Older cubers discussions

[newtonbase]

And I never got the hang of blindfold... Maybe it would be a cool party trick to have.

It is. Do it.

Back from Macc. Results overall were far better than expected. Took a bit off my 2x2 average and 4x4 single and got a massive 5x5 single that I've never even got close to at home. Also got 2 3BLD successes including a PB. Pyraminx and OH were poor but I don't care. Failed MBLD but I'll get there some time. 3x3 was the only real disaster. Wasn't expecting a PB but I seem to have regressed a year.
There was plenty of success for the older guys with Mark's 5BLD being a highlight.
After hours was fun too. I had a civilised meal with Mark and Andy and some very uncivilised drinks with some of the regulars.

 

[Shaky Hands]

Great comp at Macclesfield. I was really happy to get to a Second Round for the first time ever and set several PB's alongside entering some events for the first time. Also happy to have been the judge for a few PB's from Mark and Mark.

Awesome time spent with oldies @mark49152, @newtonbase and @bubbagrub. Great curry as well.

Now I'll have to crack on with some proper practice before the next comp in 1 month's time. Hoping to learn a couple of OLL's a week before then with the ultimate target of learning Full OLL by end of 2016. Also, getting back into the habit of participating in the forum's Weekly Comp is a must for me.

 

[mafergut]

Congratulations to all for your PBs at the comp this weekend.
For me it's been more of a swimming pool weekend with almost no practice and I don't want to repeat myself talking about how much I envy you for goint to comps and all that... ooops! I did it again, and no, it was not my intention to paraphrase Britney Spears at all.

 

[h2f]

The thing with Maskow's 41/41 is a little bit complicated. In the time when he was doing it the regulations had changed - cubes had to be in random orientation. The earlier regulations told nothing about it and blinders often asked to put the cube in their orientation. He told me that he was on the comp where some solevers got the cube in their orientation after the regulations had changed. And when he did 41/41 he and the judge and the delegate werent aware of the change. That's why he got only warn and the record was approved by WCA.

 

[bubbagrub]

Great comp at Macclesfield. I was really happy to get to a Second Round for the first time ever and set several PB's alongside entering some events for the first time. Also happy to have been the judge for a few PB's from Mark and Mark.

Awesome time spent with oldies @mark49152, @newtonbase and @bubbagrub. Great curry as well.

Now I'll have to crack on with some proper practice before the next comp in 1 month's time. Hoping to learn a couple of OLL's a week before then with the ultimate target of learning Full OLL by end of 2016. Also, getting back into the habit of participating in the forum's Weekly Comp is a must for me.

Agreed -- it was a great comp. And good to share in the fun and PBs with the various oldies. And as Mark said, other-Mark's 5BLD success (and silver medal) was a particular highlight -- maybe one day you'll inspire me to try big BLD again, Mark...

There were a few oldies who aren't on here, I think -- I wonder if they'll stumble upon this thread, or if anyone mentioned it to them?

 

[mark49152]

Had a great time this weekend with the other oldies. Congrats everyone on the PBs, some great improvements there.

A few comments and thoughts about my results...

In 5x5 my 2:02 official was also my overall PB that had stood since January. My warm up today started with some awful 3-minute solves followed by a 1:57 out of the blue, my first sub-2. Then on the very next solve, another one! Wow! At that point I decided to finish warm ups on a high, and after a shaky start in the event I got a 1:58 official. You wait six months for a bus then three come at once .

I think there is something about being surrounded by cubing and fellow cubers that acts as a performance enhancer. I always feel like a better cuber by the end of the weekend.

I was also reflecting on my 3BLD 1:24 and am kicking myself that I didn't do better. The reason is that I have done loads of corner comms practice and quite often use them in solves at home now. In that 1:24 there were four really easy comms that I certainly would have done at home, but I only used one, reverting to the comfort zone of OP for the rest. Plus, I wasted about six seconds lifting the blindfold and taking one last look because I didn't trust my memo. If I had had the confidence not to do those things, I think it could have been over 10 seconds faster. So one of my resolutions is to be braver in 3BLD in future. Next comp I will not let myself use OP for corners at all.

In multi I was disappointed to drop points because the memo was good and it was just a silly execution error. I'm not exactly sure what, but I think forgetting to undo a setup or similar. MBLD is a lot of sustained mental effort and it feels frustrating to mess up on one little slip. In a way it was less frustrating to screw up several cubes through stupid mistakes like I did in London! Oh well, try again next time.

Finally, 3x3. I've switched to GuoGuan at home as it's light and fast and turns great. So I used it in the first round at Macc. Disaster! My comp nerves were just amplified by the more unforgiving cube and I locked and fumbled all over the place. I switched back to AoLong for the second round and was much more comfortable, although it wasn't a successful event for me this comp. Anyway, my lesson learned here is that I need a slower and more controllable cube in comp, and actually it might even be better to have two mains, one for home and one for comps. That's what I think I will do for now.

 

[h2f]

Congratulations to all for your PBs at the comp this weekend!

I had a busy weekend due to my family visit. Luckily i could do around 20 solves of megaminx and dropped to my times to low 5. I've replaced 3 colors and changed white (it's on bottom now), grey (it's on top layer now) nad cream (it on bottom layer now). I've seen that new record holder had similiar thoughts about it - it's on one movie on his yt channel. And now it's fine.

 

[mafergut]

Congratulations to all for your PBs at the comp this weekend!

I had a busy weekend due to my family visit. Luckily i could do around 20 solves of megaminx and dropped to my times to low 5. I've replaced 3 colors and changed white (it's on bottom now), grey (it's on top layer now) nad cream (it on bottom layer now). I've seen that new record holder had similiar thoughts about it - it's on one movie on his yt channel. And now it's fine.

Not sure what you say here. Have you moved some caps?

 

[muchacho]

Just some colors changed, see

I also have white opposite yellow, it made sense to me.

Yesterday I improved my best Ao5 from 18.194 to 18.191 and today to 18.153... small improvements, but being that fast frequently must be a good sign.

Spoiler

24372 01-ago-2016 9:22:51 00:14.193 F2 U' B2 U B2 D F2 R2 D2 U' L2 F' R' L F U L2 F2 L D' L2 U2
24371 01-ago-2016 9:22:01 00:20.014 B2 D2 L2 D F2 D B2 R2 F' D U2 B2 R2 U' L D' F U
24370 01-ago-2016 9:21:17 00:23.119 U' L2 U2 L2 F2 D' R2 F2 D R2 U B' R2 B2 D2 F R2 L' B L2 U R'
24369 01-ago-2016 9:20:34 00:16.247 D2 B2 D2 B2 R2 U2 F2 U B2 U R2 F' L' B D B L D F' D' U
24368 01-ago-2016 9:19:54 00:18.198 R2 B2 U L2 U F2 R2 D' L2 F2 U2 F D2 L D' L2 B' R' F L2 U' F'

 

[h2f]

Not sure what you say here. Have you moved some caps?

I used bad words. I have switched 3 colors - white - gray - cream.

 

[JohnnyReggae]

Or ZZ

ZZ actually has the simplest LL in many ways. I think it is 7 OLL, and 21 PLL? The PLL is what you already know... OLL is the OLL from two look just the corners cases.

Alas, EOLine is still painful... but ya know... Try it, you might like it . First one's free.

-Ira

I started looking at ZZ. In truth it is not that hard. The EOLine takes a bit of getting used to. Having said that though I still split the EO from the line as currently I can't do both at the same time. I like the method and want to spend more time on it especially after hearing about ZZ-CT which seems very promising .... it's just the number of algs to learn ... not sure if I want to spend the amount of time required to learn them all to get a few seconds faster than I am currently using CFOP.

 

[mafergut]

I started looking at ZZ. In truth it is not that hard. The EOLine takes a bit of getting used to. Having said that though I still split the EO from the line as currently I can't do both at the same time. I like the method and want to spend more time on it especially after hearing about ZZ-CT which seems very promising .... it's just the number of algs to learn ... not sure if I want to spend the amount of time required to learn them all to get a few seconds faster than I am currently using CFOP.

I have seen the ZZ-CT thread but, to be honest I didn't quite get it. Can you explain a bit?

Sent from my Nexus 4 with Tapatalk

 

[JanW]

ZZ-CT solves last F2L slot and LL in 2 steps. First step, TSLE, inserts the last F2L edge and orients all 5 corners (U layer and FDR), while ignoring permutation of the corners (109 cases). 2nd step, TTLL, permutes the last 5 corners and 4 edges (94 cases).

TSLE recognition works like OLL recognition, you only look at orientation of U layer. TTLL recognition is like PLL recognition, you look at the blocks on the sides of U layer. The algs are supposed to be fairly easy to execute and many of them easy to learn.

It's still a lot to learn, but at least it's less than full ZBLL. Recognition should also be a lot faster than ZBLL.

 

[JanW]

4/5 mbld, 38:30, off by a flipped edge. It was a stupid execution mistake. Instead of solving UF->LF->LU I did UF->FL->UL, even though my memo was correct and I was thinking about the correct stickers. But, at least I'm steadily improving. 8 cubes seems more and more doable.

In a few days I should get a pack of Traxxas 50k, 30k and 10k in the mail. Then I have to learn how to actually lube a cube. Have used only Maru lube so far.

 

[mafergut]

ZZ-CT solves last F2L slot and LL in 2 steps. First step, TSLE, inserts the last F2L edge and orients all 5 corners (U layer and FDR), while ignoring permutation of the corners (109 cases). 2nd step, TTLL, permutes the last 5 corners and 4 edges (94 cases).

TSLE recognition works like OLL recognition, you only look at orientation of U layer. TTLL recognition is like PLL recognition, you look at the blocks on the sides of U layer. The algs are supposed to be fairly easy to execute and many of them easy to learn.

It's still a lot to learn, but at least it's less than full ZBLL. Recognition should also be a lot faster than ZBLL.

Ah, okay, what I was not getting was the part about 1st step orienting the corners, so I thought, why the last step has less algs if you have one more corner unsolved? But, anyway, it's around 200 algs, more or less half of ZBLL. I mean, it's still quite a journey. What I don't like is that if forces you to leave one specific ZZF2L pair for the end so, in case you happen to have a free pair in U at your disposal you cannot just insert it.

 

[MarcelP]

not sure if I want to spend the amount of time required to learn them all to get a few seconds faster than I am currently using CFOP.

I would.. The thing is, I doubt ZZ will make me faster because ZZ requires block building skills and of course the whole EOLine thing. If I could master that, I would probably be faster becauses it leaves me with easy PLL's. But I would definatly find it worth all the trouble if it would make me 2 - 3 secs faster than CFOP

 

[mafergut]

I would.. The thing is, I doubt ZZ will make me faster because ZZ requires block building skills and of course the whole EOLine thing. If I could master that, I would probably be faster becauses it leaves me with easy PLL's. But I would definatly find it worth all the trouble if it would make me 2 - 3 secs faster than CFOP

To be honest. I'm getting more and more convinced lately that, at our age, what makes the difference is movecount (and lookahead) instead of spamming TPS with hundreds of algs and, for that purpose, I still think the best method is and will ever be Roux. And you can have "advanced" Roux with just 42 algs (full CMLL), which is even less than full OLL + PLL, not to talk about ZZ-CT or ZBLL. Ofcourse, there's the same problem here regarding block building that you see in ZZ. If I ever get bored of 3x3 'cos of my lack of progress I might give another method a try and it would most probably be Roux, even though ZZ seems better for OH (which I also like) but I think I could get used to the table abuse thing for M slices if I practice enough.

 

[JohnnyReggae]

I would.. The thing is, I doubt ZZ will make me faster because ZZ requires block building skills and of course the whole EOLine thing. If I could master that, I would probably be faster becauses it leaves me with easy PLL's. But I would definatly find it worth all the trouble if it would make me 2 - 3 secs faster than CFOP

I'm seriously thinking about going down that road, although I would like to see how far I can get with CFOP before I feel that I'm not going down, or unlikely to get lower times. But it is always good to learn new things which keeps things interesting.

 

[MarcelP]

To be honest. I'm getting more and more convinced lately that, at our age, what makes the difference is movecount (and lookahead) instead of spamming TPS with hundreds of algs and, for that purpose,

I think you are right! Even at practiced scrambles after doing the same scramble 10 times I can not get the insane TPS that new young cubers do get. But if you do 40 moves instead of 100

 

[JohnnyReggae]

New 5x5 PB ... 2:43.73

B2 F2 Lw' Rw' Uw2 R Bw' Rw F' Uw2 Dw' D L2 U2 R' Uw Fw2 Rw' B2 R Fw' Dw U2 L2 B' Lw' L B2 Rw L2 U' Bw F B Lw' R' L2 D2 Bw F' Rw2 U Dw2 Fw F2 Bw' D' R Lw' Dw R2 Uw2 F2 L2 Lw' D2 Rw' B Rw' Fw'

The Bochuang that I ordered a month ago arrived on Friday along with a Shengshou Mini Linglong 5x5. The Bochuang is an awesome 5x5, certainly the best that I have. I currently have a Moyu Huachuang and a Cyclone Boys. The Bochuang has made me keen to practice 5x5 again because it feels so nice, turns so smoothly and is really quiet. I so rarely get a sub 3 min with 5x5 with my average between 3:00 and 3:30 somewhere. In the last couple days I have already had 3 sub 3mins. Don't know how it compares to the Yuxin but I am so glad that I got the Bochuang as I really like it a lot.

The mini Shengshou Linglong is surprisingly not bad at all. It turns quite nicely albeit a bit harder to turn than the Bochuang, but then again they are not in the same league. I really like the small size and at my current speeds quite adequate to speedcube with. If you're a lot faster than me then it would be more for the fun and something that is easy to stick in a pocket and travel with.

Here they are next to my Gans V2 ...