What is harsh about soft cuts is that they are a barrier to registering an official average at all, even a slow one. What's more, it's inconsistent between countries and events. There are plenty of people slower than me with official 5x5 averages.
Since I started 5x5 I have done 600 timed solves at an overall average of 3:18, which allowing time for scrambling and inspection is about 50 hours of practice, maybe 60-70 with untimed solves and other practice. I know there are people who put in much more, but that's a significant investment born from genuine interest and enthusiasm, not just "half an hour". I'm now at about 2:45, so closing in on the cut, but it will take a lot more effort to get there.
BTW, my question was in jest, and I'm not really complaining, just making an observation and giving the perspective of a competitor who's affected by the cut. I understand the practical reasons for needing harsher cuts on more time-consuming events, and I accept it. In a way it's good to have the cut as a goal rather than some arbitrary PB time, and without the cut I wouldn't ever have the motivation and gratification of beating it
.
I was directing my comments at Sq-1 (addressed below) - sorry for the generalisation of my statement! Interesting insight about cuts though. 2:30 on 5x5 is certainly not an achievable target for 30 minutes of practise! Indeed some people will have to work for months or even a year or 2 to get there, but as you've stated, time constraints make it difficult to justify increasing it. This formula probably doesn't work for other events, but a world class solver would take 5 minutes of solving time to finish an average - same as 2:30 x 2 solves
I'm not directing the following points at you specifically, but merely writing some random thoughts:
I don't have an issue with the existence of cuts. This is a competitive hobby, which mean I always like to draw comparisons to "real" sports: Rewarding faster people by letting them have more solves and medals should not be confused with elitism and does not necessarily mean we're not being inclusive enough. I like to think we're a lot more accommodating than most equivalent hobbies/sports actually.
I think different cuts in different competitions/countries is fine - again, that's perfectly normal for every other comparable activity. I wouldn't feel strongly against making them consistent though, but logistics and a wide variation in abilities across the world make a strong argument for the status quo.
I was joking about the cutoff change. However, 'half-an-hour' is not really a fair thing to say. I have only practiced Sq-1 for the past week. I have done 350 solves. I have spent hours just today, and I am still slow. I guess that the fact is that some improve faster than others, and I do not improve very quickly at Sq-1. On the other hand, I am getting the QiYi soon, which hopefully will bring me under the cutoff.
I thought by saying that you wanted 1:30 cutoff you meant that you were 1:30 or below already and if that is the case, I still believe that 30 minutes of practise can get you sub-1. Of course some people improve faster than others, but (no offence intended) maybe you haven't learnt the right things? Maybe I can help...using Vandenburgh, there is a set of 5 algs that can get you sub-30 fairly easily with some cubeshape knowledge and still sub-40 even with beginners cubeshape.
CP: Intuitive, average of 2 slice, max 3 slices.
EO: Opp-Opp (alg is M2) and single edge swap. Each case is max 2 of those algs.
CP: Double J. All cases can be done with 1 or 2 double Js (4 slices each alg)
EP: Adj-Adj (4 slices) until you reduce to Adj parity (long
). Also you should know H perm already from 3x3 (M2 U M2 U2 M2 U M2) so you don't have to do 4 adj-adjs for that.
By the way, "M2" is 1,0/-1,-1/0,1
Maybe I should make a tutorial on this minimal-alg-but-still-fast method.
