deserving of his recognition because he became good at many events long after it was thought possible.
(Yeah, yeah. Rowe, Breandan, etc. You have to draw the line somewhere. I think those are the ones that pushed boundaries the most and showed the cubing world how much more could be achieved.)

- Harris Chan is the most deserving person never to have had a world record.

- On that note, I've never even had a continental record, nor have I ever won a championship title (though I did get a first place at US Nationals 2006). People often seem to get the impression that I have.

- Competitions are being held at staggering rates. There were 9 competitions on August 27, 2011. It used to be that it was uncommon for competitions to on *adjacent* weekends, let alone the same.

- The front page of speedcubing.com actually used to have news. Getting into the top 10 UWR was a big deal.

- Tyson Mao started writing the WCA regulations on a couch at EPGY. We used to have no idea how to run tournaments, and the current system has sort of delicately fallen into place.

- Know about cube lovers, Singmaster, Thistlethwaite, Rokicki, Korf, Kociemba, and Randelshofer.

- Know who is and has been on the WCA board. Know the WCA mission.

- Our current scramblers are still terrible. Square-1 and Megaminx scrambles are not random (though in the latter case we consider it okay).

Really? I find this more useful and wasn't even going to post it.

Yeah, but you know how to do algs already. In any case, that reminds me to ask Conrad about merging his algtrans capabilities into alg.cubing.net .

 

[Forte]

aCube and Cube Explorer let you generate your own algs.

 

[Phlippieskezer]

Yeah? It wasn't invented by Mr./Mrs. Cfop either. I kind of like calling it Fridrich, because I think her website was an amazing service to the early cubing community.

I know where you're coming from, and it's not a really big deal, but it's still not equally as accurate. The method's actual "inventor" isn't defined (unlike Roux, for example), so rather making an acronym of what it actually is the "better" alternative (hence, CFOP). Equally, AFAIK (please don't call me out on this >.<), it could be called the "Singmaster Method" and it would be just as correct as calling it Fridrich. One gave excellent services to the cubing community, the other made the foundation of what would essentially become the most popular method.
I'm not saying "DON'T EVER SAY FRIDRICH RATHER THAN CFOP OR ELSE YOU WILL BE DAMNED;" I'm merely saying understand that Fridrich did not invent it, and CFOP is more technically correct. It's rather annoying engaging in conversation about methods and the person you're talking to has no idea of the actual origins about his/her main, and sometimes are even zealous with believing Fridrich flat-out 'invented' it. Don't others deserve equal recognition?
So, more a message to newbies, but whatever.

Case in point: I think it's important knowing what's its appropriate name and why, even if you don't call it that in colloquial conversation.

 

[insane569]

BLD is blindfolded and MBLD in multi blindfolded
and a list of current world records along with their times
and basic knowledge about methods and abreviations along with notations for more than 3x3 like sq-1 and commutators

 

[cmhardw]

I guess this may be debatable, but I would argue very strongly that Rubik's Games was the main catalyst to bring cubing out of the "dark ages" period from the 80s death of the fad to beginning of the modern era in the late 90s. The online portion where we could compete against each other's times, as well as the hall of fame list that showed those who had completed the game in its entirety brought many 1st and 2nd generation cubers together for the first time.

 

[Rpotts]

The total number of possible permutations of the 3x3x3 cube is a prime number.

Lars Petrus.

Pretty much any method that you think you invented falls under the blanket term "FreeFOP."

Kir has probably sub20'd with it.

Read the regulations before your first competition.

There's no such thing as a bad PLL if you practice it enough.

You will get faster. Posting about how you've hit a wall, or how your times increased when you learned a more difficult method won't make you faster, practice will.

might come back n add more.

 

[Anthony]

For a while, Łukasz and Edouard Chambon fought each other for the WR avg, both with CLL (Edouard used white layer only!)

I know Edouard was restricting himself to white/yellow at WC09 where he came in 2nd (and was adamant about it not being a major hindrance), but was he really doing ONLY white before that?

 

[RyanReese09]

Asking fast people questions on how to get faster annoys them, and most of the time, you won't be told anything that isn't publically available and preached about already.

 

[umyeahhi]

Ortega(3x3) is cool.

 

[Andreaillest]

Sometimes taking a break from cubing will do you a lot of good.

 

[RNewms27]

You do not require more and more cubes. Restricting yourself from certain moves on a 3x3 (such as 2-gen scramble/solves or like a square-1 that has cube rotations and its own parities) can be just as fun/interesting.

 

[Hershey]

http://cyoubx.blogspot.com/2011/05/its-cuber-not-cube.html

 

[Tao Yu]

The total number of possible unsolved permutations of the 3x3x3 cube is a prime number.

Fix'd

 

[Kirjava]

The developments are interesting.

 

[Stefan]

And a suggestion for the list (not that serious):
- No, nobody wants to repair your magic.

 

[antoineccantin]

And a suggestion for the list:
- No, nobody wants to repair your magic.

My brother actually does

 

[Ranzha]

@Jorghi: 'Flamed' and 'flammed' are two very different things.

To add to the list:
- There are many puzzles out there that you just won't be good at. Everyone has a niche--if you don't think you have one, you haven't looked far enough.
- Don't be afraid to explore and experiment with your puzzles for cool ways to do things. It more often than not furthers your understanding of a puzzle.
- Don't be afraid to turn the timer off and just solve casually.

 

[Weston]

Slow cubes are good for OH