The Top 99 Things All Cubers Should Know

[tx789]

3x3 records

 

[Erik]

ppl should know:
- 12.11 =macky = legend
- 14.40 is the holy time it always wins in a race
- cfop is the only right name (sinmaster is as bad as fridrich)
- jessica still helped the community a lot py publishing this method
- minh thai still cubes and owns a cosmetics in-export company (srsly nobody knows this)
- RON is god and should be worshipped :-D
- joel van noort
- lars vandenbergh
- gods algo is 20 moves
- breandan vallance and mats valk for their skillz and colour blindness
- dan harris without him many ppl wouldnt have learned cfop
- speedcubing.com used to document all uwrs
- guus razoux schultz
- winners of all WCs
- patrick jameson

 

[David Zemdegs]

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.

And if you are one of the many that have studied and practiced the many "methods" until they become "intuitive" how on earth do you teach intuitive?

 

[vcuber13]

ppl should know:
...
- breandan vallance and mats valk for their skillz and colour blindness
...

dont forget harris

 

[waffle=ijm]

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

I like this very much so.

 

[Ranzha]

And if you are one of the many that have studied and practiced the many "methods" until they become "intuitive" how on earth do you teach intuitive?

It's crazy hard to teach intuitive. Crazy hard, but not impossible. Unless you sit down with someone and give them insight on how the cube works, how the pieces interact with each other, and how to fashion an method based on intuition (and comms, if necessary), then they'll never know.

Also idr if it's been posted yet, but http://uncletyson.wordpress.com/
It'd be cool to take a story or two for history's sake.

 

[blah]

Also, I'm aware that we both agree that it's a good thing to know how to do a simpler conversion in your head (RL reflection for example).

Chris, I've read this advertisement from you countless times. Why do you feel like this is a "skill" one has to acquire? My point is, who *can't* mirror/rotate algs in his/her head? Are people really that stupid that they have to read a tutorial to learn how to mirror/rotate algs?

 

[Stefan]

My point is, who *can't* mirror/rotate algs in his/her head?

Ooh, that reminds me...

- You can set up the case for an alg by doing it backwards from solved state.

 

[Hershey]

Stefan's Cube Corner, Chris Hardwick's cube page, speedcubing.com.

 

[macky]

Waffo, please decide on and clarify this list's purpose. As I see it, it's to be stickied and read by new forum members as the very basic facts today's speedcuber should know. It's the page aspiring speedcubers should read after [wiki]Introduction to Speedcubing for Beginners[/wiki]. That means, in particular, that there should be nothing remotely obscure, and in particular nothing that may be called trivia (so no "fun facts"). In that case, right at this moment I can only think of three types of items that would belong.
* Basic cubing history (with links to the wiki as appropriate)
* Basic cubing resources
* Basic knowledge about cubing proper
In general, it's best to write a good wiki article and link to it with at most a short summary.

Memes belong to [wiki]List of Cubing Memes[/wiki].
Trivia more or less relating to the cube itself belong to http://cubefreak.net/other/curiosities.php

As for trivia from early cubing history or more frivolous but amusing trivia and anecdotes, please submit longer ones to http://uncletyson.wordpress.com/ . I am compiling a list of shorter ones and will call for submissions. But that's for another thread.



For example, to pick on Mr. Woner,

How to do freaking commutators. Seriously.

Thibaut Jacquinot had the first official sub-10 solve, with 9.86. Most people don't know this for some reason.

Anssi used to be super good at 3x3x3 2H, he beat Macky's 1.5 year old WR twice in one comp, eventually besting it by 1.3 seconds.

contains two items:
* Basic knowledge about cubing proper: How to do commutators (with appropriate link...should at least improve the wiki page)
* Basic cubing history: Progression of 3x3 2H world records

All the stuff that happened with Matyas that I am too lazy to type out.
Same for all the stuff with Haiyan and Sebastian PC.

These are important events. If I had a lot more time to work on the wiki, I would devote a page to each. But one short item would suffice on this list:
* Basic cubing history: Major cubing scandals: [several links to the above wiki articles]

3x3 no inspection and a few other things used to be official events. Someone who's been around since the early days might know better than me.
Chris Hardwick used to be number 1 at OH and 4x4x4 speed.

These are less important. They should certainly be mentioned on wiki pages, and they would make great entries on the trivia thread I'm planning, but not on this list. There are hundreds of other such facts.

Brief history of 2x2 CLL- Thom Barlow held the UWR 2x2 average some years ago, using only layer+CMLLs that he knew from Roux. Łukasz Ciałoń was the first to get an unofficial sub3 2x2 avg12, also the first to do so on video. He was the first person to get really fast with CLL, people used to think he had to know hundreds of algs to solve as fast as he did. For a while, Łukasz and Edouard Chambon fought each other for the WR avg, both with CLL (Edouard used white layer only!) Later, Rowe learned CLL and went about destroying the current UWRs, eventually getting WR and greatly popularizing the method.

Same. But please write a new section on [wiki]2x2[/wiki]. I'd written [wiki]Łukasz Ciałoń[/wiki], but didn't know all of this.


As an aside, I'm a big advocate of documentations in cubing history, and a huge believer in the wiki for this purpose. I've put in a lot of work myself, but there need to be a lot more people contributing if we're ever to have decent historical accounts on every important topic. And if you have trivia, add those to the wiki, too. See for example [wiki]Bob Burton[/wiki] (which, by the way, I still find lacking).

 

[lucarubik]

how commutators work, I'm sub7 after two weeks on pyraminx with my own method thanks to commutators

 

[JLarsen]

Turn off the camera and go actually solve cubes. Your opinion of how well a cube functions is meaningless to me if you have little to no experience solving one.

 

[pjk]

This is a great thread and a great idea. Why not make it into a wiki article so we can all contribute to it?

 

[DavidWoner]

This is a great thread and a great idea. Why not make it into a wiki article so we can all contribute to it?

Because so far I've deleted at least 20 posts that were off-topic or just terrible suggestions. I don't think everyone should be able to automatically contribute to something like this.

 

[buelercuber]

seriously don't get ahead of yourself, you'll catch yourself falling, backwards.

 

[cubeslayer]

Don't get so engulfed in the speed solving aspect of cubing that you no longer enjoy it ( there is FMC and Blind, if you're bored with the speed-bit)

 

[Escher]

There is value in knowing some history about any discipline. It gives you a context to place where you/your generation sits in the community and also an insight into just how much certain people have affected you and your cubing, without you even realising it. I don't see how it wouldn't increase your respect for the community and motivate you to improve it - cubing is still at the size where pretty much anyone can innovate and make a noticeable difference.

Also to be honest there is practically nothing you *need* to know about cubing so inclusion of anything in this list (and the list itself) is pretty arbitrary and subjective. Personally, I'd rather history was put in than some of the suggestions ITT.

Also plugging my thread as one of the 99 things.

 

[Kirjava]

Also plugging my thread as one of the 99 things.

Reminds me, this thread has some perfect things for this list.

 

[Kirjava]

http://www.jaapsch.net/puzzles/

 

[DaijoCube]

My advice to get better at cubes : think outside the box! Learn new methods for 3x3x3 if you wanna get better at it. Try and find your own solutions to other puzzles to get better at 3x3x3.