4x4 success!

[Tim Reynolds]

I had my second 4x4 blindfold success today, the first being some time in August 2006 with a time of about 40 minutes. My record for 4x4 is approximately 2/25 now. My time today was 26:19.97, with about 13 minutes of memo. I took about a year off from big cubes bld, so this is my first success in my new "era" of blindfolding. I'm hoping to get my accuracy above the miserable 8% it's at now, and to get my times firmly below 20 minutes.

For the centers I memorize a string of digits from 1-6. I'm planning to learn a better memory system (probably journey) soon, I just need to finish making my letter pair lists first. I've started to use a hybrid number/visual method for the edges, I think that helps me to go faster since I don't have to think about what each edge's number is, since that's not second nature to me yet. I'll probably use a journey for that as well once I finish my letter pairings.

Yesterday I had a 25:03 DNF which I missed because I mismemorized the corner permutation and ended a corner swap away from solved. That was (I think) my fastest DNF, so I was determined to get one to avenge that failure. And today I finally got one!

 

[dolphyfan]

Well done Tim!!!!!!!!
I wish I could do the 4x4 bld, I cant seem to understand those center commutators
-Tony

 

[alexc]

Nice job

 

[Mike Hughey]

Very nice, Tim! The club keeps getting larger and larger. (I guess you were already a member of the club, but now maybe you'll be a regular with it!)

Dolphyfan, have you read my centers description?
http://www.speedsolving.com/showthread.php?t=1936

(You probably have, but I thought I'd mention it just in case - it seems to have helped some other people.)

 

[ExoCorsair]

Congrats Tim! 5x5x5 next?

 

[Tim Reynolds]

Thanks everyone. No, I think I'll try to push my times to about 15 minutes before I venture on. I've tried the 5x5 twice, and I think for now I'd rather spend about 25 minutes on a 4x4 than an hour on the 5x5. Hopefully if I work hard on 4x4, I'll get better so I can do 5x5 faster.

 

[cmhardw]

Hey Tim, congrats on the 4x4x4 solve! If it makes you feel any better I once had 17 consecutive DNFs on 4x4x4, then 1 successful solve, then about 10 more consecutive DNF's.

So I was 1 for 28 ;-) Seriously though don't feel like having a lot of DNFs for 4x4x4 is a bad thing. Any practice for big cubes BLD is great practice. It gets your brain used to thinking really hard, and to how to think to handle big cubes BLD. Eventually you'll have that "click" moment where not only will big cubes BLD seem like the same difficultly as 3x3x3 BLD, but your accuracy will came way up.

Congrats again!

Chris

 

[LarsN]

Congratulations on your successful solve, Tim

Eventually you'll have that "click" moment where not only will big cubes BLD seem like the same difficultly as 3x3x3 BLD, but your accuracy will came way up.

Chris

I'm still waiting for that "click" so for now I'm happy with the occational successful solve

Then again I'm going to try my first official solve in a few months, then I might not be so happy about it.