Fred's Thread

[Fred]

Big cube went well. My 6x6 PR mean went down from 3:26.57 to 3:17.22. I can still do some better, but I'm definitely happy with this result. I also did a pseudoslot on my last solve.

Remembering how to do small puzzles started out poorly with a 21.51 3x3 average featuring two botched crosses and blanking on an ELL that's nowhere near a new alg. Luckily it was enough to get in round two, where I got an average of 17.97. It's kind of mediocre, but I'm just happy I had no disaster solves in that round.

2x2 was okay. I didn't blank on any CLLs. My biggest mistakes were a lockup and a plus 2.

I slightly dropped my skewb average from 10:36 to 10.09, which was a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

I smashed my square-1 PR average (49.50 to 35.70) thanks to getting five good solves in one average. My PR single also improved from 34.05 to 31.34. I was rather proud of recognizing a cube shape that involved neither scallop/scallop or kite/scallop, namely right fist/left fist (or maybe left fist/right fist). Yeah, kite/scallop (or scallop/kite?) goes through it, but I didn't need to backtrack to kite/scallop first.

Clock was quite good. I broke my PR single twice in one average (8.80 to 8.63 to 8.45) which also improved my average from 10.66 to 10.15. I'm still hoping for sub-10 averages in both clock and skewb, but I'm getting closer!

I also said hi to several people and missed a few others that I'll have to catch at another comp.

 

[Fred]

Just got back from an evening comp where I got a 3bld PR single of 3:26.72 on my third attempt, sneaking in just a few seconds under the ten minute cumulative time limit. I also improved my 3bld PB from 2:52.14 to 2:47.34, and there were a couple DNFs in the 2:30 range.

Down to 2:42.95 now, and I also DNFed a 2:24.40 by three corners. I feel like there's a lot more improvement within reach.

 

[Fred]

Just got back to my hotel room from Southeast Champs day 1! It was a doozy, starting at 8:30 am with multiblind and lasting until 7:00 pm with big blind. I'd been mostly practicing blind events, so the sighted events were mostly mid except for 7x7 which was really bad. I DNFed due to messing up a wing parity alg. At least I made the megaminx cutoff of 1:45, and I got a good OH single that was close to PR.

Multi was my first 8 cube attempt and I got 5/8 with a minute or two to spare. One cube I did an inverse comm, another cube I didn't quite manage the three corner twist, and the third DNF was due to blanking on corner memo. I had tried two 9 cube attempts leading up to the competition, and both were 4/9 and going slightly over time. My last official attempt was six cubes, so I'm happy to get a successful 8 cube attempt under the hour. I might stick with 8 cubes at my next multiblind comp, but we'll see.

By the time 4bld rolled around at the end of the day, I tired and disappointed that I hadn't managed a single PR all day. But then I got a twenty minute success on attempt one, beating my old thirty minute PR. The second attempt was a DNF with three corners and a handful of centers off, but it was a fast DNF, under 17 minutes. I happened to get three out of four food-related letter pairs at a food-related location in my memory palace, so memo went very well, especially that part. Anyway, I had enough time left (1 hour cumulative) for a third attempt, which I was not expecting. I got a 19:57+2=19:59 due to missing a D layer unsetup late enough in the solve that it didn't screw anything else up. I'm really happy with these results because it means a mean is achievable, and 4bld doesn't feel so huge and scary anymore, so maybe I can get 5bld next.

 

[Fred]

My highlight of day two is still the same highlight as day one. The results for big blind didn't get inputted until this morning, and it turns out I got 4th in 4bld and 3rd among Southeast cubers, so I got an award!

As for what actually happened today, it was mostly nxns, but also clock (and squan but I didn't qualify). Again, much of my solving was subpar, but I was happy to make the cutoff of 1:45 for 5x5 and got a decent average, and 4x4 went about as well as possible without getting PRs. My 4x4 PRs were a really big drop from my previous PRs, so getting close to both of them shows that they were not a fluke. Oh yeah, there was also 3bld which I triple DNFed. I want to practice rushing my speed more so that I can quadruple or quintuple DNF get more attempts within the popular ten minute cumulative time limit.

 

[Fred]

New 3bld PB of 2:27.95! I also got a 2:11 DNF by inverse comm.
Edit: 2:14.89 success! I'm chasing sub-2!

 

[Fred]

In May, I have three weekends in a row of competitions with blind. The first was yesterday, and my goal was to get five attempts in under the cumulative time limit of 15 minutes. I had only one attempt over 3 minutes, where I forgot to memo the first letter in edges and had to redo edge memo entirely. I also got one success (2:53.19, PR by 33 seconds) on a different solve, and a couple more close misses. I also got PR averages in pyraminx (14.02 -> 12.97) and 3x3 (15.54 -> 15.51), which I'm really happy about because I had been getting bad results recently in 3x3. I also got another sub-1 average in 4x4 (barely) despite some inconsistent solving.

I also got skewb PRs, but in the silliest way imaginable. This comp had skewb as the main event, so I qualified for the second round fairly easily while breaking my PR single (8.18 -> 7.64), which was my oldest PR, from fall 2024. In the second round, I had two extras due to the timer turning itself off, and into 4pad mode when turned back on. I guess this is why my region usually mods our timers to disable 4pad mode. The two solves I lost were a 12 and a 13, so I wasn't sorry to replace them, but I did have to try to calm myself down for the rest of my average. It worked, and I crushed my PRs. The times were 8.93 (13.xx) (12.xx) 8.97 7.23 (6.70) (12.29), so I broke my PR single two more times and dropped my PR average down from 10.09 to 8.38. Very weird and very silly round.

My next comp is a PBQ with all the blind events and FMC. I'm hoping for a 5bld success. The one after that has a 20 minute cumulative time limit on 3bld, so I might try to go for an average. That one also has clock, so I started learning 7simul no-flip today, after a long time of doing 7simul flip. Apparently my past self was too scared of D moves, since people in the clock discord were saying that even thumb D moves are better than having to do a flip. I already got a few successes (with sub-15 memo too!) because the methods are quite similar, but they were kinda slow because I still have to think about the new method.

Edit to avoid spamming front page: I'm still cubing, but I'm probably not going to be posting as much. I've been having bad experiences in multiple online cubing communities. Anyway, here's an update.
Thanks to the PBQ, I now have this!

Silver in multi with 7/8 and bronze in 4bld out of three successful solvers. Nobody succeeded in 5bld, though I finally managed to get a success at home in 36:30 a couple weeks later. The next weekend, I didn't quite get a 3bld average, but 3/5 successes is much better than my usual 0 or 1 out of 5. I also got a PR single in 3x3 thanks to sune last layer, and a sub-3 PR 6x6 single, and a sub-50 PR 4x4 single.

I'm still trying to catch up to my 7sf clock times with 7s no flip, and I'm getting close on singles. I'm still quite inconsistent though. I'm also trying to learn EG-1 for 2x2 and L4E for pyraminx in order to be not quite as mediocre at sprint events, but I'm also wanting to learn more stuff for blindsolving. I want to finish off 3-style corners, then parity and flips/twists. 3-style corners is finally making more sense to me intuitively, thanks to thinking in terms of triggers. For example, R' U' D' R is a lot to understand intuitively if you think of it as a four move setup, but every corner moves according to either the R' U' R or R' D' R trigger.