All the following results were done BLD. I did a BLD week this week, since Daniel said he was going to. I didn’t quite manage to do everything, but I got a lot of them done! Whew, it was a lot of work. (If there was ever a doubt as to my sanity, I suspect I've removed it.
) And I’m very happy with how many averages I actually got, although a few of them were rather heartbreaking (especially 5x5x5).
Someday (perhaps a year or two from now) I WILL attempt every single scramble for a weekly competition BLD. I still need to learn square-1 to do that, though, and also get better at megaminx. And it will take a long time to do all those 7x7x7’s, so I’m going to need a lot of time when I finally do it.
Mike Hughey:
2x2x2: 35.90,
25.27, 35.84,
45.08, 27.77 =
33.17
Comment: Very nice to get them all.
3x3x3: 1:43.31,
1:38.28, 1:46.11, 2:27.93,
DNF [2:32.16] =
1:59.12
Comment: Barely managed sub-2.
4x4x4: DNF [8:33.61, 4:47], DNF [8:10.00, 4:16], DNF [8:02.68, 4:17], 9:38.00 [5:34], 7:45.51 [4:01] =
DNF
Comment: Rather depressing at first; I’m glad I at least got the last two. The first two were both off by 3 wings due to mismemorization. The third one was off by just 2 corners – I thought I had parity that needed fixing, but apparently I didn’t – very sad. It was solved, and then I “fixed” it.
The fourth one was really slow because I couldn’t find the last 2 wings to memorize – I hate when that happens.
5x5x5: 15:22.23 [8:04], 14:49.24 [7:25], DNF [18:10.26, 11:54], 15:15.58 [7:56], DNF [15:08.80, 8:50] =
DNF
Comment: Aaaagh! If only I could have gotten that last one right, I could have had a sub-WR average. But the truth is that the last one wasn’t even close. Apparently when I reoriented, I picked an orientation that was actually centers parity, but I didn’t think it was. So my centers fix didn’t work, and the center E slice was wrong. So I wound off by 8 + centers, 4 centrals, and 4 centers. For scramble 3, I was off by 3 wings and 2 centrals – the wings were executed backwards, and I didn’t notice a central to flip.
6x6x6: 28:49.38 [14:03], DNF [34:31.87, 18:11], DNF [39:25.47, 20:55], DNF [40:19.30, 22:13], DNF [36:35.69, 17:22] =
DNF
Comment: This would have been very depressing except that all of them were really close to solved. The first one was my second-best time ever, so I was pretty excited about doing these. The second one was off by just 3 obliques; I memorized them correctly but forgot to do them. The third one was off by just 3 outer wings; I executed the algorithm backwards. The fourth one was off by just 3 outer X centers; I had two images that were too close to the same, and used the wrong one (I’ve switched to a different image for one of those now because of this). The fifth one was off by 4 corners, 3 inner X centers, 6 obliques, 8 outer wings, and 8 inner wings. So why do I say they were all close? Because the corners were off by only a single L turn – it looks like that’s probably the only mistake I made, and all the bad pieces can be explained by that single missing L turn.
7x7x7: DNF [1:01:08.67, 36:56], DNS, DNS, DNS, DNS =
DNF
Comment: Yet another close one missed. Off by just 2 obliques. I can't figure out what went wrong with them; all I can figure is that I mismemorized, but I'm not willing to reapply the scramble to see if that's really what it was. My memorization was really slow because it wasn't sticking due to interference from all the other solves this week - I finally know what my limit is.
I guess that means I need a few more rooms.
2x2x2 BLD: 34.31, 26.68, 30.11 =
26.68
3x3x3 BLD: 1:39.44 [1:37.44 + 2], 2:07.36, 3:35.03 =
1:39.44
Comment: On the first one, I forgot to do F2 after a parity fix. On the third one, I forgot part of my memo, but I refused to give up, and so I got it. Terrible times, but at least I got them all.
4x4x4 BLD: 6:23.59 [3:13], 8:24.58 [3:31], 8:48.10 [4:36] =
6:23.59
Comment: The first one is my personal best; after that I haven’t gotten another decent 4x4x4 BLD speed all week. The second one was easy to memorize, but hard to execute for me. The third one was very hard to memorize.
5x5x5 BLD: 15:08.43 [7:48], 17:12.31 [10:06], DNF [17:54.19, 7:37] =
15:08.43
Comment: I think I beat Chris by just a few seconds! Third one was off by 2 X centers. I had a terrible time memorizing the second one – I couldn’t get the memorization to stick.
3x3x3 multiBLD: 2/4 = 0 points, 16:53.30 [11:53]
Comment: I wish I had time for a real multi, but with all this other BLD, I just couldn’t make time for it. And what a disappointment! First one was off by 3 edges because I mismemorized; fourth one was off by 2 corners and 6 edges, and I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong. Why am I so much worse at small numbers of cubes than I am at large numbers?
3x3x3 OH: DNF [4:20.52], 4:25.43, 3:43.43, 3:26.13,
3:05.52 =
3:51.66
Comment: Successful average! I’m really out of practice – you can see how the times came down with every solve. I should really be sub-3 all the time with this. First one was off by 3 edges.
3x3x3 WF: DNF [17:16.02, 1:48], 18:34.18 [2:12], 11:27.21 [1:37], 10:11.03 [1:45],
9:24.75 [1:32] =
13:24.14
Comment: I still can’t believe I got the average! With the last one, I was sure I messed up, but it was still solved. I think I got lucky (or I was pumped up about finally doing it, and rode the adrenaline to success); I seriously doubt I could do this again anytime soon. And it’s exhausting, physically and psychologically. First one was pretty scrambled; only the middle layer was correct.
3x3x3 Match the scramble: DNF [3:24.31], DNF [4:24.33], 2:54.20, DNF [3:38.05], DNF [4:37.22] =
DNF
Comment: Pretty awful – I didn’t have time to really think about it before I began, so I was trying to work out how to solve parity and flipped edges as I went; I don’t think I got it right. First one was completely wrong because I stupidly grabbed the cube in the wrong orientation.
Second one had 2 corners twisted and 2 edges flipped. Third one was really easy because no parity, twisted corners, or flipped edges. Fourth one had 2 edges flipped because I mismemorized. Fifth one had 2 edges flipped because I didn’t figure out how to flip them correctly.
2-4 relay: 17:04.73 [11:45]
Comment: Yes! Got it right!
2-5 relay: DNF [41:50.25, 27:27]
Comment: I was too tired for this, so it was slow. 3x3x3 off by 3 edges – I thought I had set up for parity wrong and “fixed” it, but it was already solved. 5x5x5 off by 2 wings – I mismemorized them. So it was kind of close.
Magic: 1.91,
1.78, 1.80,
3.46, 2.69 =
2.13
Comment: As I’m sure you can guess, this was not OHITABLD. I wanted to have a chance at beating Daniel. Too bad about the last one.
Master Magic: 4.25,
3.75, 4.22,
4.44, 4.33 =
4.27
Comment: Average.
Clock: 5:06.80 [0:40],
DNF [4:05:22, 0:46], 4:41.31 [0:51],
3:41.03 [0:37], 4:09.63 [0:33] =
4:39.15
Comment: Another successful average! Done using Stefan’s method. I still think it’s probably better to do a speedBLD method, using some mathematical shortcuts, but I didn’t have time to figure them out. The key will be trying to make the shortcuts quick enough to compete with those memo times – it’s nice being able to memorize in less than a minute. (I suspect I could get to where I memorized in 15 seconds with practice.) But I have to go really slow on execution because I’m afraid of DNFs, so I’m turning very slowly, one click at a time.
Pyraminx: 1:00.34, 1:22.22, 1:13.06,
DNF [1:16.47], 1:14.46 =
1:16.58
Comment: Yet another successful average! And this one was quite fast for me! Fourth one had 2 edges flipped.
For megaminx, I wish I could have done it, but I’m just so bad at it – I didn’t have anywhere near enough time this week to try even one of them. For square-1, someday I’ll really learn to do it; perhaps I’ll start working on it seriously after US Nationals. For 3x3x3 Fewest Moves, I would have needed to take some time to review the process for doing this, so I’d have a chance for succeeding. I didn’t have time for it, so I didn’t do it.
PLL skip
The scramble just has to be easy enough 
