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[Unofficial] Mike Hughey solves 8x8x8 BLD

ilikecubing

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INSANE!! I can't even imagine doing such a thing in wildest of my dreams....the scrambled 8x8 itself looks so dangerous in the starting of the vid!
Mike,you truly are a BLD legend.
 

Mike Hughey

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what next? 3 8x8x8's
You should try multi - 8BLD. ;)
I still think I should go back and actually get a successful 7x7x7 BLD multi first. Someday...

Regarding reconstructions: for BLD solves obviously the solver would be the ideal person to do this?
From the memo you can write out the full solve.
As we’re talking “Big Mike” here I wouldn’t be surprised if the still knows the memo :)
If I had done it right away (even the next day), yes, I could have mostly done this. However, I wouldn't be surprised if there would be a few places where I wasn't sure how I had solved the pieces. The most common case of this is when there are just 2 centers to swap - you actually do a 3-cycle with a piece that's already solved, and you can choose a different piece. Also, I actually did a couple of the wings commutators with different commutators from the ones I normally use, simply because I happened to think of the other one while I was solving (some cases have more than one solution, even optimized, and sometimes I go one-move-sub-optimal because it seems more convenient or is easier to think of).

And anyway, I'm hoping this is true:
Should be really easy to reconstruct because it's mostly commutators and slow TPS. Just time consuming.
and I also think that it's a major accomplishment to have a big reconstruction done by Brest, so I'm hoping. And his format is so very good. Although I admit this would be outlandishly time consuming, and I'm not expecting anything - just hoping. :)

BTW: how many targets do you have to memo for a typical 8x8x8 solve? (assuming reorientation to solve some centers from the start)
I wish I had thought about calculating this right after the solve, but I'm afraid I didn't, so I don't know the exact count here. But I would guess a typical solve would run somewhere around 36 images for wings, 30 for X centers, 30 for + centers, 30 for obliques, plus 3 or 4 for corners, so around 130 images, or 260 pieces. This one felt like a pretty bad case, with not as many centers solved as usual. My recent 1:08:00 attempt had a lot of centers solved - I'm guessing it was less than 250 pieces.

Well done Mike. You have incredible determination. Sorry for my ignorance, but has this been done before or is this a first?
To my knowledge I'm the only one silly enough to have tried. However, there is a comment on YouTube that
SheldonSpeedcuber said:
Matyas Kuti is even more faster.
I wonder if that means he's tried it? If he actually got one, I have no doubt he'd be faster than me, although I am still quite happy with my time.
 
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Ok, then i will try to get into this "layer-stuff". I love the idea of practising memorization with only ONE big cube instead of solving many 3x3x3s. So you would only need ONE cube.
Thanks for your fast reply.
You are awesome. And the fact, that you tried it 14! times makes you even more amazing! Congrats again! You are the best...

Greetings, Dennis
 

Luis

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This is one of those situations in which I deeply regret not being able to communicate in English as well as I do in my own language. All in all, I'll try:

Mike: your efforts in demolishing what others think is "the human limit" deserve my highest appreciation and admiration. More indeed considering that the competition is far away from your targets. Your achievement is a lesson for us. Useless to say "keep it up" because we know that "giving up" or even "take it easy" are not in your mind. Proud of you.
 

Mike Hughey

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Out of curiosity Mike, what is the craziest/biggest BLD challenge you reckon you will ever attempt? Would you say that this is the hardest BLD solve you have made so far, or has there been something harder?
Actually, I started to try an 11x11x11 once. I gave up for several reasons:
1. I was too tired.
2. The stickers were the wrong color scheme.
3. I was only on the second set of wings, and had already made several mistakes that I had to correct.

I think I want to do an 11x11x11 someday, but I'd rather work up to it. At this point, I'm hopeful that a good 9x9x9 and 10x10x10 will someday exist, so I can do those first. An 8x8x8 has 296 moving pieces, a 9x9x9 has 380 moving pieces, a 10x10x10 has 488 moving pieces, and an 11x11x11 has 596 moving pieces. So an 11x11x11 is about the same as two 8x8x8's. So if I can do an 8x8x8 multi, I can also do an 11x11x11 single. :)

I would say that the 7x7x7 multi is definitely harder than an 8x8x8, and I came close to succeeding on one of those once, but I don't think I've ever had a success that was actually harder. But the hardest thing for me that I've ever tried was the 4 cube multi 5x5x5 BLD attempt I did a number of years ago, because back then, 5x5x5 was much harder for me than it is now. That was the roughest experience I've ever had. (And I got 3/4 on it!) That one took me over 3 hours. Agonizing.

I love the idea of practising memorization with only ONE big cube instead of solving many 3x3x3s. So you would only need ONE cube.
Yes, I like one big cube best too. Multis and relays are fun in their own way, but somehow a single big cube seems more elegant to me.
 

Madde532

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wow that's amazing!! When you memorise the 8x8x8, which memorisation method do you use? I mean like, letter pairs, numbers? Are you familiar with the Self Enhancing Master Memory Matrix?
 

Mike Hughey

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wow that's amazing!! When you memorise the 8x8x8, which memorisation method do you use? I mean like, letter pairs, numbers? Are you familiar with the Self Enhancing Master Memory Matrix?

I use images for letter pairs, with three images (hence 6 letters) per location, in rooms of 9 locations each. It takes me 6 such rooms to memorize an 8x8x8. I put wings and X centers in the first three rooms, and obliques in the last 3 rooms. I just use an audio loop for the corners. I memorize in the following order:
1. outer wings
2. outer X centers
3. middle wings
4. middle X centers
5. inner wings
6. inner X centers
7. "outer" obliques, left, then right
8. "middle" obliques", left, then right
9. "inner" obliques", left, then right
10. corners

Then I solve in the following order:
1. corners
2. "outer" obliques, left, then right
3. "middle" obliques", left, then right
4. "inner" obliques", left, then right
5. outer X centers
6. middle X centers
7. inner X centers
8. corner parity, if any
9. inner wings
10. middle wings
11. outer wings

I had not heard of the Self Enhancing Master Memory Matrix by name, but was somewhat familiar with the concept. Now that I've looked it up, I can see how something like that might be useful to help anchor the memory. I would also imagine I could incorporate the concept of it without actually changing my method - if I were to come up with an actor for each room and an object for each location numerically in the room, and use that actor to act on my images, I would imagine it would create a much more vivid picture to remember, and it would be very similar to the Self Enhancing Master Memory Matrix. However, there are two problems with that:
1. I already use my buffer piece as an actor. With wings, that never changes, so it's wasteful, but with all the other pieces I actually sometimes change my buffer, so I'd have to find a way to deal with that.
2. I do lots of BLD solves every week: about 25 or so of 2x2x2 and 3x3x3, at least 3 4x4x4 and 3 5x5x5, and a 6x6x6 and a 7x7x7, as well as a megaminx, square-1, clock, pyraminx, and skewb solve. Then I always do at least one multi (usually just 3 or 4 cubes lately, since I was working on 8x8x8 as well). With all of those solves, I'm a little afraid that having a more vivid memorization system might lead to having trouble forgetting. I have always thought my greatest strength is my ability to forget so well - I think that is why I can do so many solves per week and still have high accuracy - because I forget better than most people can. :)
 
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