Older cubers discussions

[mark49152]

I've just had a read of that and of a few of the preceding pages. @mark49152 got his first 5BLD also and you were both around 40 mins which is where I am.
Some nice discussion of Mark's MBLD at Manchester 2016. He said that he doesn't know how people do 15+ cubes. How things change.

Wow that was fun to read, thanks! I posted my splits and memo from that 5/5 and looking at it now it seems so poor. I'm impressed I was able to recall such dreadful memo . No wonder it took me 3:25 per cube just for the first pass to come up with it!

I've kept a log of all my MBLD splits and here's a comparison of that 5/5 two years ago to my 16/17 at Weston recently.

First pass: 3:25 / 1:08
Retrace and review: 1:32 / 0:49
Quick memo review: 0:26 / 0:19
Execution: 1:59 / 0:56

Despite it being the most improved by proportion, I still think first pass is my area of greatest potential improvement. It should not take treble my 3BLD memo time, and on smaller practice attempts I average under 0:50 so I'm unconsciously taking a slower pace at larger attempts for some reason.

It's both amusing and depressing to think that it takes me as long to recite the memo of one cube in my head to make sure I remember it, as it takes a world class solver to do a full 3BLD solve .

 

[openseas]

Tried 4BLD - it's been a while, first time since I've got the official success last November.

12:49.41 DNF - one wing cycle off. Looks like I swapped the letter pair / executed the reverse order for that pair.

Since mostly practiced 5BLD (didn't do that much but compared to 4BLD), 4BLD feels way easier in terms of memo & execution. That impossible (at least to me) 10:00 min qualification for US Nats doesn't look to be that far away

 

[SpartanSailor]

@openseas that's pretty impressive. I think the 3BLD Nats qualifying time is 4 mins. That's not even in the realm of possible for me at this point.

There is a competition in Charleston, SC, at the end of March that will offer 3BLD. I'm thinking of making a weekend trip so that I can compete and make an official attempt. The have a 10 minute cumulative limit for 3 attempts. If I nail it on the first one, I'll be happy... but currently that takes me about 8 minutes. If I make the trip, I'll do every event I am able to compete it to make the trip worth it. My son thinks it would be a fun roadtrip and weekend trip too...

 

[newtonbase]

Tried 4BLD - it's been a while, first time since I've got the official success last November.

12:49.41 DNF - one wing cycle off. Looks like I swapped the letter pair / executed the reverse order for that pair.

Since mostly practiced 5BLD (didn't do that much but compared to 4BLD), 4BLD feels way easier in terms of memo & execution. That impossible (at least to me) 10:00 min qualification for US Nats doesn't look to be that far away

I had a go at 4BLD too today. 11:43 with one word forgotten on wings and something off on centres (execution). We'll both be sub 10 soon I think. A bit of practice on wings tracing should do it for me.

 

[pglewis]

@SpartanSailor : you might be surprised how quickly it can improve at this stage. I had my first success last Jan., I think, but I've only worked on 3bld in fits and starts so I'm not very far ahead of you. Get the tracing confident so you don't have to review your trace; review the memo, but re-tracing will eat a lot of time. If that feels overwhelming maybe try it with corners-only scrambles, it's a shorter trace to keep track of what's been solved and might build a lot of confidence when you return to a full scramble.

 

[Selkie]

@pglewis - My very few successes a number of year ago used a POA system but not using pairs, using a single letter so 3 letters per image. I think this was a major reason for such a low success rate as a rigid 3 per image did not help with parity etc.

I have had a demotivating few days with very few successes and lots of solves where I haven't even finished memo because I cannot think of suitable images or sentences, ones where I have odd/even for edges/corners and solves which when finished have lots of missed targets which I can only assume was a bad setup or alg. Slight redemption with a success an hour ago but I do feel I am probably trying to do full solves too quickly. I need to work on so many areas of my solves that I really need to split up practice to learn some areas quicker.

Not sure what will help. Doing corners only and edges only? Tracing alone? Trying to commit more letter pair images to memory. Any tips greatly appreciated.

 

[MarcelP]

Hi guys... It's been a while.. Life got in the way. At my work we had had some reorganisations and a take-over. In short I was not in the mood for cubing. After watching some video's of Chris it reminded how cool cubing is. I ordered some new cubes (right now I am using Weilong GTS 2!) and started cubing again. I lost a great bit of speed and lost some OLL's. I think I average 23-ish now but I do not want to do CFOP any more. So now I have to find out what I am going to do. I am looking into Roux and ZZ now. And maybe I will do some BLD finally..

 

[newtonbase]

Hi guys... It's been a while.. Life got in the way. At my work we had had some reorganisations and a take-over. In short I was not in the mood for cubing. After watching some video's of Chris it reminded how cool cubing is. I ordered some new cubes (right now I am using Weilong GTS 2!) and started cubing again. I lost a great bit of speed and lost some OLL's. I think I average 23-ish now but I do not want to do CFOP any more. So now I have to find out what I am going to do. I am looking into Roux and ZZ now. And maybe I will do some BLD finally..

Good to see you back cubing @MarcelP
Enjoy your hunt for a new method. Blind has taken over here recently

 

[Jason Green]

Hi guys... It's been a while.. Life got in the way. At my work we had had some reorganisations and a take-over. In short I was not in the mood for cubing. After watching some video's of Chris it reminded how cool cubing is. I ordered some new cubes (right now I am using Weilong GTS 2!) and started cubing again. I lost a great bit of speed and lost some OLL's. I think I average 23-ish now but I do not want to do CFOP any more. So now I have to find out what I am going to do. I am looking into Roux and ZZ now. And maybe I will do some BLD finally..

Yay it's Marcel! Chris mentioned you hinted at picking it up again on YouTube, and then I saw your unboxing. Some new guys here have said they hope you drop in again, you're a bit of a celebrity I think. Or maybe we are all celebrities to each other. Haha. Don't worry I'm over twenty seconds if I miss a few days of practice which happens a lot. But I'm usually back down after a good session.

@pglewis - My very few successes a number of year ago used a POA system but not using pairs, using a single letter so 3 letters per image. I think this was a major reason for such a low success rate as a rigid 3 per image did not help with parity etc.

I have had a demotivating few days with very few successes and lots of solves where I haven't even finished memo because I cannot think of suitable images or sentences, ones where I have odd/even for edges/corners and solves which when finished have lots of missed targets which I can only assume was a bad setup or alg. Slight redemption with a success an hour ago but I do feel I am probably trying to do full solves too quickly. I need to work on so many areas of my solves that I really need to split up practice to learn some areas quicker.

Not sure what will help. Doing corners only and edges only? Tracing alone? Trying to commit more letter pair images to memory. Any tips greatly appreciated.

I'm one of the slower blind guys here, but I can relate to having a hard time thinking up images. What works for me sometimes is just to get a little more ridiculous. Trying to think of an example for you but having a hard time. I'll try and share one next time it comes up. Sometimes these don't seem that good but they work usually.

 

[pglewis]

@Selkie: I've witnessed everyone here in a spell like that and the top guys seem to repeat "all blind practice is good practice".

As a programmer I couldn't help but explore some ideas and variations on the letter pair / image approach but I eventually reached the conclusion that's it's an amazingly well optimized system for 3bld.

When I first started, I had it in my mind it might take 1-3 months to get my initial success so when it came after a week I felt incredibly ahead of schedule. I spent the next several weeks mostly practicing sighted execution. There's so many little things that can go wrong I wanted setups and execution to be a given if the memo is correct. I also spent time drilling sticker to speffz recognition because it was one more new and slow thing for me during tracing that I didn't need. Sighted execution was good for that as well, kinda like flash-cards for speffz without the mental fatigue of full tracing/memo.

After that, yeah, assigning good images to my pairs on the fly became the obvious bottleneck and still is. My biggest gain in that direction has been convincing myself that this isn't multi-blind and I only have to remember edge memo for like 45 seconds to a minute to get through edge execution, even at my green level. I memo corners first with enough attention that it can stick but it's only 4 or 5 images in most cases... that's nothing with just a little practice. I'm experimenting with remembering portions of the edge memo without images if it's feeling like it's going to cause a stall. My traces are more confident if I avoid long stalls to assign an image so I'm giving myself full permission to be more haphazard on edges. If I go down in a fiery, smoking explosion it was an acceptable sacrifice in the name of maintaining pace.

 

[mark49152]

@MarcelP - welcome back, great to see you here again!

Not sure what will help. Doing corners only and edges only? Tracing alone? Trying to commit more letter pair images to memory. Any tips greatly appreciated.

Look at it as a positive thing that your solves are going badly, because it means it's easier to identify areas for improvement

Seriously though, I think full solves are the best thing to gain competence and confidence. Like anything else in cubing, or anything at all I guess, at first it seems really difficult and then after a while it clicks and seems surprisingly a lot easier. Maybe stop timing yourself to take the pressure off. If you feel like breaking the solve down to tackle some specific areas, any of the things you mentioned could help. Maybe just experiment and see what seems helpful to you. The main thing is, persevere and know that it will get easier, sooner than you think.

 

[h2f]

@MarcelP, nice to see you back!

 

[moralsh]

Yay @MarcelP, Welcome back!!

I'm gonna do the first 4BLD of the year right now, let's see where I stand.

Edit: 10:54 DNF, centres were an u move away and that messed also wings, Memo was poor (7:xx) and recall was just OK, I'll try to do another one tomorrow

 

[Selkie]

@MarcelP - There is no 'love' option for a post like option here or I would have used it! Awesome to see you back. I think all of the regulars would agree that without this thread, created as a welcome post by you, we would just be very old cubers thinking there were not any others! I have met some great friends here and feel younger than I should, and performed much better than I should because of it. Start some BLD and we can celebrate the failures together

@Jason Green , @pglewis , @mark49152 - Thanks for the words of encouragement, I will persevere and as my lettering scheme familiarity has started clicking tonight so has my tracing. I am sure it will all come good by my next comp in April.


For those of a non BLD persuasion had a 4:45.65 7x7 single and my second sub 12 3x3 average of 11.98.

Back to the letter pairs....

 

[pglewis]

A couple failures plus a success at 5:01.73 tonight, I'm getting a good feel for what the 5 min pace is now. I know I have a 4-minuter as my PB but that was a perfect storm of friendly trace plus easy images; I was more realistically 6-8 mins before my hiatus.

 

[Selkie]

1. DNF(6:12.07) D2 L' U2 B2 L2 R B2 D2 R B2 R' U' L D L' D' L2 B F2 L U'

Out by 2 twisted corners. Would have been a PB by a long margin. Only 8 edge targets!

Thought I would also let my older brethren know that I have joined the WCA Ethics Committee. It should keep me busy with being on the Financial Committee as well. Will be a challenging role but one I feel is important for the association moving forward.

EDIT: 4:44.66 7x7 PB single in weekly

 

[newtonbase]

1. DNF(6:12.07) D2 L' U2 B2 L2 R B2 D2 R B2 R' U' L D L' D' L2 B F2 L U'

Out by 2 twisted corners. Would have been a PB by a long margin. Only 8 edge targets!

Thought I would also let my older brethren know that I have joined the WCA Ethics Committee. It should keep me busy with being on the Financial Committee as well. Will be a challenging role but one I feel is important for the association moving forward.

EDIT: 4:44.66 7x7 PB single in weekly

1:11 on that scramble Would be a PB if it counted.

Well done on the new position

 

[pglewis]

I think all of the regulars would agree that without this thread, created as a welcome post by you, we would just be very old cubers thinking there were not any others!

Echoed here. I'm looking forward to meeting @Mike Hughey at the Great Lakes regional nearly as much as I'm looking forward to my events. It'll be the first time there was another competitor there within 20 years of me.

 

[moralsh]

Thought I would also let my older brethren know that I have joined the WCA Ethics Committee. It should keep me busy with being on the Financial Committee as well. Will be a challenging role but one I feel is important for the association moving forward.

Congratulations on the appointment!, I was very tempted to submit to WEC and WDC but decided to wait as I plan to help on the WST and I have not much more time available.

 

[Mike Hughey]

Echoed here. I'm looking forward to meeting @Mike Hughey at the Great Lakes regional nearly as much as I'm looking forward to my events. It'll be the first time there was another competitor there within 20 years of me.

I'm looking forward to meeting you too! I may not be there the whole time, but I expect to be there the entire day Friday, and most if not all of the day on Saturday, anyway.