Older cubers discussions

[pglewis]

remember that 18.45 s I thought was so low I would not acheive better in a long time ? Well I got 18.11 And those are still my ONLY two sub 20 singles. I just had a 25.05 Ao5 today and I broke the 28 sec barrier a few times for Ao10, with a 27.33 being the best so far.

Great progress and you've probably knocked down a mental wall, having done it twice now. It's also good motivation for me to try to keep pace, you keep forging ahead and I'll try to follow in your footsteps.

Of the ones I "know", there's still a few which are a little dodgy. I reckon, with renewed focus, I can finish the rest this month...

Yeah, as I found back with PLL, there's "knowing the alg" and then there's using it in an actual speedsolve. I know 8 OLLs beyond EOLL but I still rarely use the squares (newest for me) when they turn up. Either my edge OLL recog takes over before I realize "OH!", or I recognize it but then feel the delay on recall and ditch it for 2 look still. OLL is going to be a big focus for me after this weekend but I figure it could be a few months after I "know them" before I really reap the full benefits.

 

[newtonbase]

Consecutive PLL skips on 4x4! Untimed of course.

 

[Shaky Hands]

Yeah, as I found back with PLL, there's "knowing the alg" and then there's using it in an actual speedsolve. I know 8 OLLs beyond EOLL but I still rarely use the squares (newest for me) when they turn up. Either my edge OLL recog takes over before I realize "OH!", or I recognize it but then feel the delay on recall and ditch it for 2 look still. OLL is going to be a big focus for me after this weekend but I figure it could be a few months after I "know them" before I really reap the full benefits.

I used to not use some algs that I was trying to embed into muscle memory in a speedsolve as I didn't want to affect an average I was working on. Now I attempt it anyway and if I mess it up, I just delete the solve from the average I'm counting it towards. Better to try than not is my theory. Obviously I can't do this in a competition but if I'm just sitting down to do a quick Ao12, I think it's fair game to do so.

One thing that slows me down with finishing up OLL is that I'm doing 90% of my practice on Big Cubes, so the percentage of time I'm actually practicing OLL is way lower than it used to be.

 

[JohnnyReggae]

It's been rather a strange day so far. After struggling with a stomache bug and spending most of the previous evening violently throwing up and spending most of yesterday in bed as sick as a dog, I am back at work today as a number of people are on leave and coverage of services is required. Nonetheless I feel terrible but I decided to do a few solves at work. First off 4x4 ... 2nd solve in I a get a PB of 1:03.05 which had a PLL skip. I decide to take a walk and get some fresh air and sun and go sit up at the Varsity sport fields and do a little OH. So not only did I get a new PB of 27.45 I also broke my mo3 and ao5 .... strange day indeed

4x4 = 1:03.95 U F' Fw2 L' Rw2 R' U2 L2 Uw L F Uw2 F2 B' R Fw' F' U2 Fw Rw L2 Fw2 Uw' Fw2 U' Fw2 B Uw L R2 D' F' Rw D2 Fw2 L2 F' R2 Rw' F2

OH = 27.45 F' L2 F' D2 R2 B2 D2 R2 B R2 U B2 D2 F' R F' R' D' U

 

[mafergut]

@Shaky Hands I have been doing something similar when, e.g. I was doing a 3x3 Ao100 and I suddenly found a nice non-white/yellow cross. I would try out the solve with the blue, green... whatever cross color and delete the solve from the average afterwards. Right now I have really stopped doing serious Ao100 because I'm in the process to becoming full CN so, next time I do a serious Ao100 it would be under those conditions. The other day I did one already but my focus was not good times, just trying to get the hang of finding the best cross from 6 sides instead of just two in more or less the 15 second limit. The Ao100 was 20.7x and the best Ao50 in there was 20.39 so not globally sub-20 full cn yet but less than 2 seconds off my PB on white/yellow cross so, I'm going for it.

@JohnnyReggae I hope you feel better soon. Very nice 4x4 solve and that OH single beats my PB . I just had a double disappointment at 4x4. I stopped the timer and saw a 1:00.65, almost two seconds better than my PB single but... so close to sub 1 minute!!!! Dang! I rotate the cube and I see that I had adjacent PLL parity on the back, so it's a DNF

 

[JohnnyReggae]

@JohnnyReggae I hope you feel better soon. Very nice 4x4 solve and that OH single beats my PB . I just had a double disappointment at 4x4. I stopped the timer and saw a 1:00.65, almost two seconds better than my PB single but... so close to sub 1 minute!!!! Dang! I rotate the cube and I see that I had adjacent PLL parity on the back, so it's a DNF

I had exactly that last week, stopped the timer on what should have been a PB only to find an adjacent PLL parity at the back ... so disappointing At least that has been rectified this week ;-)

 

[Logiqx]

Not too shabby for a Skewb noob?

Best of all: 4.242
Worst of all: 21.986
Average of all: 12.723
Best Avg of 5: 7.774
Best Avg of 12: 11.097
Best Avg of 50: 12.273
Best Avg of 100: 12.723

The 7.77 Ao5 was lucky of course!

Progress below. I quite enjoy this event but it isn't great on my ageing wrists!

 

[pglewis]

Now I attempt it anyway and if I mess it up, I just delete the solve from the average I'm counting it towards. Better to try than not is my theory. Obviously I can't do this in a competition but if I'm just sitting down to do a quick Ao12, I think it's fair game to do so.

That's a good idea. Also, I'll be timing a lot less frequently after this weekend. First new priorities will be more OLL and a focus on white/yellow neutral. Full CN may become a 2017 goal for me as well, I've had some sub-40 solves on non white/yellow so there shouldn't be much excuse for me other than laziness on practicing it.

@Logiqx: I'm using your PDFs to try to get another over-40 solving. His last resolution to learn to solve apparently ended in cube violence so we'll see. I really like your beginners approach to F2L. Ever since moving from LBL to F2L I've felt it's almost useless for beginners to learn LBL because you pretty much want to ditch it in favor of pairs the moment you can solve. Your beginners approach there seems like the best of both worlds, cheers!

 

[CLL Smooth]

I've seen a lot of talk on this thread of turning the timer off for practice. I used to do a lot of this and there is much to be learned from it. I also see the recent talk of deleting solves in the middle of averages if you want to spend a little time working different algs/techniques in your solves. I've also done this in the past but have adopted a different approach lately.
I use the timer always, now. Mainly for the scrambles and the routine. Sometimes I even do that big pause at LS or LL to remember and incorporate new algs into my routine. Now, I just keep all of my times. I don't see it as fair to count an average that I deleted a solve from. The hardest part about this approach is just not caring.
I did do some untimed practice the other day, though. It was blind cross+1st pair. I recommend it to all.

 

[pglewis]

Now, I just keep all of my times. I don't see it as fair to count an average that I deleted a solve from.

I'm of two minds on this, I guess it mostly comes down to what you're looking to get out of the timed sessions. If I'm considering my timer runs as comp practice then what we all normally do isn't really accurate, tbh. We're churning out timed solve after timed solve rather than a solve followed by 1 to N practice solves waiting for the scramble/timer seat. I'm not at the stage where I'm tracking longer term averages yet, but I imagine plenty of people track Ao1000 runs that were broken up with untimed solves between timed sessions. So I don't view it ridiculously strictly if I see an easy orange cross and think, "I'll discard this time because I consider it an experimental solve and not a speedsolve"; timed sessions often have experimental solves in between. But if I subsequently get a :17 and decide to keep it, now I'm probably crossing over the line into cherry picking (for me) . All that said, I've never discarded any solves from within an AoX that I've "counted" for a PR.

As for untimed solves: I believe they've helped me make progress but then again, how could I know? It's possible I would have progressed just as well or better timing them all, be what may. I believe it helped me mentally not to see scads of times ten+ seconds slower than usual because...

The hardest part about this approach is just not caring.

 

[Logiqx]

@Logiqx: I'm using your PDFs to try to get another over-40 solving. His last resolution to learn to solve apparently ended in cube violence so we'll see. I really like your beginners approach to F2L. Ever since moving from LBL to F2L I've felt it's almost useless for beginners to learn LBL because you pretty much want to ditch it in favor of pairs the moment you can solve. Your beginners approach there seems like the best of both worlds, cheers!

Cool. It's nice to know that my slides are getting some re-use. They took quite some time to create, mostly on the train to work instead of practicing!

Let me know how you both get on with the lessons. Good luck.

 

[kbrune]

I've been doing some BLD practice. I figured id find out what my typical memo/execution splits are. Although not very accurate (memo was only identifying sticker) I came up with approximately 1 minute for each. Which would potentially give me a 2 min average

When doing proper bld solves I'm currently averaging 3 min. So memo is most likely around 2 min. I use OP/M2

Based on this. I can't fathom how I'm ever going to get anywhere close to 1 min bld solves! I mean I'm working on transitioning to 3 cycle. But it'll be a long time before I can use it in solves. Even when pushing memo today I managed a 2:27.xy Missed by a twisted corner.

Any thoughts or advice from the Bld pros on improving memo speeds?
@mark49152 @h2f and whoever else has anything to offer.

Apologies for the incoherent post lol

 

[h2f]

@kbrune - only regular practice is the answer. The progress will come naturally. When you will feel comfortable with what you're doing you can learn 3style, but in fact it's not necessery to be around 1 minute. I've learnt it only because OP corners seemed boring to me.

 

[mark49152]

@kbrune - memo is one of those things that won't improve unless you push it. The brain settles on a comfortable pace and you need to push it out of its comfort zone. You can just rush memo during regular practice, or devise specific exercises for speeding up your memo, whatever you prefer.

 

[mark49152]

@Shaky Hands , @pglewis, @CLL Smooth and others: I also delete some solves from sessions. My logic is this. I record my averages to measure my progress, so I count only those solves that are relevant to what I am trying to measure. Generally, I want to measure my speed. I do not care about measuring my success rate executing new algs correctly, but I do want to practise those algs when the chance arises. Therefore if I am doing a timed session and a new case comes up, I immediately mentally note that this is an "alg practice" solve which will be excluded from the average, and continue.

On the other hand, when I was measuring my performance while learning BLD corner comms, I would count all the times where I was hesitant or slow with new comms. That's because the impact of the new comms, including hesitancy or slowness, was directly relevant to the progress I was trying to measure.

 

[newtonbase]

@kbrune - memo is one of those things that won't improve unless you push it. The brain settles on a comfortable pace and you need to push it out of its comfort zone. You can just rush memo during regular practice, or devise specific exercises for speeding up your memo, whatever you prefer.

Agreed. My biggest improvements came when I hammered memo. Successes become less frequent but when they come they are quicker and quicker.

 

[Jason Green]

My thought on deleting solves is this, try to use the strategy that you believe will give you the most improvement. Some people I guess might be motivated by the slowness of a new alg to drill it more or something. For me I wanted to know how fast I could average without any new algs so I would also delete when learning them (it's been a while since I learned any). A week or so before comp I would usually do strict practice with no deletes. I've been happy with my progress in general so I would say it worked for me.

I do not count any PBs from that type of session though, those have to be complete and unaltered for me.

 

[teacher77]

The most useful techniques are preserving pair #2 where it's already made, and using the pair #1 insert to split up a nasty case for pair #2, or to extract it from a slot if it's stuck.

Thanks for the heads up. Is there any reference describing these three specific techniques that you could point me to ? Or should I gatter bits and pieces while looking at the entire theory ?

So 2 out of 100 times you mess up a PLL? I wouldn't sweat that too much, it's probably better than me haha .

It's worse than that in fact. I'd say that I screw up about once out of 10-15 PLLs. For example, I often confuse the ending of the Rb-perm and the Gc-perm. But there's also one of the 21 algs that I didn't even bother to learn yet (Ga perm - I use 2-look instead), so if I include thise as "screwing up", then I should have said that my screw up rate is 10-12% :-S

And yes, definitely switch to cross on bottom. The lookahead towards your first F2L pair is invaluable. I spent one evening a long time ago training myself to do cross on bottom and never looked back. A really good practice is to just scramble and solve the cross over and over again while taking as much inspection time as you need (forget 15 seconds, it's not a comp). Then when you're comfortable with that, scramble and solve the cross blind over and over again. I still do this once in a while when I find my crosses are getting lazy.

That's definitly next on my list. I DID try to solves crosses on bottom but I screw up most of the time, unless they're really easy.

In fact, here's my list, if anyone would care to comment on the order or the relevance, etc. :

1) master a satisfying alg for all 21 PLLs
2) master cross on bottom
3) improve PLL recognition (learn to recognize from 2 sides)
4) Other stuff, in whatever order I'll find relevant by then :
- learn some of the easy OLLs (I know 12 of them only)
- learn how to make an X-cross
- improve my lookahead (currently able only to find a corner piece ahead or a single pair at best)

 

[mark49152]

Thanks for the heads up. Is there any reference describing these three specific techniques that you could point me to ? Or should I gatter bits and pieces while looking at the entire theory ?

Most of my thoughts and work on multislotting are captured here: https://www.speedsolving.com/forum/threads/cfop-efficiency-and-multi-slotting.45301/

@Escher's walkthrough towards the start of the thread is a nice illustration of how multislotting in practice tends to be more about tricks and techniques than algorithmic solutions.

 

[JanW]

@teacher77 I would also recommend you start working on doing cross exclusively on the bottom as soon as possible. It might take some time to get used to and lead to lots of messed up solves in the beginning, but this is an even better reason to start working on it asap. The sooner you start, the sooner you'll get used to it. Since you are already quite fast, you will probably take a proportionally quite large hit to your times at first, but it is definitely worth it.

I've been taking it quite easy the first days of this year. Not too much timed solving. Today 50 solves, which included new pb Ao5 and Ao12. The Ao5 was quite amazing with 3 16.xx solves within 4 solves. As I see more and more full-step 16s, I feel I might eventually be able to break my super lucky pb single from last fall!