What is the worst amateur cubing mistake you have ever made

[Bingus Ringus McDingus]

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I used something like this but it was some weird off brand stuff called Herco Valve Oil. It smelled like chemicals, and thankfully I was able to clean it out. Still awful tho.

 

[NebraskanSpeedsolver]

I used something like this but it was some weird off brand stuff called Herco Valve Oil. It smelled like chemicals, and thankfully I was able to clean it out. Still awful tho.

My cube was never the same until I got real lube and cleaned the puzzle several times. seems to work fine now

 

[Bingus Ringus McDingus]

Valve grease, not valve oil, works ok to lube hardware tho. But put it in your tracks or pieces would make it very slow.

 

[Bingus Ringus McDingus]

Btw what instrument did you play? I played trumpet but I stopped a year ago

 

[NebraskanSpeedsolver]

Valve grease, not valve oil, works ok to lube hardware tho. But put it in your tracks or pieces would make it very slow.

Never used valve grease, I have always used valve oil. Mainly because I play tuba and the valves are huge lol

 

[NebraskanSpeedsolver]

Btw what instrument did you play? I played trumpet but I stopped a year ago

Tuba, Trombone, Euphonium (Baritone)

 

[Bingus Ringus McDingus]

Oh, cool! Also, keeping it on topic, another mistake is keeping cubes way too loose. I used to get so many pops until I realized that extremely loose tensions doesn't mean ideal corner cutting.

 

[NebraskanSpeedsolver]

Oh, cool! Also, keeping it on topic, another mistake is keeping cubes way too loose. I used to get so many pops until I realized that extremely loose tensions doesn't mean ideal corner cutting.

Relateable.

 

[abunickabhi]

Using Rubik's brand for 5 years, doing wishful thinking about V cubes.

The mistake that I did was that I did not try hard enough to see if Dayan cubes could be procured.

 

[Timmah]

So I've got a note on my phone with 2 look OLL/PLL algs for reference when I'm out and about.

For some reason every time I did the adjacent center swap alg it messed up the solve. I went through it like 8 times and was convinced JPERM had it wrong.

Of course he didn't.

Dumb4$$ left handed me over here was doing M moves counter-clockwise Obviously doesn't matter for M2, but was messing up normal M moves!!!!

 

[Discomantis]

My biggest regret is not solving 3x3 enough

I ended up losing my consistency and now suck at the event and have no motivation to practice it to get better

My two most recent comp averages have been high-13 and low-14, yet my PR is mid-11

 

[JDAW6]

Cheating… that is my worst mistake

 

[qwr]

My regret was not looking up any tutorials when I first got a Rubik's Cube, instead I gaslit myself into thinking that the only way to solve a rubik's cube was to identify the scramble and reverse it. Seven years I could have practiced cubing wasted.

Ironically mine is the opposite.
My biggest puzzling regret is being impatient as a kid and looking up the Friedrich method for solving the 3x3. I forever deprived myself of coming up with an original solution, as Tony Fisher did in 1980. It would've been a less efficient beginner/roux/8355, but it would be my own.
Also I'd say I never had the patience as a kid to practice 3x3 back in 2011 because I thought people like Feliks were already "too fast". I missed out on a lot of community by not having the willpower to ask my parents to take me to comps. I knew the forums existed but didn't make an account.

 

[Garf]

I regret looking up all the algorithms for CFOP. It still haunts me to this day, as my solutions are still kind of wack.

 

[randomness...]

my worst mistake is loving alternate (and ergonomic) algs over efficency.
led to my TPS being high but having low efficiency

 

[Bingus cuber]

Once I used treadmill oil as lube

 

[qwr]

my worst mistake is loving alternate (and ergonomic) algs over efficency.
led to my TPS being high but having low efficiency

ergonomic is good. easy to memorize but really long is bad. unless you have ruihang TPS then you can get away from it:

 

[gsingh]

My biggest regret was not cubing a lot during the Pandemic, since it gave so much time to practice and get fast.

Same

using a pamphlet to solve the cube and bringing it with me all the time instead of just learning the algorithms one at a time like a normal person. I likely could have learned in about a week or two instead of two months. i was an idiot.

Yooooooo I did that as well

 

[Discomantis]

I likely could have learned in about a week or two instead of two months. i was an idiot.

I did that with a website too except took me 6 months to solve it without the website instead of 2.

 

[randomness...]

ergonomic is good. easy to memorize but really long is bad. unless you have ruihang TPS then you can get away from it:

my ja perm is 24 quarter turns