Older cubers discussions

I had long hair too. Also, Guns n Roses.

Seems pretty normal for this list. Yeah... I was in that demographic as well.

Maiden and Metallica were my favourites in those days and I liked GNR plus many others.

I got it updated into *some type* of HTML on my blog. :) I'm not great with HTML so I have not made it collapsible yet, so yeah it's way long. I think it probably needs jquery or java script to do that? @Logiqx Mike I'd be happy to check in my version that creates HTML to GitHub if you want it.

https://acuriousblog.wordpress.com/how-fast-are-the-cubers-over-40/

Nice one Jason. iPython notebooks are pretty cool eh?

There is a big debate about Python 2 or Python 3 but that is outside the scope of this forum, lol.

jQuery would be a quick and easy way to make the tables collapsable. Perhaps you can make your code switchable so that it can generate bbcode or HTML?

In terms of submitting your changes, perhaps you might like to try the following activity:
- create yourself a github account
- "fork" my code so you have your own repository
- "commit" your changes to your repository
- submit a "pull request" so that I can pull your changes into the original project

I did the same a little while back to submit some minor changes to visualcube. :)
 
I really like my diagonal swap L. I use a fat version of an OLL:

OLL 35: R U2' (R2' F R F') R U2' R'
COLL L6: r U2' (R2' F R F') R U2' r'

Good to know. I use cmll which is very nice: L' U2 R U' r' U2 R l U' R'. I didnt like oll35 and switched to something different taken from Ch. Olson's channel.
 
Good to know. I use cmll which is very nice: L' U2 R U' r' U2 R l U' R'. I didnt like oll35 and switched to something different taken from Ch. Olson's channel.

The other thing about this case is that adjacent colours are on top so it's either the no swap (triple sune) or diag swap. One of the non-twisted corners has stickers matching the colours on top and the other has stickers with opposites to those on top. I identify which non-twisted corner matches the colours on top (i.e. look at just one sticker on either of non-twisted corners) and AUF so that the appropriate corner is in UFR. It's then pretty obvious whether I need to execute triple-sune or the fat OLL without needing an additional AUF.

This recognition also works for U and T cases where adjacent colours are on top. Simple AUF rules help me to differentiate the cases whilst I am still a noob. :)
 
Back in February on this thread, I bemoaned the number of corner twists I got with a Thunderclap and put that cube aside. I picked it up again yesterday for a bit of BLD practice (still a long way from a success) and then today I managed a few 3x3 PB's with it despite not being that used to it:

Ao25: 26.22 (previous best 26.43)
Ao100: 27.45 (previous best 27.99)
Total time for 100 solves: 46:07 (previous best 47:12)
Total sub-30 solves: 77 (previous best 75)

I'm going to go back to this cube for a bit. It's showing potential I may not have realised before.
 
Hi there Oldies! Long time no cubing. Or just a little bit... First few months of this year were really busy, didn't have time to sit down and do timed solves. But I've had a few cubes lying around the house, which I've picked up for a few hand scrambles whenever I walk by, and also done some slow solving while watching TV. In the last few days I did the first couple of hundred timed solves of the year, and I'm pleased to see that I have kept improving over the past few months, even if practice has been a lot more sporadic.

Broke all my PB:s today.

Single: 23.349
Ao5: 26.738
Ao12: 27.927
Ao50: 30.054
Ao100: 30.267

Cannot quite say I'm sub30 yet, but at least I'm closer than ever.

One thing I've been thinking about lately is corner recognition. Is that something worth thinking about? I'll give an example. In the picture below, the white cross is done and you see a orange-white corner at the upper left, a blue-white corner at the upper right and a green-white corner in the front at the bottom. Can you tell (during a solve) the third color of any of those pieces without turning the cube to look?

Cpx4CB2.jpg


Second example. Three F2L pairs are solved and you see the white of the last corner in the back left corner. Can you tell which way it is turned and which color will be upwards with a L move without turning the cube to look?

0q7q2Qw.jpg


Just wondering if this is a skill some of you might have acquired with experience, or with practice, and if it is worth the effort to think about such things during slow solves.
 
@JanW - the way I would think about this is that if the white was on the D-face, the relative position of centers should always identify what the other colour is.

In the first image, the missing colours should be Green on the White-Orange corner, Red on the White-Blue corner and Red again on the White-Green corner.

In the second image, if we assume Orange to be the F-face, the missing colours on the White corner should be Green on the B-face and Red on the D-face.

If you look at a solved cube and play around with the positions, hopefully you can see what I mean.
 
Hi JanW, welcome back!

@Shaky Hands Yeah, it's a good cube, it gets better with some use, maybe that's why it didn't impress you much at first. It's one of my preferred cubes (but I think I prefer even more stable ones like Tanglong or Weilong).

PBs:
3x3 OH single: 58.580 (was 59.932 since 30-jan, I didn't practice much after that, 50 solves since then)
3x3 OH ao5: 1:05.131 (was 1:11.358 from 7-jan)
3x3 OH ao12: 1:16.973 (was 1:17.353 from 30-jan)
4x4 single: 1:46.680 (was 1:49.880 from 26-apr)
 
Last edited:
@JanW - the way I would think about this is that if the white was on the D-face, the relative position of centers should always identify what the other colour is.

In the first image, the missing colours should be Green on the White-Orange corner, Red on the White-Blue corner and Red again on the White-Green corner.

In the second image, if we assume Orange to be the F-face, the missing colours on the White corner should be Green on the B-face and Red on the D-face.

If you look at a solved cube and play around with the positions, hopefully you can see what I mean.
Thanks! This is pretty much the way I've been thinking about it, yes. The question was more if you do this kind of thinking on the fly while solving. Or do you turn the cube to look at the piece. I can figure it out at the moment, but takes a couple of seconds, so during a speedsolve I would just turn the cube and have a look at the back. I'm wondering if I should keep working on this to make it intuitive, or if there are more important things to focus on.

Thanks for the welcomes! :) Maybe I should get back into the race to sub 30 and stick around.
 
@JanW - Nice to see you back. In answer to your questions, I can certainly tell those corners during a speed solve without turning the cube to look. There is no reasoning involved. This ability comes through lots of solving.

Also worth noting that I'd probably know the other sticker in your first example due to lookahead, tracking whatever corners are on the top. The second case would be automatic for me since the white is clearly visible on the side.
 
@Logiqx Thanks! So better to focus on improving lookahead and eventually I'll get used to recognizing those corners automatically. That sounds about right.
 
The other thing about this case is that adjacent colours are on top so it's either the no swap (triple sune) or diag swap. One of the non-twisted corners has stickers matching the colours on top and the other has stickers with opposites to those on top. I identify which non-twisted corner matches the colours on top (i.e. look at just one sticker on either of non-twisted corners) and AUF so that the appropriate corner is in UFR. It's then pretty obvious whether I need to execute triple-sune or the fat OLL without needing an additional AUF.

This recognition also works for U and T cases where adjacent colours are on top. Simple AUF rules help me to differentiate the cases whilst I am still a noob. :)

I didnt notice it earlier. Thanks. I'm recognizing with Waffo's system of patterns etc.
 
Wowzers! I just can't keep up with this thread! you guys are great. Admittedly I only skimmed over the last several pages, but I saw lots of PB's (awesome!), and lots of Roux discussion. I tried Roux and it's an enjoyable method to solve, but I'm really slow at it. Roux is another one of those "once I get to sub-20 at CFOP" things for me.

I finally received my AoFu GT 7x7! today (along with a few other puzzles). I considered waiting till tonight so I could do an unboxing, but I couldn't wait, and opened it up here at the office :) I'll do some solves tonight and see what I think of it.

@JanW For that last F2L case. As @Logiqx said, definitely focus on improving lookahead rather than trying to deduce the orientation of that corner piece in one look. I also highly recommend you practice inserting pairs in the back slots. As you do this you will begin to recognize these corner cases without even really thinking about it and you won't need to rotate the cube, even if your lookahead isn't very good.

Does anyone here do half centres for last four in Yau? It looks quite nice.
I'm trying to use half centers more and more, because I really like it. Though in speedsolves I often regress to my bad one center at a time habits.
 
Part of the fun learning COLL has been figuring out the recognition. I've only looked at other peoples recognition after figuring something out for myself. :)

The exercise I like is to take 6 cubes and to this:
1. Prepare every case in proper order from 1 to 6. This forces connection between cases like doing B1 makes C1 etc.
2. Solving them in ordrer from 1 to 6.
When I used to it. I do 2. randomly. Next step is take 12 cubes and do the same but in connection B with C. D with E (T cases with U cases). T with U and H with Pi. And again - right order and random order. I really like this way of remembering it and it works for me.
 
Back
Top