Picked up my cube again

[Dutchcuber86]

Hi all,

Maybe this will be some kind of journal, but let's see how it goes.

Here is the story:

In 2018 I renovated my home and had all my stuff in a small room including my bed so I could work properly. I just had half a square meter of walking space in that room and the walls were getting pretty close. I needed something for distraction in the evenings

While browsing the interwebs I came across videos about cubing and thought: "Why not do something challenging?" So I bought a cube and started ofcourse with the beginners method.

That got lame pretty quick, so went to CFOP and the rest is history. Did thousands of solves, PB of 26 seconds and just enjoyed casual solving.

Progress until then:

2 look oll and partial 2 look pll

Then life came in the way and cubing went to the backseat (started playing chess).

Fastforward a few years and here I am at 39 yo, forgot a few PLL's and I suck at cross and F2l.

Two weeks ago I got hooked again somehow and last week I re-learned the forgotten algorithms and I learned the G-perms now. Only the R and N perms remain which will be the goal for next week.

After some timed solves I have an average of 35 seconds, but I'm not focused on time now since the low hanging fruit will be at F2l and cross. But I want to eliminate the frustration of having a good cross and f2l and then get a PLL which I don't know, so full PLL will be first priority and then cross and F2l.

Ultimate goal is to be sub 20 which is very ambitious for me since I suck at fingertricking, but I know it's possible.

Today I also ordered a few new cubes (my best one right now is a Valk (I think the first one, don't remember).

Ordered the:

Moyu RS3M V5
Dayan Guhong Pro
Weilong V11
Gan 356M

So at least I have some decent cubes so I can't blame the cube for sucking in the future.

Let's see where this journey will go. Cstimer is configurated for 3x3, 3x3 splits, cross and every individual PLL so I can do targeted practice easily.
On jperm net I train the PLL's for muscle memory.

Ready, set, GO!

 

[Dutchcuber86]

Started training the Ra perm. I don't know why I took until now to learn this and why I was intimidated by it, because this one feels very comfortable and easy. Rb is next.

Also might have found a nice money saver.

My cubes weren't turning smoothly since they were dried out after years of not being used. I ordered some cube lube, but that will still take a week to arrive.

But I remembered having silicon spray for my bicycle in a drawer and decided to test this spray on a cube I won't use and worked quite well.

Now I also sprayed it in my Valk and it turns like there is actual cube lube in it. This spray bottle is 250 ml and costs less than 10 euro's. Happy with this discovery. For people interested I added an image of this spray. Don't know if it's available everywhere though.

Enough with the yapping, let's train Rb perm

 

[Dutchcuber86]

I was planning on learning the remaining PLL's next week, but yesterday I had an itch and learned the remaining Ra/Rb and Na/Nb perms.

Just now I did an average of 12 on these 4 PLL's and the results suck, but at least I know them and can recall them after a brainfreeze of 1 or 2 seconds.

Ao12 results:

Ra - 6.43 (best: 5.14)
Rb - 5.13 (best: 4.21)
Na - 5.83 (best: 4.83)
Nb - 6.41 (best: 5.53)

Nb perm is by far the most weird feeling alg in my opinion. I thought the G-perms would feel weird, but I stand corrected.

Today I will spend my time on Jperm net to train recall and muscle memory. The G-perms are also pretty fresh and I had to relearn F and V perm last week so I will be confused a lot, so there is a lot of progress to be made.

The easy Pll's I can all do within 2-3 seconds without thinking. So the goal will be to be able to execute all PLL's in that same time, so my total solve times will not fluctuate too much because of the last layer.

Probably I will get sick and tired of practicing PLL after an hour or two, so later will do some casual solves and maybe some blindfolded cross practice.

I'm pretty happy today that however slow it is still I know full PLL now. Years ago I could't/didn't pull through so I'm glad I that's out of the way now.

Only up from here

 

[Dutchcuber86]

On friday I did some PLL recall and it went relatively well. After that did some blindfold cross, but wasn't really in it, so nothing much to speak of.

Yesterday I did some casual solves and some timed solves.

The timed solves were quite bad, because of the last layer (PLL). Some were ok (sub 30) if I had muscle memory for the PLL, but with others I completely choked because I learned the PLL just recently.

Decided to do much more work on PLL drills.

Today I focused on Ra and Rb and did hours and hours of just doing the algs over and over. A couple of thousand times I did Ra and maybe a thousand times Rb. Got these in my muscle memory now, so I can move on to the N and G perms to really solidify them. And with spaced repetition I hope PLL will be finished (for now) so I can move on to f2l and cross.

So that's the plan for the coming days/weeks. Just drilling.

Ps. Found a relatively small yt channel with quality cubing content, so shoutout to Brandon True. He somehow hits my motivation button more than other big channels

 

[Dutchcuber86]

Not much to talk about today..

Just did Na and Nb perm today. For Nb it took me a few hundred times to do something that some might say is finger tricking. It's a difficult one, but I'm starting to like it.

I can't move on from the N perms yet, since I still have some difficulty 1 in 20 or so repetitions, so tomorrow I will continue with these.

Oh and I ordered a rubiks connect x that will arrive tomorrow. In my country there aren't many smart cubes available, so it's just to check out if I like it and if I'm going to use it. If so, I will buy a premium smart cube later.

 

[Dutchcuber86]

Today I only did solves on the smart cube I received today. I really like it although the Rubiks connect x turns like a brick.

Would I recommend this one? Not if you care about smooth solving without lockups.

But... my previous record on a 3x3 was 26 and change. Today I had a pb of 24.11 with a few more 25's and 26's.

Pleased to see that there is a bit of progress.

Also the stats are really confronting. I see that my f2l recognition is almost as slow as the execution, sometimes I just don't find stuff, so there is a lot of work to be done. Also, sometimes I do cross in 3 seconds, other times it takes me 7 seconds. PLL also fluctuates too much between 3 and 7 seconds depending on the case.

But I see now that with a bit of work on cross and F2l I can go sub 20. But still a long way to go since I average about 33 seconds now.

Tomorrow I will do a mix of alg drilling and smart cube solves

 

[Dutchcuber86]

Change of plans.

I was planning on drilling algs and doing smart cube, but today my new cubes arrived.

I'm actually shocked how good these new cubes are. Out of the box they all turn great. I feel that one of them is lubed already, but the once that aren't also feel great. Lube hasn't arrived yet, but I'm considering not lubing them yet anyway since they are great already. Also I don't feel much friction, so my feeling is that is should be ok for longevity.

Today I'm just going to play around with these cubes to decide what will be my main, but I can already tell that my pb will be broken very soon. Fingertricks are a breeze now in comparison to my cubes of 2018.

Question for the experienced cuber who might read this: Should I lube all the cubes anyway or is there something to be said for not lubing cubes?

 

[Dutchcuber86]

Progress is being made!

Yesterday I just played around with my new cubes (a lot) and did casual solving. Nothing special.

Today my session started out on jperm net for pll recognition and execution. I really see a lot of progress in muscle memory for all pll algs, although I don't have optimal fingertricks yet, but that will come will time I guess.

Also did more casual solving and noticed I'm starting to see more. Better cross solutions and better lookahead with f2l.

For now I decided to make the Dayan Guhong pro my main cube since it feels the most comfortable.

Just did an average of 12 to see what my times are currently and I average sub 30! Which is huge, because before I sometimes had a lucky solve where I had sub 30, but mostly I got between 35 and 40 seconds.

Edit: Just set a new pb of 19.20

 

[Dutchcuber86]

100 solves in the books

A few 22's, 23's and 24's, so I'm happy with that, but this session was quite frustrating with ups and downs.

* a few scrambles where the cross was almost solved, but I choked on F2l
* one scramble where my cross and f2l were 11 seconds, so with a good LL I could have had sub 20, but got Nb perm and forgot how to start it, so eventually it was a 35s

And had a few more of these kind of flukes, so I wanted to throw my cube against the wall.

But all in all it's going well. Shaved of 7 seconds of my average in 2 weeks time.

Still need to drill algs, because N and G perms are atrocious. I still need to think before I execute.

The plan for the rest of the day is to casually solve on my smart cube.

See you later

 

[Dutchcuber86]

Haven't posted in about a week since there is not much going on.

Still cubing, but mainly I'm doing untimed solves so I get lots of exposure to all the plls.

Also experimenting with F2l pairs and trying out different solutions. F2l needs a lot of work and I will start with the jperm technique by finding a pair, closing my eyes and solve the pairs blind and preferably in the back (if reasonable).

I also started to do solves with yellow cross. Did a few timed solves with that to see where I'm at. The first few solves I got around 45-50 seconds, but after a decent session I got it down to about the same as with white cross. White cross is still a bit more effecient, but the difference is about 2-3 seconds now, so it won't be long until I can do both colors.

Not sure if I want to go further than that since the other colors are a lot more confusing. I know that if I want to do it I have to do it early while my times are still high, but my feeling is that white/yellow is enough and chances are that if white cross is really bad that yellow at least is a bit better.

I'll continue with casual solving for now. Probably won't post for about 2 weeks since I'm going on holidays. After that I'm planning on doing some big timed sessions.

See you later!

 

[abunickabhi]

How did your holidays yo?

Are you back with the speedcubing grind?