Returning to cubing as an adult - who else?

[ketchuphater999]

I'd love to hear you guys who might have solved, gone to comps, etc. as a kid and have returned to the hobby as an adult! I decided I would begin again in 2025 after 10 years and signed up for a competition, got myself a good 3x3 and 2x2, and have been practicing for the last couple days. Had a 25-26s avg on the first day, today I'm looking at an 18 second ao12! It'd be crazy if I could beat my old official PB someday. Have any of you also returned as an adult? What's your experience been like? I think one of the biggest things to me is how much the technical/hardware aspects of the hobby have advanced. I remember torpedo modding my old guhong and thinking it was the cutting edge now we've got magnets (how do they work? magic?)

I'm also just thinking about how I forgot how enjoyable this is as a hobby. I think as a kid I just loved the sensory feeling of turning a cube, and the mental work of tracking so many pieces was always really stimulating. I guess that never really changed! I'm having a blast

 

[Fred]

I went to one comp in 2006, then returned to competing in 2024. It was fun trying to beat my old weekly comp records from back then, though I'm unfairly using much better puzzles and better methods. For example, I used to do a bad version of floating 3-style (didn't know fixed buffer was something you could do) with tons of rotations with purely visual memorization (no translating to letters). The letter pair memorization system makes my blindsolving so much better and more enjoyable, and this year I want to learn good 3-style. Another big advancement is the proliferation of tutorial videos. I could not for the life of me figure out how to speedsolve with reduction on big cubes, so I made my own non-reduction method. Now I've learned Yau and I'm much faster on 6x6+. I'd also gotten bored of CFOP back in 2007, but now I see there's so much more to learn, even without mentioning ZB.

 

[Clock_Enthusiast]

Cubing has been far better for me as an adult. I went to my first competition when I was 13, but my parents weren't able to take me to many competitions because we lived in rural northern New England. There were zero comps within even a 3 hour drive, so it wasn't possible. More competitions exist everywhere now, and I can drive myself around and buy cubes more readily. I also moved to a more populated region, which means I have better access to competitions and cubing friends.

The hardware of today is ridiculous compared to when I started, and I'm way faster than I ever was in 2014-2015. I cannot imagine trying to speedsolve the Shengshou 5x5-7x7 with enough grace to prevent explosions.