[Member Intro] Hi from South Africa

[AlphaSheep]

Hi. I'm a 28 year old engineering PhD student (basically finished though) from Johannesburg, South Africa.

I learned to solve my dad's old Rubik's cube in about 2000 or 2001, and I solved it frequently at a casual pace (in about 2 minutes) until last year. The cube locked up frequently, and finally broke last year, so I went online to buy a decent cube. I did some research, got a speed cube (a Guhong), learned the ZZ method, and began looking around for local competitions, only to find nothing. Without anything to work towards, I didn't really practice much.

In June, a local toy store held a competition. I went along, and set an average of a minute, and found out about South Africa's growing speedcubing community. Since then, I've been practising when I have time. I set my first official times (24.88 single, 28.27 average) a couple of weeks ago, and had the awesome opportunity to watch both Mats and Feliks in action.

Here's hoping that this forum will help me get me to my goal of sub-20 in 2015.

 

[obelisk477]

Hi! Are you still using ZZ? And if so which alg sets are you using?

 

[AlphaSheep]

Yes, I'm still using ZZ. I use OCLL+PLL for last layer at the moment, but I'm busy learning COLL. I've learned about 12 algs so far, but my recognition is still very slow.

 

[obelisk477]

Before I say anything, you should know that I'm a CFOP'er and haven't traversed into ZZ too much to be incredibly helpful.

But anyway, I would say your best bet for now, at least in terms of algs, is to finish COLL and get used to recog. You're not going to have any problem getting sub-20, and probably within the next 3-4 months if you're practicing consistently and finish your COLL memorization soon. I would also recommend learning some of the shorter Winter variation cases and corresponding Summer variation cases (although these are less useful) if you don't already know them.

Do you do any of the other puzzles?

 

[AlphaSheep]

Yes I do. I solve cubes all the way from 2x2 to 7x7, but I'm not at all fast with the bigger cubes. I still take 15 minutes for the 7x7. I enjoy Skewb as well - I've only been solving it for less than 2 months and currently average about 14 seconds.

 

[sneaklyfox]

Welcome!

 

[TDM]

Welcome! Good to see more ZZ users. Do you practise one-handed solving much? ZZ is a very good method for that.

 

[Randomno]

Welcome! Good to see more ZZ users. Do you practise one-handed solving much? ZZ is a very good method for that.

And if he gets sub-20 at OH he might end up with some CRs.

 

[Cuddly Cuber]

I'm in the same boat for getting sub-20. Right now I'm like 23 second average but I've been stuck here for about four months. Best of luck and welcome!!

 

[AlphaSheep]

I'm very clumsy with one hand. I've only done about 10 solves, averaging about 2 minutes. I don't think I'm going to be getting any CRs any time soon.

 

[TDM]

I'm very clumsy with one hand. I've only done about 10 solves, averaging about 2 minutes. I don't think I'm going to be getting any CRs any time soon.

If you practise OH, your times improve very quickly. Learning to turn is hard at first, but with a bit of practise you can do it quite quickly. If you haven't watched any of asmallkitten's youtube videos, then watch some of them, because they're really useful. He has videos on how to turn one-handed and how to practise your turning.

 

[AlphaSheep]

Thanks. I will definitely have a look at them.

 

[DuffyEdge]

Welcome Brendan!

 

[AlphaSheep]

I thought I'd just add a graph of my progress since I started practising regularly in June. This makes that 30 second barrier so much more obvious. I'm hoping to get a sub-30 Mo100 by the end of the year.

Spoiler

 

[MrMan]

Hey, we're having exactly the same level ! (averaging/PBs)
That's funny.

 

[AlphaSheep]

My PB is still a little higher than yours. Mine is only 22.58. When did you start?

 

[MrMan]

I have known how to solve it for almost two years but got into speedsolving only in september when I discovered that rubik's wasn't a good brand.
Although my PB was really lucky I got maybe 1 24s since and 2/3 26/25s.
Also as I can't really practice consistantly at the moment I can't get consistent time. I just made an average and it was 35...
I'll get more into it during the hollidays !

 

[AlphaSheep]

I updated the graph of my progress so I thought I'd post it here. All 6124 timed solves since I started keeping track just over 9 months ago.

 

[PenguinsDontFly]

I updated the graph of my progress so I thought I'd post it here. All 6124 timed solves since I started keeping track just over 9 months ago.

http://i.imgur.com/yRuqXnl.png

Thats a lot of solves! I usually delete after 100