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Hello, 39-year old noob here, who's driving his wife crazy

LocoOnSoco

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My name is Joe, I decided one day a few months ago to learn to solve a Rubik's. Call it a bucket list kinda thing. Well naturally I got bored of it and the beginner method rather quickly, and discovered CFOP. I only practice a couple days a week but I'm down to about a 1:30 average and getting faster as I learn more. I basically do 2-look but have learned a few OLL's and and a couple PLL's. I now own 3 speedcubes, using a white Weilong MoYu as my timing one because I'm in love with how it feels.

My wife on the other hand thinks i'm nuts, and the sound of the cube turning all the time drives her crazy. I kinda get a kick out of that. Does that me horrible? I think not. ;)

Thanks for reading, I hope to learn a lot more from this site.
 

Dane man

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Hi, welcome to the site. I don't recommend annoying your wife, though :p.

Weilong is a good cube to learn to go fast on. There are plenty of places here to help you learn to be faster, especially in the "How-to's" section.

Have fun!
 

Chree

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Welcome Joe!

Trust me, you're not nuts. Merely addicted. Being a speedcuber quickly becomes a way of life.

I have a few friends that have recently considered the sounds of my clicking and cubing to be a comfort to them. So let's hope that's where your wife's opinions drift. :)
 
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Same boat here. I taught my wife the beginner's method, but she doesn't care about speedsolving. So, after years of hearing the clicking of my cube during speedsolves, she absolutely hates that sound now. It's like a pet peeve for her.

To me, I find the sound really nice.
 

Lazy Einstein

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My name is Joe, I decided one day a few months ago to learn to solve a Rubik's. Call it a bucket list kinda thing. Well naturally I got bored of it and the beginner method rather quickly, and discovered CFOP. I only practice a couple days a week but I'm down to about a 1:30 average and getting faster as I learn more. I basically do 2-look but have learned a few OLL's and and a couple PLL's. I now own 3 speedcubes, using a white Weilong MoYu as my timing one because I'm in love with how it feels.

My wife on the other hand thinks i'm nuts, and the sound of the cube turning all the time drives her crazy. I kinda get a kick out of that. Does that me horrible? I think not. ;)

Thanks for reading, I hope to learn a lot more from this site.

My wife hated it at first as well. 7 months later I have a cube in the bedroom, one in the bathroom, and another 30 in my "office". =P
I am sure she will think it's sexy when you start getting more comfortable and faster with your cube.

Welcome to the site. It's a great site; that search button has pretty much the answer to every question. Most people on here are happy to help as well.
 

moralsh

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My wife on the other hand thinks i'm nuts, and the sound of the cube turning all the time drives her crazy. I kinda get a kick out of that. Does that me horrible? I think not. ;)

Been there, done that :p She'll get used to it.

I also started with 39 a couple of years ago, you'll enjoy this place :)

ah, pay a visit to Marcell's thread in the off-topic forum, you may find encouragement, a lot of help and a bunch of even nicer people there ;)
 

Lady Pitch

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oh my, it is nice to see someone else that decided to pick this up later in life. I am 34 and just started two months ago. I flipped from Beginner's to CFOP to Roux within the first few weeks and now I am strictly Roux. I have gotten my time down to 40ish seconds but I haven't been practicing a lot lately. I am currently starting to learn my CMLL algs.

My fiance didn't get tired of hearing the cube noises... I bought him a cube and taught him how to solve as well. Heh!

Looking forward to hearing about your progress. :D
 

Ulbert

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To begin with, one of the most common mistakes as beginner is to start learn OLL and PLL to early. And buy a "waaay to good cube" of course. I can understand that you really like the weilong and now are getting used to it, which is not a good sign, because your times won't drop as fast as the times goes. If you for example start with a rubik's brand, and use it until you average around 1 minute, and then switch over to a cube4you or shengshou 3x3.

About your algorithm learning process, if you know 2-look OLL and 2-look PLL you should stick with that ATLEAST until you average 30 seconds, and on your way to sub20 you can start learn 1-look (full) PLL. The OLLs aren't needed until you try to reach the professional level, which I would say is under 15 seconds. And about your weilong, should stick to a rubik's brand until you get to the sub 1 minute barrier. Or possibly get a shengshou wind or aurora, or why not a cube4you 3x3. I think I already mentioned the thing about you switching cube before haha..

This is just my opinion thought, there may be people who think something completely different, for some really strange reason. And keep in mind that this is just what I recommend myself, you can keep learning OLL and PLL, your times won't drop as fast as they should in the future, just saying.

Hope I helped you out,

- Albert
 

mark49152

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Welcome! Great to see another older cuber here. There seems to be quite a few of us now. Definitely check out Marcel's thread in the off-topic section - that's where several of the 30/40 year old cubers hang out.
 

cmhardw

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Welcome to the forums Joe! I hope you find that your wife will be better able to tolerate the cubing noises over time, and perhaps even get interested to try it! Offer to teach her a beginner solution and see if she's interested. I just got married last month (yay!), but my wife was already a cuber before we got married, she wanted me to teach her how to solve while we were still dating.

Cubing is such a great way to train your mind and have fun at the same time! Good luck on your progress, and enjoy!
 

DeeDubb

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To begin with, one of the most common mistakes as beginner is to start learn OLL and PLL to early. And buy a "waaay to good cube" of course. I can understand that you really like the weilong and now are getting used to it, which is not a good sign, because your times won't drop as fast as the times goes. If you for example start with a rubik's brand, and use it until you average around 1 minute, and then switch over to a cube4you or shengshou 3x3.

About your algorithm learning process, if you know 2-look OLL and 2-look PLL you should stick with that ATLEAST until you average 30 seconds, and on your way to sub20 you can start learn 1-look (full) PLL. The OLLs aren't needed until you try to reach the professional level, which I would say is under 15 seconds. And about your weilong, should stick to a rubik's brand until you get to the sub 1 minute barrier. Or possibly get a shengshou wind or aurora, or why not a cube4you 3x3. I think I already mentioned the thing about you switching cube before haha..

This is just my opinion thought, there may be people who think something completely different, for some really strange reason. And keep in mind that this is just what I recommend myself, you can keep learning OLL and PLL, your times won't drop as fast as they should in the future, just saying.

Hope I helped you out,

- Albert




This is all traditional thinking that doesn't really make any sense to me.

First of all on the cube. It makes absolutely no sense to say using a worse cube will make him progress faster. He uses a better cube. He gets used to how it turns, and he gets faster using it. He's not going to develop "bad habits". He's going to become accustomed to what his cube allows, which is totally fine. He won't find the cube "uncontrollable" because it's the cube he uses. I've used a WeiLong since about 50 seconds, and have had no issues. I feel like this line of thinking comes form people who have been solving for a long time, since before the WeiLong was released and maybe before the Zhanchi even, so they have HAD to progress through cubes as they become market available. However, there's no evidence that starting with a nice cube will slow your progress, and to me that's counter intuitive and silly.

Second of all on memoing algs. Memorizing PLL/OLL will not improve your times AS FAST as focusing on F2L, that's true. However, the earlier you memorize them, the sooner you will be able to incorporate them into your solves, and the more you will become used to recognizing them and practicing their execution. It depends if your goal is to drop your times as fast as possible (don't learn full PLL/OLL) or get to your best possible speed as fast as possible (learn them now). If you can deal with the frustration of not progressing quickly at first and can handle the steep learning curve, then it's worth investing time whenever you want into PLL/OLL. I memorized my 42 CMLL algorithms starting at about 55 second average, which means I've been using them for that period of time. Now I'm able to recognize and execute them much better than if I had waited until 25 seconds to start.

Just because something is conventional wisdom doesn't make it accurate, and those two beliefs about how someone should progress make very little sense to me.

EDIT: Welcome to the forums! I'm 30, and I started a few months ago. Don't listen to the ideas that age slows you down either :) Just work your butt off and you can get faster.
 
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LocoOnSoco

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Wow all these replies have been great, thanks!

As far as teaching my wife, I've offered a few times. She's very smart and I know she'd be good at it, but it just doesn't interest her. I have to keep trying I guess. :)

I'm not sure about my better cube hurting me. I don't really understand that. I do agree I need to get faster at 2-look, I am currently very slow on the cross and my F2L is slowly improving. I may be jumping the gun trying to learn OLL's etc, agreed there. I should probably get under 60 seconds first. :)

I will check out the Marcel thread as well!
 

DeeDubb

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Wow all these replies have been great, thanks!

As far as teaching my wife, I've offered a few times. She's very smart and I know she'd be good at it, but it just doesn't interest her. I have to keep trying I guess. :)

I'm not sure about my better cube hurting me. I don't really understand that. I do agree I need to get faster at 2-look, I am currently very slow on the cross and my F2L is slowly improving. I may be jumping the gun trying to learn OLL's etc, agreed there. I should probably get under 60 seconds first. :)

I will check out the Marcel thread as well!

Well, definitely learn PLL before OLL. It's less algorithms and will give you a bigger boost.
 

cmhardw

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Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. I have a couple of them down so far. Thanks. :)

I recommend to learn the edge 3-cycle (U-perm) and the corner 3-cycle (A-perm) first.
After those two, learn all 4 G-perms immediately :)

If you know only the U, A, and G perms, then you will be able to do a 1 look PLL exactly 4/9 of your solves (about 44% of the time). You will also be able to solve every PLL case in 2 or fewer looks.

The G-perms look scary so people often learn them last, don't do this! The G-perms are the most common cases, and all four taken together represent a little over 22% of all the PLL cases you will get.

In short, learn A and U first. Each of those two PLLs is two algs because you can cycle in 2 directions. Then learn all 4 G perms right away :) They look scary, but they're not so bad. You will get faster more quickly this way, so your solve times will thank you for it :)
 

MarcelP

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Hi LocoOnSoco,

Nice to see another older cuber. I agree with everything DeeDub said. The sooner you start with a fast cube the sooner you will get used to it. The sooner you start learning OLL's the sooner you can recognize them and execute them with mussle memory. I started to learn full OLL at averaging 40 seconds. Now that I am sub 25 I am glad I know all OLL's since I have a low TPS and need to het as few moves as possible in my solves. Oh.. about the wife.. my wife does not care about the cubing sound a lot eighter.. but she did get used to it :)
 

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Welcome, another old-timer here. Ignore the advice about the cubes--some ideas just get repeated so much that they are accepted as truth and it's all nonsense. Use good equipment. A Weilong is great, stick with it. You'll have to wade through good and bad advice, but basically there is a real depth of information here, keep digging and you'll find nugget after nugget of useful info. I've been cubing for a really long time and I find no end to the depth of what can be improved, whether it be via methods or dexterity.

My wife thankfully has tuned out the sound of the cube. She doesn't even hear it anymore...that's a good thing. It's a part of me, and she accepts it as such.

Keep on speedcubin'.
 
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