Recent content by Old Tom

One. I try to do more, but I get noticeably worse, so have to stop and go back to sighted solving, that relaxes me. But hey, I will be83 next month.

Same here. 1981, inspired by that Martin Gardner article in Scientific American.The ideas of commutators and conjugation. Looked for sequences of moves that would shift only a few pieces, latched into the concept that these moves could be reversed and also combined with simple shifts. Wrote...

And as I learned, long, long ago, when studying anything: just writing something down improves memory.

Since I’m 81, I guess I can talk about this. Learning new algs, remembering thrm, and not forgetting old ones in the process is tough for me. But I am doing it, sort of. For me it takes drill, drill and more drill. Then repeat. I frequently go through my complete alg set, one after the other...

There is another trick in the memo trace that is helping me also: suppose the pre-inspection of the corners shows one piece twisted. So, instead of remembering “8” moves, I focus on “6 plus 2”, then I am prepared to hit the buffer piece at “6”, followed by a double hit at the twisted location. I...

I use mod Y, T, Ja, Jb, and Ra for parity correction. Ja and Jb are mirror images, which I find easy to memorize and execute as such. As to new cycles, I am still at the stage where those are hard for me for edges, but the (fewer) corners are getting much easier. It helps to remember by “what’s...

You also need an alg to correct parity when necessary. I use Ra for that.

I can tell you what’s the easiest: the Old Pochman method, but it is slow. However, you only need five algorithms to do it. Three actually, but five is more efficient. It is a piece by piece method which is why it is slow, but also why it is relatively easy.

Also, so far the FB group is mainly about "accomplishments", which is ok. This group was always more about nurturing, helping each other out.

This thread was astonishingly helpful for me when I stumbled on it about three years ago. Until that I had been just a lone LBL solver, since way back in the 80s. I was nudged by many in this group to do F2L, and then, huge step, blind solving. Had almost daily advice for a month while I learned...

I am just getting back to cubing after a necessary break of more than a year where I simply had no mental energy or focus to even pick up a cube. I am back at it now. At 81 it is coming back slowly: the 3x3 was easy (though I am NOT FAST). The 3BLD is proving a challenge. The OP methodology is...

Takes me almost that long to pick up a cube. Seriously, I am astounded.

G Got it!

That actually makes sense. Thx!

Ah! But how do I prevent the “sense of urgency” from giving me a bad case of the mental yips? That has been a major problem for me when trying for speed, blind or not. The only approach that is “sort of” working for me is trying to stay calm, not trying to go too fast, staying within my...