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Older cubers discussions

@Mike Hughey, what was the blindfold method before Stefan Pochamann discovered OP and M2? My question is connected with Matyas Kuti's case - I wonder how it was possible that he cheated? What method was he using or saying that he's using? Searching through the forum is a little bit hard.
I think OP was really the first method anyone used. Unless you count speedBLD (where you work out a speedsolve by staring at the cube and working it out for a really long time, then do a speedsolve as fast as you can). Or there's Guimond's method, whatever that was, but I suspect it was likely OP as well.

Mátyás clearly understood OP and M2 and straight comms. He knew how to do a normal BLD solve, and I believe he was probably very good at doing freestyle BLD solves. But he clearly did some things during some official solves on video that were not possible with any reasonable method - things that would have only made sense if he were peeking through the blindfold. And that would have been quite easy to do with just a quick peek or two. So we can't trust his official solves. But I still suspect he was very good at BLD.
 
I've read an old thread on this and I think he was meant to be using his own secret method.
I really don't think there's much to this. Perhaps he had a slightly improved freestyle method (which probably wouldn't be considered all that good today), but it in no way was capable of explaining the strange moves he was recorded doing on one of his 5x5x5 BLD solves.
 
Got to finish this before leaving for holidays tomorrow, so...

Day 4, final day of worlds:

No second rounds for me, no scrambling duties, just judging and/or running on a quite light schedule so there I was, relaxed and just enjoying myself.

after some judging on 4x4 and 3x3 I spent my free hour scrambling the rest of the 3x3 second round and judging pyra and skewb, none of which I was supposed to do, but some of the staff were a bit elusive (none of the regulars here, of course) at least I saw some awesome solves by Jules Desjardin (ER on that second round) and Drew Brads who is just awesome to watch solving on close range.

I also was amazed how many people from not the top groups was doing sub 7 and sub 8 like if it was something normal.

Then I also judged 3x3 semifinal for the top group, getting top motivation to practice the event.

After that, lunch time was the scheduled time for the oldies photo, so I went to the UK table, finally met Ben (and his son) and met Brest, already had met @newtonbase a while earlier. While we were waiting for everybody to show up, @Shaky Hands just stopped Feliks to ask about his dad (I bet that's not what usually people stop Feliks for) but unluckily he didn't made it to the photo. After making the first photo, we just waited to @bubbagrub to leave to make us another photo with Ernö Rubik :p. Nice photo and nice chat before and after, we've got to do this again.

Some more judging and then went to watch Pyraminx and 3BLD finals. It was awesome to watch a WR in Pyra, if Drew Brads inspection is short, it's a high 1 or low 2, so after the fist 3 (1.50, 1.72, 2.26) everybody was looking. Inspection was long and the solve was a 3.21 (which in almost every other hands, it's considered fast), but in the last solve, inspection was fast and... bang 2.17. As I said, awesome to watch.

Blind finals were strange because there were no clear favourite other than Adam Barta (who won the previous 2 rounds) and he DNFed. The two resurrected Poles (Jalocha and Kowalzcyk both podiumed with WR Mean holder Ishaan Agrawal between them.

After that, I was judging on the 3 last finals previous to 3x3 on the top 10 group, I tried to get one of the center spots but Clement Cherblanc was faster :) .

On 4x4 I judged Max Park who started a bit slow but got better in every solve to claim 4th place in the end. Winner was Sebastian Weyer in the next table.

On OH I judged Feliks, who again started slow but gave us the best OH solve (8.93) of the championship to claim second, winner was Max Park (with a World Record) on the next table :p

On 2x2 I judged Kian Mansour who ranked eleven, winner Antonie Petarakis was 2 tables next to me, but second placed Chris Olson was just behind me.

And then we al watched the Finals, very exciting to watch as it seemed almost anybody could end winning.

But Max Park was the man, Huge congrats to him.

Then we saw how Uwe Meffert podiumed every category always telling the guy who won something about the puzzle he was giving.

And then came goodbyes, some photos, and a little bit of tourism. Au revoir Paris, it was an amazing experience!
 
Hi guys! It's been like 3 weeks since I last posted anything but I've skimmed through all the pages. Lots of good stuff about London Open, Worlds, pics with Erno Rubik, Mats Valk... wow! I'm really envious. Also lots of interest in BLD.

Regarding myself not much to say. Little to no practise but still trying to avoid forgetting any algs. This week I managed to do some 4x4 and, after like a little bit less than 100 solves I'm back to my best times from before. Didn't get any PB's nor any new sub-1min solves but got lots of sub 1:05s and several of them with OLL parity or PLL parity which would have been sub minute without. Do you think it would be worth for me to get a WuQue M, even though I barely practise now? There are a couple of Spanish cubers that make them now (and WuShuang M as well) and at a reasonable price.

And continuing with my non-WCA collection, I just ordered the new 2x2x3 cuboid by QiYi, a LanLan Master Skewb, one of the Dayan Bermudas (Venus, I think), a Witeden Super Crazy 3x3x3 and a Witeden Mixup Plus 3x3x3. Oh, and the new RSC / GAN Paris Worlds edition as well.
 
...and women?
Can't help you with that I'm afraid.

@Selkie, welcome to the BLD club. You'll be ready for Guildford no problem! :)

Tried my first 20 cube MBLD attempt today. 19/20 in 1h14. Pleased with the accuracy although obviously I have a long way to go to get my time within an hour.
 
Do you think it would be worth for me to get a WuQue M, even though I barely practise now? There are a couple of Spanish cubers that make them now (and WuShuang M as well) and at a reasonable price.

We shared rooms with those 2 guys and I must say I tried their whole repertoire (2-7, although they only sell 4-5 right now) and they are all awesome. I gave them my 5x5 at worlds and received it yesterday, 10 seconds drop in times. Probably will get a Wuque also
 
OK so a few hours of BLD planning this evening. Some initial thoughts...

Method - I used OP for both corners and edges for my very few successes over 5 years ago. Whilst OP for corners is obviously the way to go initially (though I know a lot of corner comms from FMC) the question over edges is not so clear. For OP edges I know all setups to the extent they are almost subconscious and feel very confident with the execution, but... I am considering whether it would be better to take the plunge and start my new blind chapter with M2. It will obviously take a little longer to gain the understanding of the M slice algs and the swap targets for 2nd letter but surely better to take that hit initially?

Memo - I think this was the Achilles heel in my solves back in the day. I used a PAO (PERSON doing an ACTION with an OBJECT) system previously but this is obviously a three target per image system and as such is a lot harder to judge parity etc. I toyed with and even started creating a letter pair list on a number of occasions but never finished.

I have watched Noah's tutorial series and JPerms, any others of note?

Any advice very welcome :)
 
@moralsh - Really enjoyed your day by day worlds review, so gutted to have missed it since I originally was going and had even bought tickets but posts like yours an the excellent live video feed at least allowed me to enjoy from afar. Enjoy your holiday :)

A PB for 2x2-7x7 Relay. One of my cubing life goals is a sub 10m which is very ambitious but I really enjoy this unofficial event which really tests ability across all n-order cubes:-

2x2-7x7: 12:28.43

Unfortunately not on film but splits were:- 2x2+3x3 in sub 20, 4x4 done sub 1:15, 5x5 done at 3:10 and 6x6 at about 6:40
 
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...and women?
Same answer...

All this talk of BLD and the great motivation from you guys...

... I've only gone and registered for BLD at Guildford Open in 2 months time. Better get cracking!!
I'm going to register for blind tomorrow for a local comp in about a month. I don't know if I'll actually compete at the event, we will see.

Plenty of time to get match fit. Maybe you and @Jason Green could have a thread race?
He's way faster than me, plus he's done blind before, sure why not. :P I can clearly see accuracy in memo is going to be my big issue. I worked on corner only memo off and on at work today and I'm horrible at it, it's like I've never seen my color scheme... Kind of like me trying to do a CN solve. Remembering the letters and execution seem less troubling. In fact last night I took my second solve I wrote down on paper and was able to execute it with eyes closed. That was fun!

Last night I got an email from a local paper interested in doing an article on cubing in my city. After talking with him and mentioning Jeff Park that is from this area, he said the person needs to be directly tied to Fort Worth. So long story short he is interested in doing an article on ME being an older cuber in a mostly kids sport. :) Will let everyone know how that goes.
 
OK so a few hours of BLD planning this evening. Some initial thoughts...

Method - I used OP for both corners and edges for my very few successes over 5 years ago. Whilst OP for corners is obviously the way to go initially (though I know a lot of corner comms from FMC) the question over edges is not so clear. For OP edges I know all setups to the extent they are almost subconscious and feel very confident with the execution, but... I am considering whether it would be better to take the plunge and start my new blind chapter with M2. It will obviously take a little longer to gain the understanding of the M slice algs and the swap targets for 2nd letter but surely better to take that hit initially?

Memo - I think this was the Achilles heel in my solves back in the day. I used a PAO (PERSON doing an ACTION with an OBJECT) system previously but this is obviously a three target per image system and as such is a lot harder to judge parity etc. I toyed with and even started creating a letter pair list on a number of occasions but never finished.

I have watched Noah's tutorial series and JPerms, any others of note?

Any advice very welcome :)
Go for M2.
PAO can still be used with pairs, just use 2 letters for each.
Zane and Speedcubereview are well known resources.
 
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