Blindsolving Accomplishment Thread

[cmhardw]

Hey Mike, congrats on finishing learning all your prepared images! Trust me it will start to pay off very quickly ;-) I had a lot of DNFs too right around the time I was learning my images, but once they are solidified for you the memorization and the recall feels so much smoother.

One tip, don't feel bad about changing an image if you find a better one. Daniel Beyer and I do that constantly, I still do that to this day.

Also, one other very important thing, if you ever forget an image, try after the solve (DNF or not) to remember which image it was that you forgot. You may notice that you consistently forget the same images. Those are usually the images I would change in my repertoire when I did change an image.

Congrats again, I think you'll be very happy with the results as you start practicing with the whole image list

Chris

 

[Mike Hughey]

Thanks, Chris. I've changed a couple of images today already. One of them - I changed XR to X-Ray, which is something I've used repeatedly when inventing them on the fly but didn't think of when constructing my list. Another one I really like from yesterday: UH = U-Haul truck.

3 more fairly close 4x4x4 DNFs today. But I'm often close to my personal best with them, and when I'm not, it's usually because I have trouble with some part of the recall. I've had a few memorization phases of just over 5 minutes now, so I'm definitely going faster.

 

[Mike Hughey]

5x5x5 BLD: 29:46.17 - Finally sub-30!!! The memorization was just really easy on it (13:40). This was for the first solve in Ryan's online competition this week.

Also got my best ever 3x3x3 BLD this morning - 2:24.30 (the second solve in Arnaud's competition). I was surprised it was this good because it had parity and I took 2 steps to fix it - a T-perm followed by an edge 3-cycle. Overall, the edge permutation was easy, though - really easy 3-cycles.

 

[cmhardw]

Congrats Mike on the sub-30 5x5x5! I told you using prepared images would show improvement very quickly ;-)

I think you'll find that after sub-30 it doesn't take long to get to low 20's. For some reason getting through the 20 minutes wasn't too hard (compared to getting sub-30 in the first place). Getting consistently sub-20 was a chore, but what helped was to really refine my images list with better images, and just practice practice practice.

Congrats again Mike, that's awesome! I think you'll continue to see rapid improvement with the new images list, at least for a while

Chris

 

[Mike Hughey]

Thanks very much, Chris. But I'm not so certain about getting to low 20's as fast as you did. I think I'm still hampered by being slower in general than other people are. Keep in mind that I'm still averaging over 30 seconds on a 3x3x3 (sighted). Not many other people doing big cubes BLD can say they're that bad at speedcubing.

I feel like 10 minutes at 4x4x4 and 25 minutes at 5x5x5 are both quite doable. I think going below those marks is going to be very difficult, since thinking ahead well is probably not enough to get below those times - I'm probably going to have to increase speed when actually executing my moves in order to get faster than that.

But honestly, if I could get sub-10 on a 4x4x4 or sub-25 on a 5x5x5, I'd be pretty happy. Those would be respectable times, by anyone's standards.

I'm working pretty hard on 3x3x3 (sighted), but I just don't seem to be very good at it. It seems like I need about 300 solves on average to drop one second off my time, and my averages of 100 are around 33 seconds right now. Do other people really need that much practice to improve? I'm guessing not - I'm just really slow to improve.

Oh, and by the way, refining my memory image list is probably not going to be as big a chore as it was for you, since I was able to steal your list as a starting point, which is already pretty good. (I figure 50% of my images are either matches to your list or to Michael Curtis's list, which you took from. Probably my biggest problem with your list is I'm not as big of a Marvel Comics fan, so I couldn't use most of those X-Men references. )

 

[MiloD]

Sub 3 BLD: 2:52.45
I had 4 or 5 sub 3 DNF's before this.
I didn't check because it makes me nervous, but I think it was about 1:15 for memorization. The visual system is really sinking in and getting much more reliable. Also, imagining the setup moves really quickly as you memorize is great reinforcement.
This one had an ugly parity too. corners UFL and DFR, edges FL and BL. Now I guess I could have used a T perm on the side and then re-oriented the corners, didn't see it at the time.
I think I'm going to stick with with standard OP 3 cycle for a while, at least until after US Nationals...So yeah I'm excited.

 

[Mike Hughey]

Congrats again Mike, that's awesome! I think you'll continue to see rapid improvement with the new images list, at least for a while
Chris

Chris, I just wanted to say that you were very right about this. I have now had 6 successful big cube BLD solves in a row (2 5x5x5, 4 4x4x4), and 5 of the 6 were new personal bests! I think part of it was due to some easy scrambles - the scrambles this week on Ryan's competitions include some rather easy ones - but still I can't believe this kind of a streak. I just got a 29:28.13 5x5x5 and a 10:23.47(!!!) 4x4x4 this morning! I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and find out I was just dreaming these. Thanks for all the encouragement - it really helped me get here.

The 4x4x4 was not a competition solve - it had 5 corners permuted, 6 corners oriented, 9 centers already solved, and a single cycle for all the edges, so it was pretty easy, but I wouldn't consider it officially lucky. For anyone who'd like to try an easy 4x4x4 BLD, here's the scramble:

r' f F' U B2 f F' D' L' B f' F U f F2 D u U B' f2 R U2 L' R D' U2 B' F L' r2 R f r2 D U L U' r2 B r

 

[Tim Reynolds]

Sub 3 BLD: 2:52.45
I had 4 or 5 sub 3 DNF's before this.
I didn't check because it makes me nervous, but I think it was about 1:15 for memorization. The visual system is really sinking in and getting much more reliable. Also, imagining the setup moves really quickly as you memorize is great reinforcement.
This one had an ugly parity too. corners UFL and DFR, edges FL and BL. Now I guess I could have used a T perm on the side and then re-oriented the corners, didn't see it at the time.
I think I'm going to stick with with standard OP 3 cycle for a while, at least until after US Nationals...So yeah I'm excited.

Nice Milo! For that parity, the way I'd have done it would be E' (N perm on the front) E. Actually I'd have thought of that after, but I probably would have done something crazy like (R2 U2)*3 R2 (N perm) R2. It's good to know that you can set up a diagonal corner PLL case on any side without disorienting corners. But yeah, sub-3 is really good to have under your belt, it took me a lot of work to get there.

I've been inactive in big cubes bld since my 4x4 at Kearny since I've been trying to finish my letter pairing list. I've made 548 out of 576 so far, and I really hope that this will help me once I finish and memorize them.

 

[MiloD]

Sub 3 BLD: 2:52.45
I had 4 or 5 sub 3 DNF's before this.
I didn't check because it makes me nervous, but I think it was about 1:15 for memorization. The visual system is really sinking in and getting much more reliable. Also, imagining the setup moves really quickly as you memorize is great reinforcement.
This one had an ugly parity too. corners UFL and DFR, edges FL and BL. Now I guess I could have used a T perm on the side and then re-oriented the corners, didn't see it at the time.
I think I'm going to stick with with standard OP 3 cycle for a while, at least until after US Nationals...So yeah I'm excited.

Nice Milo! For that parity, the way I'd have done it would be E' (N perm on the front) E. Actually I'd have thought of that after, but I probably would have done something crazy like (R2 U2)*3 R2 (N perm) R2. It's good to know that you can set up a diagonal corner PLL case on any side without disorienting corners. But yeah, sub-3 is really good to have under your belt, it took me a lot of work to get there.

I've been inactive in big cubes bld since my 4x4 at Kearny since I've been trying to finish my letter pairing list. I've made 548 out of 576 so far, and I really hope that this will help me once I finish and memorize them.

Wow! I never realized the diagnol corner thing. Thanks, that is awesome.

I practiced alot of 4x4 today until I got a new best avg and single. I still hate my 4x4; I have to be so gentle to avoid lockups, making the 3x3 phase very tedious. I hope the 4x4 OC is awesome.

avg 1:51.66 single 1.44.38

 

[Lucas Garron]

59.46

 

[joey]

1:16.97 BLD
On my third try of experimenting with a variation of my method.

 

[joey]

Ok, THIS is a MAJOR accomplishment! The first of its kind!

6 hours 13 minutes, 48.87 seconds 3x3 BLD

Huh?

Last night, I went to bed at 1am. Just before I went to bed, I spent a few minutes memoing a cube. I then slept until 7:03am, as soon as I woke up (without looking at the cube), I donned the BLD and tried to solve the cube with my memo from the night before. I was successful!

As Eidolon said, sleep-delayed BLD! Now.. whose ready to tackle sleep-delayed multibld or sleep-delayed big cube bld?

 

[AvGalen]

Ok, THIS is a MAJOR accomplishment! The first of its kind!

6 hours 13 minutes, 48.87 seconds 3x3 BLD

Huh?

Last night, I went to bed at 1am. Just before I went to bed, I spent a few minutes memoing a cube. I then slept until 7:03am, as soon as I woke up (without looking at the cube), I donned the BLD and tried to solve the cube with my memo from the night before. I was successful!

As Eidolon said, sleep-delayed BLD! Now.. whose ready to tackle sleep-delayed multibld or sleep-delayed big cube bld?

I got you beat by hours. My trick is to not sleep so much. I think a sub 5 minute solve can be achieved with the help of someone that wakes you up after you start sleeping

 

[Mike Hughey]

Ok, THIS is a MAJOR accomplishment! The first of its kind!

6 hours 13 minutes, 48.87 seconds 3x3 BLD

Huh?

Last night, I went to bed at 1am. Just before I went to bed, I spent a few minutes memoing a cube. I then slept until 7:03am, as soon as I woke up (without looking at the cube), I donned the BLD and tried to solve the cube with my memo from the night before. I was successful!

As Eidolon said, sleep-delayed BLD! Now.. whose ready to tackle sleep-delayed multibld or sleep-delayed big cube bld?

That's really cool! I'm going to have to try a 4x4x4 soon - maybe tonight.

 

[Lucas Garron]

Ok, THIS is a MAJOR accomplishment! The first of its kind!

6 hours 13 minutes, 48.87 seconds 3x3 BLD

Huh?

Last night, I went to bed at 1am. Just before I went to bed, I spent a few minutes memoing a cube. I then slept until 7:03am, as soon as I woke up (without looking at the cube), I donned the BLD and tried to solve the cube with my memo from the night before. I was successful!

As Eidolon said, sleep-delayed BLD! Now.. whose ready to tackle sleep-delayed multibld or sleep-delayed big cube bld?

Just so you know, I've done speed BLD this way (and in fact, my first speed BLD was done like this). Actually, I've memoed the cube, then speed BLDed it in my head, and executed next morning. The UWR for speed BLD execution was once set this way.

 

[Mike Hughey]

Ok, THIS is a MAJOR accomplishment! The first of its kind!

6 hours 13 minutes, 48.87 seconds 3x3 BLD

Huh?

Last night, I went to bed at 1am. Just before I went to bed, I spent a few minutes memoing a cube. I then slept until 7:03am, as soon as I woke up (without looking at the cube), I donned the BLD and tried to solve the cube with my memo from the night before. I was successful!

As Eidolon said, sleep-delayed BLD! Now.. whose ready to tackle sleep-delayed multibld or sleep-delayed big cube bld?

That's really cool! I'm going to have to try a 4x4x4 soon - maybe tonight.

Well, I did it! 4 hours, 59 minutes, 19.26 seconds 4x4x4 BLD. I went to bed entirely too late last night, and my wife was already asleep, so I went in the dining room and memorized the cube. I took entirely too long memorizing the cube (about 10:30) because I was trying to really burn the images in (since they needed to last until morning) and because I had to include the corners in long-term memory (normally I don't do that for 4x4x4 BLD). Then I put a piece of paper over the cube, set up the blindfold next to the cube, turned out the lights, and went to bed. When I woke up this morning, I went back in the dining room without bothering to turn on the lights (why bother?), put the blindfold on, and removed the paper and started solving. I unfortunately didn't look at the stopwatch before I started solving, so I don't know how long it took, but I'd guess it was about 10 minutes. (I had trouble recalling one location's worth of edges.) But I got it right.

It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be because obviously I went over it in my mind a few times before falling asleep. I also woke up in the middle of the night once and went over most of the memorization (all but the location I had trouble recalling), so that probably helped. It was fun, though.

 

[joey]

Nice Mike!!1 Thats awesome!

 

[alexc]

3x3 blindfolded: 2:17.78
I also got a 2:21.xx.

 

[Ville Seppänen]

Broke a Finnish record for 3x3x3 BLD at my first (so far only) competition. Time was 1:57.28. Now I am the worst sub-2 cuber in the official results and just out of top 20 lol.

 

[Speedy McFastfast]

I learned that I can memorize corner orientation simply by looking at the cube! I'm proud of myself, now I just gotta get better at memorizing edges... Corners are no problem for me, unless I get a few parities.