What Happens To Young Cube Solvers When They Get Older?

ahhahaha I call myself : Getting old getting Hot ( in this case with cubing)

My husband is lazy with practice so I have to remind him to practice. During doing ironing I always have a break with solving my cube ( avg of 20 or even 50) I think Age is not important BUT your spirit and talent.
 
I don't cube less, just my focusses change. I used to be interested in technique work, now i spend time sitting around developing methods. This looks like I've just given up cubing, but as you go on things get more relaxed. Cubing isn't the centre of my life anymore.
 
I'd say, as with any other 'hobby', maybe 20% will continue at the same level. I think this is true of any pursuit that youngsters take on, because they have so much spare time, but then the amount of spare time steadily decreases (until you retire, I guess!?).

For example, I went to school with 2 England under 18 rugby players. Neither plays rugby any more, although one played into his 20's. I know another guy who played pool internationally at age 16, and now is fat and lazy and useless at most things, although he can still kick my ass at pool!

Most people who continue do so not necessarily because they're the best, but because their motivation for doing something comes from the pure love of doing the activity itself, rather than the results. For example, I ran at school. I was pretty good, and qualified for the national championships. I don't run any more, but a friend I ran with, who was barely a reserve runner for our team, still runs. He runs because he loves running - he doesn't expect to win races. If you run to win races, NOT winning races is more likely to upset you than if you run purely for the joy of running. Same goes for cubing - if you cube to be sub-xx and DON'T get sub-xx, I guess you're more likely to give up than those who cube for the love of cubing.

The other 80% will inevitably lose interest as they get into things like the opposite sex/same sex/drink/drugs/family life/employment. Of this 80%, there will be some, sure, who will still occasionally cube, but not with the regularity or commitment that they had in their youth. There will be others who will pick up a cube at a party one day and solve it, dazzling the crowds, and remember how much fun cubing is. Maybe they'll start cubing again, and appreciate the joy of cubing rather than the agony of failing to become a world-beating cuber, and this time stick at it?!

So IMHO, those who love cubing, not love being fast, are more likely to stick at it. The rest will sell all but 1 of their cubes, which will end up gathering dust in a cardboard box, under the bed they used to sleep in at their parents' house, alongside the football boots, tennis racquet, and Twilight posters.

Edit: just FYI, 80/20 is just an arbitrary figure I plucked out of thin air based on personal experience. I'd say less than 10% of my friends still actively engage in hobbies they enjoyed in their teens.
 
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I didn't start cubing until I was 20, but I had just dropped out of college and only had a part time job, so I had a loooooot of free time.

About 2 years later, I was working full time at a call center, so I could still solve a lot at work. This is when V-Cubes came out and I got into bigger puzzles. I met a girl who I'd later marry, and she loved that I could solve a Rubik's Cube, and she liked to show me off to her friends, so I still played a lot.

But then I moved to California, worked full time, was married, and was trying to make a living. The time that I spent cubing dropped off significantly.

Three years after that, however, I was divorced, moved to Oregon, and I'm back working at a job where I sit in a cubicle. I walk to work every day, which is 45 minutes there and back of pure cubing time. And I'm still single. So I'm backing to being able to get hundreds of solves a day in.

Another thing you might notice as you get older however is something that Lars Petrus puts very succinctly on his website:

"Being able to solve Rubiks cube very fast is a near useless skill, that takes a lot of time to acquire, and does not typically impress the opposite sex. If you think you have better things to do, I can only agree. You probably have."

For all you young, male cubers out there: girlfriends, should you be lucky enough to attract one, will make you worse at cubing unless you are very, very, very picky.
 
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Chree said:
For all you young, male cubers out there: girlfriends, should you be lucky enough to attract one, will make you worse at cubing unless you are very, very, very picky.
Click to expand...

I don't want to be the typical forum faggot, but not all guys are straight. What is nice for them is that they are more likely to find somebody of the same sex that does like cubing.
 
I was about 5 when I first "discovered" a rubik's cube in my drawer (it was my mother's old cube from when she was younger and she had given it to me to fiddle around with). I managed to get the complete top face white, although the sides of the pieces were not correct, as would be expected from a five year old.

Eventually she showed me how to get the white pieces in the correct place, and then how to do the middle layer using a standard LBL-type system. However, there was an algorithim for the bottom layer which she had forgotten, so she was unable to show me how to do the complete cube.

When I was about 8 she finally found me an online guide to solving the cube, which I subsequently took to quite easily. I spent about a week learning all the algorithims (there were only about 3 or 4 to learn) and then I could solve it in about 1:40 (which was faster than my mother had been!).

Over time my times dropped to just above 1:20, and I stopped cubing. Last year, at the age of 13, I started again, only to find that I had forgotten an algorithim. Fortunately I still had the solution guide, so I quickly re-learnt it.

My father claimed to have done it in 1:17 when he was younger, so it was quite I milestone when I got faster than that. Then I dropped to 1:10. Then to 60 seconds (I can still remember when I got 59 seconds!).

By this time I was getting fed up with LBL, so, after a bit of searching, I started learning F2L. My times were pretty rubbish at first, but they soon dropped to sub-50. And then my cube broke.

I had to wait a few months before I could get another cube (it was a Rubik's brand). When I got it it was incredibly stiff, so my times went up again. However, it soon freed up and I got back to sub-50.

It was really only practice which got me sub-40 (I can still remember when I got 38 seconds!). But by now I needed to learn 1-look PLL and 2-look OLL, rather than the beginner methods which I still used, so I started finding some algorithims myself and getting others online. However, I still needed a speedcube.

At around this time, I discovered this forum and signed up. My progression through the 30s was relatively quick, so I was soon sub-30 with almost full PLL.

About 6 months ago I was averaging around 30 seconds, with a PB of 26. I have now got a Dayan Zhanchi, after wanting one for almost a year, and am learning full OLL, finishing off my last few PLL cases, and practicing lookahead. My PB has dropped to 18 seconds, with a rather lucky PB of 16 (x-cross with PLL skip). My average is now around 25. 30 has gone from being a "good" time to being a "bad" time.

So I am becoming a speedcuber...
 
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