Older cubers discussions

[Oldmancfop]

I'm having the hardest time doing M turns quickly, especially M2s. Most things I see progress on, slow as it is, but with those turns I'm like a grandpa. I silently think to myself "M, M" and go about one turn per second.

I'm gradually getting used to M turns, sounds like your brain/hands are pausing with dread when you see you need to execute an M. As much as executing the M turn I do a small re-grip that must be accurate so as not to foul the path of the middle layer with other fingers. Over time this re-grip has become more natural, reducing my apprehension and as a result my turns are getting a little faster. As I'm discovering, learning to cube demands patients, it often feels like progress is non existent, but it's there.

 

[Oldmancfop]

So what do you think, this cube ready for a clean? And yep, I've got a dog!

 

[Sergey]

So what do you think, this cube ready for a clean? And yep, I've got a dog!View attachment 10517

I think it was ready for this yet yesterday.

 

[h2f]

Anyway I'm not tempted to switch. With a busy life, it takes me so long to implement changes to my solving, and I have a long list of improvements I want to make that will cost less time and deliver greater benefit than switching edge buffer .

Moreover - I gave a try for CE memo and EC execution with UB-UL switch for parity and it looks very promising. After 2 days and around 150 solves my times are down to 1:30-2:30 range with some nice 30-40 memos. I think this order CE-EC is much better: corners in a long term memory are easier to recall - it's 3-4 words mostly - and edges in a short term memory are easier to fast memo - no need to recall words for every pair. Of course I need a time to get used to it but I feel I can memo faster than in EC-CE. In the EC-CE I've hit 20 seconds barrier which I couldnt pass.

 

[pglewis]

Moreover - I gave a try for CE memo and EC execution with UB-UL switch for parity and it looks very promising. After 2 days and around 150 solves my times are down to 1:30-2:30 range with some nice 30-40 memos. I think this order CE-EC is much better: corners in a long term memory are easier to recall - it's 3-4 words mostly - and edges in a short term memory are easier to fast memo - no need to recall words for every pair. Of course I need a time to get used to it but I feel I can memo faster than in EC-CE. In the EC-CE I've hit 20 seconds barrier which I couldnt pass.

I'm rather surprised you didn't do CE-EC before. Most things are a matter of compromise but I think going in CE-EC order is one of those rare things where there are advantages and no disadvantages.

 

[Mike Hughey]

I feel so incompetent. Even after having switched to CE-EC several years ago, I have yet to get anywhere near my memo speed of EC-CE that I was at before. I averaged 30-40 seconds memo with EC-CE, and often had 20 second memos. Now, I probably average 45-55 seconds, and my best memo times aren't much better than 30 seconds. But I don't know how much of that is lack of adequate practice, and how much is because my audio memo is just not very good.

 

[mark49152]

Moreover - I gave a try for CE memo and EC execution with UB-UL switch for parity and it looks very promising. After 2 days and around 150 solves my times are down to 1:30-2:30 range with some nice 30-40 memos. I think this order CE-EC is much better: corners in a long term memory are easier to recall - it's 3-4 words mostly - and edges in a short term memory are easier to fast memo - no need to recall words for every pair. Of course I need a time to get used to it but I feel I can memo faster than in EC-CE. In the EC-CE I've hit 20 seconds barrier which I couldnt pass.

Sounds good! With UF buffer, or DF?

Mini competition report from British Summer Open. It's a rare treat to be able to do three BLD events plus FMC all in one morning, so I was really looking forward to this comp. Sadly it was a disaster .

In FMC, which I never practise, I tried to be clever and do EO, since I've seen it mentioned so much recently. Then I noticed a few easy edges, and after those saw an easy way to solve all remaining edges. So I thought, great, I've got plenty of time so I'll solve all the corners with insertions, since I'm good with BLD comms! Unfortunately, it took 4 comms, and I couldn't figure out how to insert or cancel any of them. In the last 5 minutes I noticed my written solution left 3 corners unsolved and I had no time to track down the mistake, so I tacked on a 5th comm, an 11 mover, on to the end. So I solved edges in 14 moves for a total score of 59 moves . I enjoyed trying out different things though.

Multi was 13/20. My memo was fine, pretty solid and in good time. Forgot corners on just one cube. My execution was full of mistakes though. It was my first big attempt since switching to full 3-style and I'm pretty sure I fouled up some edge comms under pressure. Also I used my new cube set, which is faster and less stable, and I found that a little distracting.

Triple DNF in 5BLD. First two scrambles were nice, and I was a minute under PB on both, but lost them on simple exec errors. One was a new wing comm done backwards, so again full 3-style tripped me up. Third scramble was much tougher and I made a mess of it.

Finally, triple DNF in 4BLD too. Before the first solve I saw my camera SD card was full and I had no time to clear some space, which annoyed me and I lost focus during memo. So I bailed out rather than create time pressure in the remaining two solves. The next two solves were exec errors, but by this time I think I was getting careless anyway.

Overall, my memo and times were a positive, but my accuracy let me down again, same as the previous 3-4 comps. Full 3-style seems to have really set me back - my times have recovered to what they were before, but not improved beyond, and my accuracy has really suffered. Its going to take a lot more practice for it to settle in.

 

[pglewis]

I caught a :15.9 while recording a few solves today. Wasn't that great during F2L but I didn't avoid the dot OLL and it paid off with a PLL skip.

 

[h2f]

Most things are a matter of compromise but I think going in CE-EC order is one of those rare things where there are advantages and no disadvantages.

I was talking with few top blinders and it's personal.

I feel so incompetent. Even after having switched to CE-EC several years ago, I have yet to get anywhere near my memo speed of EC-CE that I was at before. I averaged 30-40 seconds memo with EC-CE, and often had 20 second memos. Now, I probably average 45-55 seconds, and my best memo times aren't much better than 30 seconds. But I don't know how much of that is lack of adequate practice, and how much is because my audio memo is just not very good.

I'll see what happens after some time of practice. Maybe I'll back to EC-CE.

Sounds good! With UF buffer, or DF?

UF.
Sad to hear about triple DNFs in both big blindes, Mark.

 

[Tom Joad]

I caught a :15.9 while recording a few solves today. Wasn't that great during F2L but I didn't avoid the dot OLL and it paid off with a PLL skip.

Nice. I love anything sub 16 now, definitely getting them more and more... sub-15 not so much...

Minor observation based on a quick watch of that video: learn to recognise cases without peaking at the back of the cube and you’ll knock another second or two off...

 

[h2f]

I caught a :15.9 while recording a few solves today. Wasn't that great during F2L but I didn't avoid the dot OLL and it paid off with a PLL skip.

Nice solve!

 

[pglewis]

Minor observation based on a quick watch of that video: learn to recognise cases without peaking at the back of the cube and you’ll knock another second or two off...

Yeah, and maybe not start into the 2nd pair and then change my mind .

Without the PLL skip that was probably on pace for an 18 or low 19 which is still currently a decent solve for me, fully on the merits of spotting the first and last pairs quickly. Pairs 2 and 3 were total lookahead failure which is one reason I still bleed out into the mid 20s.

Another thing uncovered by recording a few solves: I have a bad habit of just randomly turning the U layer and/or rotating during F2L when I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't spotted a pair yet but I need to keep turning, right? Ridiculous things like U, y, spot pair, U'.

This is the sort of stuff I was hoping to uncover. I know some things that need work but watching recorded solves is eye opening.

 

[SpartanSailor]

@pglewis sometimes when doing untimed solves, i avoid using cube rotations at all. I notice my look ahead gets better when I force myself to look around while performing a particular pair insert. Then, feeling good and smooth, I start the timer and everything goes to crap.

 

[h2f]

Another thing uncovered by recording a few solves: I have a bad habit of just randomly turning the U layer and/or rotating during F2L when I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't spotted a pair yet but I need to keep turning, right? Ridiculous things like U, y, spot pair, U'.

.

I do analysys for few solvers and this is a very common habit.

 

[pglewis]

@pglewis sometimes when doing untimed solves, i avoid using cube rotations at all. I notice my look ahead gets better when I force myself to look around while performing a particular pair insert. Then, feeling good and smooth, I start the timer and everything goes to crap.

I'm a lot less sensitive to timer pressure than I used to be. I almost always practice with the stackmat once warmed up because I want to catch any surprise singles that might show up regardless of how I'm doing. Even when I rage-quit on a tanking ao50 like I have a few times this past week I tend to keep solving and timing, I just stop tracking the session. I'll often run the timer even if I'm doing slow solves; who cares if it comes up :38, I know I'm tinkering with things, and it can be surprising and informative to see occasional 18s pop up on slow-turning solves.

All that said, I'm still not immune. Often while warming up without the timer I'll think "these are going smoothly, I should be timing" and the chaos ensues.

 

[AbsoRuud]

Had my second comp this weekend. I got a PR single on 3x3x3 and 2x2x2 and both my times on 4x4x4 were PRs so I should be moving up in the over 40 rankings when they get updated. Averages were garbage due to one DNF solve in 2x2x2 and just general failing at 3x3x3. Skewb went alright, but no PRs there. Very nice competition, friendly people and I got to hang out with Mats Valk for a while. He won two events (3x3x3 and 4x4x4), Matteo de Wit won two other events (Megaminx and Skewb), Antonie Paterakis won 2x2x2 as expected and Vincent Chan won Square-1. All in all it was an extremely warm, but very good day.

 

[SpartanSailor]

I'm a lot less sensitive to timer pressure than I used to be. I almost always practice with the stackmat once warmed up because I want to catch any surprise singles that might show up regardless of how I'm doing. Even when I rage-quit on a tanking ao50 like I have a few times this past week I tend to keep solving and timing, I just stop tracking the session. I'll often run the timer even if I'm doing slow solves; who cares if it comes up :38, I know I'm tinkering with things, and it can be surprising and informative to see occasional 18s pop up on slow-turning solves.

All that said, I'm still not immune. Often while warming up without the timer I'll think "these are going smoothly, I should be timing" and the chaos ensues.

I had a couple 18s when doing slow turns today. I was timing but trying to go slower and smooth. Pretty much tried to do it withOUT slamming the insertions and focused on seeing the next piece I would work. Even if I only saw an edge or a corner alone, I at least knew where one thing was so I only had to search for it’s mate. I found that several times I could actually see both parts of the pair. Smooth is definitely faster.

 

[Logiqx]

Mini competition report from British Summer Open. It's a rare treat to be able to do three BLD events plus FMC all in one morning, so I was really looking forward to this comp. Sadly it was a disaster .

It was a shame to miss you and sorry to have hear about your results Mark. It sounds like you've been putting in the work for even better times in the future.

Had my second comp this weekend. I got a PR single on 3x3x3 and 2x2x2 and both my times on 4x4x4 were PRs so I should be moving up in the over 40 rankings when they get updated.

Just so as people know, I typically run the refresh every Mon, Tue and Wed morning. The refresh captures results submitted to the WCA before 4am (UTC+1) which is the time of the public database export.

Once I've completed a few other projects, I'm planning to fully automate the refresh later this month... create a machine on AWS and have it run automatically every day.

 

[JohnnyReggae]

I've been away for a couple of weeks on a family holiday travelling through Namibia on a car-trip. Ended up driving 5500 km's over the 2 1/2 weeks with over 1000 km's on gravel roads. Spent 2 weeks in the Etosha Game Reserve camping. Was an amazing and awesome trip. I took a few cubes with me but as usual I took too many and spent the majority of my "free" time with only 1.

I decided before I left that I would spend some time either working on my OH OLL of which I only need to learn another 20 algs or so, or attempting to do blind .... again. I opted for blind. Starting with what I knew, OP or both corners and edges to get used to Speffz and finding pieces etc. Started out writing scrambles and letter pairs, then working on sighted execution. I've always found OP for edges very easy using the T and J perms and execution time using that is quite quick. I struggle a bit more with remembering the reverse of the setup moves for corners even though they are never more than 2 moves. Moved onto writing the scrambles and letter pairs with blind execution. To lastly writing scrambles down so that I can go back to them if I messed up either the memo or execution and not using any paper for memo and doing blind execution. I did manage a few successes I'm happy to say although each was well over 10 minutes. I do recall saying to my wife that I have no idea how people do memo without writing it down and am happy to say that I am starting to get it.

So happy with my progress, I decided to look into M2 for edges and got instantly frustrated. Went back to the start of writing down scrambles and letter pairs and practicing sighted execution for edges only, blind for corners. I've been drilling some execution for the last couple days still using semi-sighted execution for edges in that I am looking at the special case algs as I haven't got Q, S, and I down yet.

I do have a frustration with edges especially when you need to break into a couple of cyles is keeping track of how many actual edges have been memo'd. Is there a very quick way from looking at the numbers when you are done with memo ? I know it could be anywhere between 9 and 13 typically. Is there an easy way to tell because trying to touch each piece trying to make sure they have all been accounted for is tricky ... finger tricky and then I forget where I am in my memo. I'm sure that will get better with more work and practice but it still frustrates me.

 

[pglewis]

So happy with my progress, I decided to look into M2 for edges and got instantly frustrated. Went back to the start of writing down scrambles and letter pairs and practicing sighted execution for edges only, blind for corners. I've been drilling some execution for the last couple days still using semi-sighted execution for edges in that I am looking at the special case algs as I haven't got Q, S, and I down yet.

One reason I push M2 from the very start is I think some people just getting started will get a few successes with OP edges and stick with it for a while because it's what they know and M2 isn't that much harder, just different.

For Q btw, I suggest (U' M')x3 (U' M) (U' M')x4 or (U M')x3 (U M) (U M')x4, whichever direction is most comfortable for your finger tricks. A lot of older references suggest (B' R B U R2 U') (M2) (U R2 U' B' R' B) which is intuitive but not very execution friendly IMO.

Is there an easy way to tell because trying to touch each piece trying to make sure they have all been accounted for is tricky

I track edges I've traced on the L or R faces with my fingers and simply try to remember any I've hit on the M slice. The competent 3bld folks just develop a natural sense of when the trace is done. I tried using a checksum instead of fingers early on but I don't think it's a fruitful approach, at least not for me.