Timothy's Progression Thread | Grinding Megaminx | Preparing for Southeast Champs 2024

[TimCube]

This week, I'm going to try to push my SS weekly comp profile Kinch score to double digits. As of right now, I have a Kinch score of 9.67. It's going to be difficult, because a week ago I set a lot of PRs. Once I've competed in all my events, I'll post all the PRs I made, and if it was enough to reach a score of 10.00. Here's my profile:

https://www.speedsolving.com/competition/showPersonalRecords.php?showRecords=9872

 

[TimCube]

PB update, consisting of two of my favorite events (5x5 and Megaminx), and OH, which is starting to grow on me:

Spoiler: 5x5 PBs

New 5x5 PBs:
Ao5: 1:44.09
Ao12: 1:49.37
Honorable Mention, Ao100: 1:59.41 (I guess that make's me sub-2 officially)

Spoiler: Megaminx PBs

New Megaminx PBs:
Single: 1:44.30 (two of my weekly SS comp solves tied as this new pb single)
Ao5: 2:00.32
Ao12: 2:08.27

Spoiler: 3x3 OH PBs

New 3x3 OH PBs:
Single: 31.47
Ao5: 39.31
Ao12: 42.65

Learning lefty OH has finally paid off, I have now beat all my righty pb singles and averages

 

[TimCube]

New PB 3x3 single!

Generated By csTimer on 2023-09-17
single: 12.93

Time List:
1. 12.93 D L' D2 U2 B' R2 F' D2 B L2 F' L2 D B D' R' F' D B

 

[Isaiah Scott]

Nice! What comp are you going to in 2 months?

 

[TimCube]

Nice! What comp are you going to in 2 months?

Sowega Solving in Albany, Georgia. I wish I could have gone to Staunton, but it was too late for me to make any plans for it

 

[Isaiah Scott]

Yeah. Staunton was great. Cool that you going to another comp though

 

[TimCube]

I decided to practice a little bit of 4x4 the past few days, for the first time in a month. I don't hate any events, but I practice 4x4 the least. Since I still use Redux for my main event, 5x5, I'm also using it for 4x4 (yes, I'm aware that Yau is much better for 4x4). anyway, I was able to get my first sub-1 single! Here are all my new pbs that I set for the event:

Single: 59.01
Ao5: 1:09.40
Ao12: 1:10.29

 

[TimCube]

Big announcement, I am now beginning 3BLD *gasp*

The reason being, I wanted to compete in other event at my upcoming competition, but it wasn't in my budget to buy any new cubes, leaving me one option: 3x3 blindfolded. I thought it would be fun to try, plus I'll be competing with Tommy Cherry (who is right beside me on the competitor list, which I thought was cool).

I already know Old Pochmann from when I learned 2x2 blindfolded, but currently I can only solve the corners of a 3x3 blindfolded. I have a success rate of around 50%, and average about 1:30 (this is for corners alone).

All that I have to do is perfect my corners and learn edges, which I'm really struggling with. I'm finding the edge setup moves to be very difficult, 1), because it uses wide turns, 2), because unlike corners, it sometimes uses more than two setup moves, and 3), because there's even more limited range of motion, because unlike corners where you only have to avoid moving the buffer piece, I have to avoid moving the buffer piece and two corners in edge setup.

If you have any recommendations on how I can make setup moves for edges easier or for blindfold solving in general, let me know!

 

[TimCube]

Today, I made my first ever three attempts at doing a full blind solve. The first was with a hand scramble, and took 6 minutes. Half the cube was solved, which wasn’t a bad start.

For the next two solves, I used cstimer. I DNF’ed the first, because I forgot my memo. But on the second one, I almost solved it! Off by just a few edge pieces. I don’t know the parity algorithm yet, but I think I was supposed to use it on this solve. My time for the attempt was 7:36

 

[Luke Garrett fan]

What do you avg for 3x3 currently

 

[TimCube]

I average 19 seconds, but today I had a really good session and reset all of my pbs again:

Single: 10.97
Ao5: 15.07
Ao12: 16.65
Ao100: 18.69

I'm still stunned about the sub-11 single, my previous pb single was a 12.46

 

[TimCube]

I got my first 3x3 blind success yesterday!

My time was 6:56, in a car with a timer app on my phone. Today I got my first cstimer success, which was a 5:56.04

Now I just need to improve my success rate and speed up my memo, and I'll be ready for my comp.

 

[TheSpeedSkewber]

I got my first 3x3 blind success yesterday!

My time was 6:56, in a car with a timer app on my phone. Today I got my first cstimer success, which was a 5:56.04

Now I just need to improve my success rate and speed up my memo, and I'll be ready for my comp.

Well done! I haven't even thought about doing a blind solve for about a month, (still haven't had a success.) Its great to see other people succeeding in this seemingly impossible task.

 

[TimCube]

I hit the next blind milestone today, my first mean: 5:40.23. I'm feeling a lot more confident about my competition in two months, now I'm trying to get my average blind attempt down to sub-4.

 

[TimCube]

3:41.38 PB single for 3x3 blind on the weekly SS competition! I’m starting to think that I could for a mean at my competition in November.

 

[TimCube]

I haven’t made any updates in a week, so here’s where I’m currently at (for the events that I’m competing in this November):

3x3
I now average sub-19, and I recently set a 14.57 pb ao5. I’m steadily improving, and I’m also halfway done learning full PLL. I know T, Y, H, Z, Ua, Ub, Ja, Jb, Ra, Rb, and F perms. I’d like to make finals at my comp, but I would need a sub-16 average. Not sure how realistic that is, but I still have 7 weeks.

5x5
After slacking a few weeks to focus on learning blind, I’m back to drilling 5x5, and I now average 1:50, with a 1:34 single and a 1:41 ao5. I’ll definitely be posting more on this event soon, as it’s still my main event.

3x3 Blind
After getting some nice successes and two averages, I’ve slowed down my blind practicing. I have a 2:53 single and 4:42 average. I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to get a success at my comp, so my focus is more on getting a sub-3. I could try for a mean, but I’m going to focus more on my other events now.

3x3 OH
I’ve had significant improvement with OH. Just a week ago, I averaged 45 seconds, and now I’m sub-35. I bought the new 54mm Guhong M Pro which helped me get a 22 second single and 27 second ao5. According to my Kinch rank, I’m technically better at OH than I am with 3x3, and I’m still improving. I’m hoping to be consistently sub-30 by the time of the comp.

 

[TimCube]

5x5 has been my main event since late August, but I am just now setting a rather ambitious goal: become sub-1 and first in state for 5x5. I'm currently averaging 1:50, and the state record average is 59.10. My main goal to improve my times right now is to solve edges without pausing. I've also switched to cycles on L4E, and I'm thinking about learning the last two edge cases, because my parity execution takes around 5 seconds. My 3x3 stage could also use a lot of work, because I average 19 seconds on 3x3. Overall, I'm very excited to work towards this goal.

I'd also like to pick up megaminx and possibly try for state record (52.38 average), but I'm not competing in it at my next competition, so I'll leave it on the back burner for now.

Anywho, here are some recent pbs:

3x3 Ao5: 13.92
5x5 Single: 1:32.70
Megaminx Ao5: 1:49.51

 

[TimCube]

I decided to start tracking my unofficial Kinch scores, here's the spreadsheet that I'm using:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11tI6euZe5us2SOTdYS6hdTgB1qty5kyYReOBgUxgEXk/edit#gid=0

I've found it to be a useful way for me to see how good I am at each event. I also have my overall Kinch rank for each month in a line graph, which will show how much I've improved over all events from month to month.

Supposedly my best event is FMC, but it's easy to get a good score with FMC. Next after that is 5x5 at 35.86, which I'm happy about since it's my main event.

For those of you who are wondering about the math behind it, to get your Kinch score for an event, divide the world record average by your average, and multiply by 100. And to find your total Kinch rank, add all of your Kinch scores together and divide the total by 17 (the number of WCA events).

 

[TimCube]

Lots of pbs broken the past few days:

5x5 single (1:29.17)
5x5 ao5 (1:39.46)
3x3 OH single (19.30)
Megaminx single (1:33.29)
Megaminx ao5 (1:48.57)

 

[Isaiah Scott]

Lots of pbs broken the past few days:

5x5 single (1:29.17)
5x5 ao5 (1:39.46)
3x3 OH single (19.30)
Megaminx single (1:33.29)
Megaminx ao5 (1:48.57)

Lesgo!