Older cubers discussions

[conanthewarrior]

I think 50 seconds was about where I was when I first learned F2L, 2-look OLL, and 2-look PLL, although that might have been after I learned those. I'm not especially good at speedcubing, but it is a fun pastime. I run around 34 seconds now with full PLL, but most of my cubing time is spent on bigger cubes.

Welcome to the thread. I think I was previously the youngest on here, and I'll be 30 next month. It's kind of nice to not be the youngest.

That is a fair time, and impressive to me! I am trying to remember the beginners method again,hopefully I will have it in my memory again within a few days fingers crossed. It is fun I agree, I am mainly doing it for fun and also as I hope it could improve my memory if I can remember the algorithms, as I have some issues there from previous illness.

Thats cool, my birthday is next month, St Georges day here in England, the 23rd, I will be 27 then. It is nice to know there are a lot of people that are my age and older here. Obviously I will speak to anyone that is friendly, but it is nice to have people of a similar age to talk with.

 

[Shaky Hands]

here in England

Many many Brits post in this thread. Welcome.

 

[mark49152]

here in England

Yeah welcome, nice to see another Brit. The cubing scene is pretty healthy here in the UK.

 

[h2f]

Thats cool, my birthday is next month, St Georges day here in England, the 23rd, I will be 27 then. It is nice to know there are a lot of people that are my age and older here. Obviously I will speak to anyone that is friendly, but it is nice to have people of a similar age to talk with.

Nice to see you here.

 

[pglewis]

I am 26, coming up 27, so not old by conventional standards, just might be by cubing standards lol.

You're probably well older than the average age for the forum and on the younger side of the folks in this thread (I just turned 49). I'm sure you relate a lot more closely with us oldies though. Welcome back to the hobby.

Hopefully I can get to my pre illness speed of a best of around 50 Seconds, and then improve upon this. This will be using the beginner method, how fast can people actually get using this method?

It's possible to get sub 20, at least, with the beginners' method but I don't think that means anyone should. As far as LBL vs. F2L pairs: I'm a firm believer that the moment you can comfortably solve the first two layers a piece at a time, it's time to start learning to solve F2L pairs (assuming you intend to pursue CFOP as your method). There really is no advantage at all to solving corners and edges separately except that it's easier to learn initially. If you watch closely, you're actually removing solved pieces, making them into corner/edge pairs, then re-inserting the pair when you do LBL... the method solves F2L pairs but trades efficiency for simplicity by limiting the F2L cases to just one. From the time I was under 2 mins to now-- averaging around 30 seconds-- the majority of my improvement continues to come from improving lookahead during F2L. If you pursue CFOP you'll spend a lot of time getting better at F2L so my advice is start learning it early. I know we have some oldies here using Roux and ZZ, as well, CFOP isn't the only way to go.

Also, it's not a lot to learn to seriously improve on the beginners' last layer method. "4-look" last layer isn't a crazy amount of memorization and I think it's perfectly fine to use a cheat sheet until you get them down. You'll develop muscle memory for the last layer algs through repetition and in my case that has developed a lot faster than lookahead. Memorizing the algs may seem like the hard part at first but it has been the opposite for me in practice. @Logiqx has some nice resources for learning better last layer, I'd personally start with this one for OLL (orienting the last layer): http://cubing.mikeg.me.uk/algs/2loll.html

There are only 3 short sequences to learn for orienting the edges first followed by seven for the corners afterwards. You'll continue to use those over and over even as you pick up more advanced techniques.

 

[mark49152]

@conanthewarrior : I agree with the above and would add that the best time to learn new stuff is as soon as you can. All these new techniques need practise to bed them in. Better to spend all those hours bedding in your F2L or full PLL than bed in beginners' techniques that you'll be abandoning soon anyway. View your practice time as an investment and make sure you invest it in worthwhile things.

 

[pglewis]

I need some supplemental notation to reconstruct a recent solve:

R0 R0 R (a new variation I invented for the end of Pi OLL... swiiiiiiing and a miss)

Then this gem on the final AUF:

U U'.5 U.5 U2

Yes, I actually found something worse than a U3. 1/4 speed playback shows I quickly realized I went the wrong way and started to correct it... then inexplicably halted and reversed again. And, yes, I actually halted after the half turn re-align before continuing on with the final U2 :facepalm:

 

[JanW]

That is good to know- I was a bit worried upon joining here I would be the oldest here lol! I don't know much about speed cubing at all, it is just something that interests me and after finding my cube yesterday, thought I might as well have a try and see how well I can do.

Hopefully I can get to my pre illness speed of a best of around 50 Seconds, and then improve upon this. This will be using the beginner method, how fast can people actually get using this method?

Welcome! In this thread you are definitely not too old. At 36 I sometimes feel like a child here...

I would recommend that you start looking into F2L as soon as you've got the beginners method down. At least for me, learning F2L was what got me really interested in solving. Beginners method is mostly about spamming a few simple algs, while intuitive F2L brings more thinking to the equation. Solving F2L intuitively is quite easy to learn, but then you spend the rest of your cubing career improving on it. Better start learning it as soon as possible.

I first learned F2L from some youtube video. Don't remember now exactly what video that was, might have been this one:

 

[newtonbase]

2nd attempt at 5 cubes. Took it very slowly and found memo errors on 2 of the cubes in review.

 

[pipkiksass]

Welcome @conanthewarrior - I'm a Brit too, and old(er)!

Just smashed the hell out of my Ao50 and Ao100 - I knew it was coming, because I hardly ever get enough time to sit down and do a solid average, and my Ao5/12 almost 3/2 seconds ahead of my Ao100, respectively. I did 50 solves yesterday, then a further 80 today (130 in total, for the mathematically challenged!), and here's the headlines:

Ao100 17.38 (was 17.79)
Ao50 17.04 (was 17.49).

Session average - 17.58 (today's 80 were much better than yesterday's 50). I'm breaking my Ao100 and Ao50 practically with each solve, but sadly I have to stop as my wife and daughter are due home any minute.

I'm trying to break back in to 4x4 - having got down to about a 1:10 average, then taking a month off, I'm back up to just sub-1:20. Need some concerted practice, but 3x3 improvements are coming thick and fast at the moment, and I keep procrastinating by going back to 3x3!

In other news, I think I'm about 6 OLLs away from full OLL. Hooray! But then I managed a 14s solve with effectively 3 look OLL earlier, so...

 

[mafergut]

@pipkiksass Congratulations! Tell me your secret! I've been stuck at mid-18 average for ages now.

Also, welcome @conanthewarrior. You are soooo young! I'm also well above 40 myself.

 

[pglewis]

2nd attempt at 5 cubes. Took it very slowly and found memo errors on 2 of the cubes in review.

Impressive progress. What's the next step, more cubes or a faster five?

I'm trying to break back in to 4x4 - having got down to about a 1:10 average, then taking a month off, I'm back up to just sub-1:20. Need some concerted practice, but 3x3 improvements are coming thick and fast at the moment, and I keep procrastinating by going back to 3x3!

Same reason I'm neglecting both 4x4 and blindfold that I vowed to keep up on. My 3x3 times started moving again after a mini-plateau... several seconds worth. It's just been the right time for me to go back to spamming sighted 3x3.

In other news, I think I'm about 6 OLLs away from full OLL. Hooray! But then I managed a 14s solve with effectively 3 look OLL earlier, so...

Ain't that the way it always goes... my PLL skips are always wasted on mediocre solves. I think my current PB was a 1-look anti-Sune (possibly my best OLL) but the previous three were full solves including a 3-look. I think I've had exactly one last layer skip ever, and it only landed me a 29.

 

[mark49152]

2nd attempt at 5 cubes. Took it very slowly and found memo errors on 2 of the cubes in review.

Nice job, congrats! Six next

 

[h2f]

I feel awfull with my official 3bld attempts. I've started filming my practice sessions and I got sub1 on cam - actually it's best on cam. I also got few 1:0x on cam. There's still a lot of room for improvement but pauses are caused by memo problems not figuring algs. Maybe this is a little sign of small impovement: doing all comms without thinking of.

 

[Tabe]

I got told I needed to drop in and say hi so here I am. Who am I to defy an order?

I'm 44, living in Spokane, WA and hope to live long enough for my PB (currently 58) to drop below my age, LOL. I've just begun studying CFOP but am also looking at other puzzles - 2x2 through 5x5, Pyraminx, Skewb, Megaminx, whatever. I seem to find a new one every day that I want to try. I got my first two cubes in 1981 and still have one of them - a gorgeous Rubik's Deluxe.

I'm old. I'm slow. My fingers don't do what I tell them. My turning style can only be described as chaotic destruction. My name Is Tabe and I'm a terrible cuber and I'm thrilled to be here

 

[h2f]

I'm old. I'm slow. My fingers don't do what I tell them. My turning style can only be described as chaotic destruction. My name Is Tabe and I'm a terrible cuber and I'm thrilled to be here

Hi. I'm sure you can be sub20 sooner or later and you are not too old for it. I'm 43 in 2 months.

 

[mafergut]

I got told I needed to drop in and say hi so here I am. Who am I to defy an order?

I'm 44, living in Spokane, WA and hope to live long enough for my PB (currently 58) to drop below my age, LOL. I've just begun studying CFOP but am also looking at other puzzles - 2x2 through 5x5, Pyraminx, Skewb, Megaminx, whatever. I seem to find a new one every day that I want to try. I got my first two cubes in 1981 and still have one of them - a gorgeous Rubik's Deluxe.

I'm old. I'm slow. My fingers don't do what I tell them. My turning style can only be described as chaotic destruction. My name Is Tabe and I'm a terrible cuber and I'm thrilled to be here

Welcome @Tabe. You are certainly in the right thread and forum I am 46 and, yeah, I also feel old and slow and all that but with enough practice and good "hardware" improvement is certainly possible to get your PB well below your current age. You have already tried lots of puzzles so, that's a good sign that you have found a new hobby

 

[mark49152]

Welcome @Tabe!

 

[pglewis]

I need some supplemental notation to reconstruct a recent solve:

R0 R0 R (a new variation I invented for the end of Pi OLL... swiiiiiiing and a miss)

Then this gem on the final AUF:

U U'.5 U.5 U2

Yes, I actually found something worse than a U3. 1/4 speed playback shows I quickly realized I went the wrong way and started to correct it... then inexplicably halted and reversed again. And, yes, I actually halted after the half turn re-align before continuing on with the final U2 :facepalm:

The last time I analyzed a recorded solve high 30s were "pretty good" so I felt it was time for me to do a post-mortem on a mid 20. Remarkably, I got a 25.x on the first one after starting the phone camera. I was unfortunately a little fumbly and not fully warmed up yet, which I'll use as my excuse for the last layer debacle documented above. It's also a slightly weird solve, I think I was gifted an x-cross (my vid annotation says the 2nd pair was already solved but that's just when I noticed it) and the last pair auto-joined for me while inserting the 3rd.

The camera angle has more hand than cube but I was able to glean what I wanted to get from it. I'll work out a better location before next time.

The good:

• Pauses between steps and substeps have been cut down tremendously since the last time I analyzed a recorded solve
• EOLL was nearly automatic
• If I ignore not "sticking the landing", my Pi execution is apparently much faster than I thought. I had to slow the vid to verify, looks a whole lot different to me outside the solve vs. when it's happening.

The bad:

• Last layer fumbles, which I can mostly write off to not being warmed up and in a rhythm. It hasn't been a chronic problem.
• Pauses still. Listening to the solve without watching was a revelation for me. Every time the sound of the cube stops, I've out-turned my look-ahead. I don't think there are 10 more seconds in pauses to trim any longer but I'll wager there's enough time in pauses alone for this one to be sub 20.

The ugly:

• That awful, awkward cube rotation before the last pair. The best I can figure is I wanted the slot in the FR but that would have been pure guessing. Guessing almost never pays off for me. My cube rotations are improving but then I catch myself doing this.

 

[newtonbase]

Impressive progress. What's the next step, more cubes or a faster five?

Nice job, congrats! Six next

The plan is to get to 6 and then finally get around to 4BLD now that I know the memo isn't a problem.
I'll maintain MBLD with some smaller attempts and work on some new rooms. I'd really like to know what I can do in an hour but I only ever get to practice on my lunch so can't test that out. My guess is a safe 7 at the moment.
But I change my mind with the wind.

Glad you made it over here @Tabe