[Unofficial] Maxim Chechnev won the semi-final of the show Ukraine's Got Talent

[Mike Hughey]

Oh, and RB - the 7bld UWR is about 37 minutes, including about 20 minutes of memorization.

Wow, cool! Thanks, that is really great time.
I actually didn’t have any idea how long it takes, but it seems my calculations were pretty close. If by calculations a super-robot-man could do it within 27 minutes, it amazing to see how close the real result can be.

I think that may still be my time, although I know several people are getting really close to it. I've gotten sub-40 quite a few times. Honestly, it's not a very good time. It's probably one of the easiest UWRs out there to beat. (You know that by the fact that I hold it. ) I once estimated how fast I thought Ville could do it way back when he was the best in the world at big cubes BLD, and I think I estimated something like 27 minutes. Now that some people are a minute or so faster at 5x5x5 BLD, I suspect sub-25 is actually what people should be shooting for.

As for how I feel about this whole thing, I admit I find it a little troubling because of how it can confuse average people about what is required to do it. But I still think what Mythbusters did with feet solving and BLD solving was much more misleading than this could ever be (oh no, Mike is on his soapbox about Mythbusters again):
1. they basically implied in their video segment that the way people make videos of feet solving and BLD solving is by reversing the video;
2. they are highly respected, so people worldwide trust them;
3. they are popular, and so are seen by many people worldwide.

I'm surprised that people seem to be more incensed over this than they were over that. I can only figure that's because Mythbusters overall appeal to the type of people who are in the speedcubing community (most of us are fans of them), so speedcubers tend to give them a pass when they take liberties on something like this. Just like Maxim should ideally tell people what his cheat was, and that there are people who can do it "correctly" and how difficult that is / long it takes, so Mythbusters should have followed their video stating that there are people who do it "correctly" and approximately how it's done. And that statement should be attached to their video on YouTube that people still watch regularly, which certainly is not the case.

I still think Mythbusters did the single biggest disservice that has ever been done to BLD solving in the general populace.

 

[Rnewms]

I still think Mythbusters did the single biggest disservice that has ever been done to BLD solving in the general populace.

Mythbusters is certainly worse than Maxim, but I wouldn't call Maxim's illusion a minor disservice. Glad you brought that up because I completely forgot about it.

 

[Noahaha]

I still think Mythbusters did the single biggest disservice that has ever been done to BLD solving in the general populace.

I agree... but it's really not hard to tell when a video has been reversed. You can pretty much always know it's real by the fact that the cube falls downwards instead of up. Some people are just very ignorant. I understand the skepticism of BLD completely, and I can understand when people say that the person just undid the scramble or peeked, since these are very reasonable thoughts if you don't understand how it works, but thinking that a video was reversed is pretty ridiculous.

 

[Dene]

First I should state I haven't really been reading this thread since I posted way back at the start but...

I still think Mythbusters did the single biggest disservice that has ever been done to BLD solving in the general populace.

Perhaps they did a disservice to the community, but what I think is unfair is that Maxim is doing a disservice to the other Ukranian contestants who are legitimately exhibiting their talents. He could win what I assume is a lot of money by doing so, whereas the mythbusters weren't screwing over anyone else. I'm not saying Maxim is not talented and doesn't deserve the money in general, but he certainly doesn't deserve to get anything the way he is going right now.

As a side note (and I'm going to guess this has already been mentioned in the thread), I also think he is doing a disservice to Simon Westlund (and any other cubers who have gone on these sorts of shows) who did it legitimately.