Why did YOU start cubing?

[ThePuzzler96]

I was at gordmans, and my sister was trying on clothes, so I went back to the toy's section. The Rubik's Cube was on sale, so I got it for like $7.99
I solved one side in the car (so proud), got home, and watched Dan's Brown's tutorial cuz it was the 1st thing to come up when I googled "How to cheat on a Rubik's Cube" and I learned. It took me like a week to learn (I'm stupid, I know), and now 19 months later, I'm stuck with inconsistent 12's-14's... Yeah.

 

[That70sShowDude]

Used to see a cube in the activity period closet in middle school, thought it was very interesting. Eventually got one around 06/07 (10th grade). Created own notation w/ LBL and had a best time of 1:13 after a lot of practice. Didn't touch it for a few years. Decided to try and learn the fridrich method at the end of 2008. Since then, I've taken well over half a year of breaks. Last break ended at the beginning of February 2010. I still use that same notation. Here I am.

 

[Erzz]

Spoiler

Many years ago, I wanted to start cubing for some forgotten reason. So I told my mom to buy me a 5x5 for christmas. Thought, if I can solve that, I should be able to solve a 3x3. But I never solved it. Years later I saw Akkerdijk's WR solve, and wanted to start again. I picked up a Rubik's 3x3 in a hobby store when I was buying cards around New Year's, same day I met my girlfriend actually. When I got home I looked up a method.. I can't find it again. It was PLL before OLL though. I got to about 5 minutes with that, then decided I should learn Akkerdijk's method. I proceeded to learn from Cubefreak. I'm now Sub-30 average, been cubing for 8 months now with a long break in the middle of that.

Spoilered to save space.

 

[AvidCuber]

I got a cube for my birthday in January of 2008.

I couldn't solve it, so it was sitting unsolved for months. I even lost it at one point.

So one day (in around April-May I think) I found it and said to myself, it'd be really cool to learn how to solve it. I then learned how to solve it from the booklet that came with it (i.e. Dan Brown's method). It took me about a week, with the help of my father. (He cubed a bit back when it first came out and showed me some tips for the first layer, but he forgot all the LL algs)

I was content with solving it in about 2 minutes for a long time. I occasionally took it out to solve every once in awhile, but I pretty much didn't touch it for almost 2 years.

In Feb-March of this year, I found Erik's WR single video, which completely blew me away. I then resolved to learn a new method and get faster. So, I've really only been speedcubing for about 6-7 months.

I now average around 22-24 seconds with Fridrich intuitive F2L, 2-look OLL and almost full PLL (I still have to learn 3 more Gs, the N set, and Ja).

 

[TK 421]

9 months ago, everybody played cube from my school. Then the hobby died 2 months later, it lasted for 3 months. So after the hobby died, I was sitting in front of school computer. As U might know my internet in Indonesia is crap, so I'm like FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU in front of it. So I looked around, found a Storebought with lost white cap. So I brought it home, solved it (Rob's method). Then AGAIN a week later found a poorly made DIY cube at a desk and took it again. So I went to cubestation and tried F2L, but found it is intuitively done. Then 3 months again I'm full OLL and PLL (clone's metjod) then tries Roux (rebel). Stick at 32s-ish and PB only 26s-ish, my PB never went up/down.

I like free cubes, but I spent 500$ on cubes now (whoa, this is my most serious hobby yet). Planning to cube until the end of time.

 

[Cride5]

cube -> lbl -> friddy -> roux -> stomp on fridrich people

I'm reporting you for cruelty to animals:

 

[ArcticxWolf]

I found out in 2007 My aunt had one from 1980. I looked up a tutorial on youtube, found dan brown. practiced, got hooked, found speedsolving.com

 

[cubemaster13]

it was summer, i was bored, it is now my life

 

[DemotioN]

watched ppl do it in 20 seconds, i can only dream of that

 

[Keroma12]

A friend brought a cube to school Jan 22nd 2010. I got hooked instantly, and decided to figure it out myself. First solved it 5 days later

 

[MagicYio]

I bought a horrible and cheap cube on a market in France on vacation last year, but I never managed to solve it. But in March, my friend bought a Rubiks and showed me at school that he could solve it. I just HAD to solve mine too, so I learned it from YouTube. I bought my own Rubiks too, silicone spray all over the place, and we competed a lot together. I remember feeling awesome because I got 1:57.xx :fp
But we could do better, so it was Fridrich Time. First learning F2L, our time dropped to 1 minute. Now I have a DIY Pi-cube (and so does he), learned 2-look OLL and full PLL (still have to learn 2 G's). I'm averaging around 40, PB 30.17, and going to the Dutch Open

 

[Eleredo]

One day I was in an adventurous mood when I stumbled upon an article that stated that the Rubik's cube is the hardest puzzle in the world and 350.000.000 of them have been sold. I was like: wait, what? How could I miss that? I went to the store, bought one of them and off I was.

I remember feeling awesome because I got 1:57.xx :fp

Haha, I know right. I remember how I was 2+ all the time, then went to 1:30 where I got stuck for a long time. Then I got stuck for a long time at 1:15. Then I slightly went to sub-1. I even still have my first sub-1, I was jumping with joy.

My first sub-1, i literally freaked out. And it even was a lucky solve lol, check the 1:36 and 1:25 haha. Good times. That 59 was the world for me.

I found a screenshot with an 48 (also lucky) which was a big deal to me, and now I'm almost always between 40 and 45, which again might suck in my eyes in months/years. I love cubing.

edit: My first sub-1.10 lol

 

[adfoote]

in 7th grade, after the EOC(exam) in my pre-algebra class there was this one kid that brought in a cube one day, and the teacher remembered that he could solve it. next thing i know theres maybe 15-20 "communal" cubes that kids that dont have cubes of their own could use. I got my own cube and on the assumption that the more obsucure methods were faster, i started learning petrus. i even figured out keyhole on my own. i used petrus for the f2l (no fixing bad edges) and dan brown for the LL, which my awesome math teacher was teaching the class. my first solve was actually lucky. the second-to-last step where you permute the corners also oriented them. i remember my fastest solve being 2:10, and i was the fastest of all the kids in my grade.
like a year later, i saw a rubik's 5x5 in a store and HAD to have it. I got it and took about 2 months to figure it out on my own. I came up with a very slow and complicated version of reduction where i only ever turned the top 2 layers to pair edges. I even figured out parity.
for like 6 months or so my 5x5 sat on my dresser, scrambled. one day i brought it into school and told people i could solve it. it took me like 20 minutes and by the time i was done everyone was like meh. so i decided id get faster. i knew i had a 3x3 from 7th grade somewhere in my closet, i found it and got to lance's 2LOLL, 2LPLL, and intuitive F2L videos. this was like november of last year.
after a month i knew 4LLL and was avging like 1:20. I was about to give up on cubing but then this kid i kinda knew in my civics class was like how do you do that? (his name is
Dylan, btw) much to the dismay of my teacher i taught him my way of doing LBL even though i was still doing petrus. the next monday he came back in knowing dan browns method for LL, and i wrote down all the 2LOLL algs and 2LPLL algs on a sheet of paper and gave them to him. he still doesnt know the alg for superman, he uses sune antisune.
I remember like one wednesday i really wanted to be sub 1 because my first diy had just arrived (it really was a diy, it came as a bag of screws, springs, and plastic) and i wanted to be sub1 with it. I decided to do an avg of 100, and i got my pb down from 52 to 37.
now its been 8 or 9 months, Dylan and I are neck and neck. I avg like 23.5, he avgs like 24. and were planning on both going to the Virgina open on october 16th. i just hope i get something respectable. when i get nervous my hands shake, and non-shaky hands are crucial (duh). we shall see...

 

[KboyForeverB]

well, i guy at school did it. The time that changed my life

 

[supercuber86]

Because of that movie presuit of happiness. Will smith solving a rubiks cube made me want to so bad.

I remember getting 7 minutes and every1 was so proud of me. oh how times have changed

 

[pistelli]

I got a rubik's cube from the store and it came with a solution, learned the 7 or so algorithm solution, could solve the cube in about two minutes, got down to one minute, put it down for three years, picked it back up, learned petrus, started learning full fridrich, trying to learn human thistlethwaite, bought a diy ghosthand 2, got down to about 45 second average, and here I'm am. If you haven't noticed, I like run on sentences also

 

[Andrew Ricci]

I first solved the cube at the end of May 2010. I learned from badmephisto's tutorial, after I couldn't understand pogobat's. I achieved sub 1 about 4 weeks after I started. About 6 days after that, I was sub 50. After this happened, I started doing 50-100 solves a day, and my times went down exponentially.

July 16: Sub 40
July 21: Sub 35
August 9: Sub 30
August 23: Sub 25
September 7: Sub 23
September 11: Sub 21
September 20: Sub 20
~October 5: Sub 19

Current: Almost Sub 18, 11.34 PB Single, 15.62 PB Average

I'll update this post when I reach more milestones.

 

[PalashD]

I was looking at a technical festival website. There I came across the competition and I looked up the methods. I tried to do it n my own for a while then gave up and learned Fridrich! got 1:10:xx in the competition

 

[The Puzzler]

I started cubing to improve my sex life. I played with the cube because it would strengthen my fingers.

In late July I found my nephew's Rubik's brand that they got for Christmas many years ago. I relearned beginner's method and tried to achieve sub-2m because one of my arrogant friend bragged durring high school that he was able to solve the cube in 2 minutes. Within a week or two, I was able to meet my goal. Over lunch one day, one of my friend (able to solve sub-1m) taught me F2L. I wanted to be as fast as he. He told me about the cubing community and that's when I got interested and decided to searched the internet and found speedsolving.com.

From the wiki, I learned 4LLL. I brought the storebought everywhere and got one of my other friend interested. He went out to get his own storebought and learned beginners method from the paper that came with the cube. A week researching went by and I decided to buy an A5 and asked my friend if he wanted it, too. By August I placed our order and my friend bought a 2-pack of CRC. The cube came in 2 weeks and I assembled, stickered, and tensioned both of the cubes. I did let him know that the cube came in though because I wanted to surprise him later that week for his birthday. After a week with the A5 I got my first sub-1m. I averaged 1:30 and my friend was as fast as I am. It was scary because he was still doing beginner's while I learned or almost learned 4LLL.

By the beginning of September, I was already working on full PLL. I joined the "Race to Sub-30!" thread at Round 19. I learned all PLL excluding G-Perm and had very little N-Perm practice. Within a week I learned full PLL. Few weeks later I got my F2 (black cube with cubesmith half-bright set with white stickers) and I liked it better than my A5 (white cube, cubesmith bright set with white stickers). A few weeks ago the core for my GuHong finally came in so I just switched to that (white cube, half-bright set with black stickers). I am very close to sub-30 average and am trying to learn full OLL.

Over time the reason I continue cubing is that it is fun.

I hope your joking.

 

[Ceraunius]

Here goes my first post!

I start cubing while I was a kid (back in the 80's). At the time I just did one or two faces at most. Never solved the entire cube.
Then the cube got lost in time... :

About 5 years ago I found again the cube and try to solve it by myself. After about a month of frustration, I went to the interwebs and found the whole new world of speed cubing.
In about a week later I had the Jasmine Lee beginner's tutorial memorized and did the cube in a sub 2 minutes time Yeeeh!

Now, with some new algorithm memorized and a bit more practice, my PB is 26s and my average is about 45 seconds
Currently I'm trying to improve my times by "looking in to the future". I lose some time between each step lookig for cubies (corner+edge), and in PLL.

And that's it... hope you enjoy it