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What Happens To Young Cube Solvers When They Get Older?

TMOY

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"Do they just get super fast or stop cubing?"
- This is a pointless question, every individual will approach this differently. Some continue and get faster, some tapper off and stay around the same speed or get slower, and some stop cubing all together.

Not sure there are many kids in the second category. Kids basically want to be as fast as possible, and when they can't improve anymore, they get bored and stop. The people who keep on cubing while staying slow are mostly grown-ups who don't care much about speed (or have no time to practice really hard) and cube and go to comps mainly for the fun of it.
 

LNZ

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I guess they quit and come back at a much older age. Age does have its advantages.

Examples include:

Not requiring parental consent to go to competitions

More money to spend on puzzles and so you can build a puzzle collection

Much more able to attend major competitions (ie world Titles, etc)

Access to online sites by having your own debit/credit card
 

stoic

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I guess they quit and come back at a much older age. Age does have its advantages.

Examples include:

Not requiring parental consent to go to competitions

More money to spend on puzzles and so you can build a puzzle collection

Much more able to attend major competitions (ie world Titles, etc)

Access to online sites by having your own debit/credit card

True enough. One major disadvantage though...hardly any free time!! :(
 

Lchu613

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Why would you have no free time?
I hope that doesn't happen, I (for some reason) can't actually see myself actually giving up cubing permanently. Well, that is as long as I don't get hit by a bus or something.

The monetary limit is pretty annoying, even though I know that it isn't practical to have a giant shopping spree on cubes :p
 

elrog

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An obvious answer to this question is they get older, but I think it is meant to ask what will become of their cubing experience. I think this relates directly to the reason they started in the first place.
 

googlebleh

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Why would you have no free time?

Your naïveté is showing! When people get older, they get jobs, families, and other responsibilities to worry about. For most people, this absorbs a lot of their daily life. As much as I hope to never stop cubing (until I get arthritis or something) I would not be surprised if I have to cut down once these other things settle in.

OP: There is no definitive answer. It all depends on how the person's life goes, how much he likes cubing and what comes to stand in between him and his hobby.
 
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I was a young(ish) cuber that got older!

The time frame might be too small to fit the spirit of this thread, but I'll add my story in anyway because it's good procrastination.

I started cubing when I was about 15 (14? high school is a little fuzzy), and I was getting ~sub 15 averages by the end of high school. Sadly, I only went to one tournament, and it was early in my "career," so I don't have the official times to prove it. I was put on the wait list for a school that I really wanted to go to, and applicants were encouraged to send "additional materials" to increase their chances of acceptance. I sent them a DVD of me doing a bunch of cool stuff, which included an average of 5. I got accepted, probably in no small part due to the additional materials I sent.

I brought some cubes to college, but they didn't get much use outside of being a good parlour trick. Additionally, I had developed a repetitive stress injury in my right wrist during my senior year of high school (damn rubik's wrist), and I couldn't cube for more than a few hours without it tingling ominously. I pretty much stopped cubing for a few years and focused (if you can call it that) on studying.

With any luck, I'll graduate in a few weeks, and I hope to pick up cubing more seriously, at least for a little while. My times have gotten a few seconds worse since high school, but that shouldn't last too long.

So...yeah. Nothing much cubing-related happened as I got older. I was actually slightly surprised by how little the speedcubing community has developed since I left it. People have gotten much faster, but the algs I use are still relevant, N perms still suck, and the methods used by the top cubers are still pretty much the same. I still have to invent my own COLLs for many cases, but finding fingertricks was always one of my favorite parts.

Hope that was at least somewhat relevant!
 

cmhardw

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I've been away from this forum for a while, but still cubing. Despite all the snarky comments in this thread I'll also answer this question seriously, as I used to wonder the same thing.

I've been cubing for just shy of 15 years, started when I was 14 and now I have a job, lots more responsibilities, etc.

In short:
- I still love to cube
- I still practice, though not nearly as much as I used to
- I still go to competitions, though not nearly as many as I used to
- I still plan to cube until I'm old or until I get arthritis so bad that I have to pick up one-handed cubing again (or feet cubing ;) )

Life and responsibilities definitely make it harder to cube as much as when you were younger. If you really like cubing then this is just something that happens, and is not anything to fret over. If you enjoy cubing now, then you'll enjoy it just as much 10 years from now. :)
 

JF1zl3

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The question is too broad. What is the focus of what you want to know happens to them? Many many things happen to young cubers as they get older, just like how many many things happen to young non-cubers as they get older.
 
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