Your Cubing Story

cashis

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Interestingly enough, I searched for this and there wasn't any threads just for personal stories, or at least any I could find with a few searches.
So, I made one. This thread will be solely for your story. Not just how you got into cubing, but achievements, sub-x's, or anything else that's happened that you think is significant.
I'll go first.
It all started when I got suspended from school two years ago (May 2013). My parents, being good parents, grounded me from everything electronic during the three days I was kicked out of school, so I just grabbed a Rubik's cube from the store. Mine came with instructions, and within a day I could do it without the instructions. I remember vividly the first time I solved it, and I swear I freaked out. After I got ungrounded, a few YouTube searches led me to the world record at the time (Mats'), and my first thought was that Ill never be able to do it that quickly. But, I still had a burning urge to do it, and fast. That sumenr, I learned F2L from CBC's (sigh...) video, which in hindsight, gave me a lot of bad habits that took a while to fix, but thats okay. For about 8 months, I decided F2L was enough, and I just solved it for fun every now and then. And then I found out about OLL and PLL. At first, the huge number of 21 and 57 algorithms was terrifying, but I decided I definitely didnt want to be someone who stuck with two-look OLL for a long time, so I decided to learn the cross OLLs last, so I wouldnt be tempted. Fun fact: I didnt learn the V perm until about a month ago.
Anyway, skip ahead a lot of practice, and my first sub- 10 solve came about 5 months ago. I freaked out! Ive since gotten a lot more, and as of this day I have 2 sub -8 solves. Ive recently slowed down my progression a lot, but thats okay.
Sorry for the text wall. I'm interested in reading all of your stories!
Sorry if there's already a thread for this, but I couldn't find any.
- $
 
April 2012: I picked up a cube, and remembered that I had a book on how to solve it. I had trouble figuring out what it meant, because I didn't know where to start. My dad helped me learn the notation and showed me some of what it meant.
May 2012: I knew how to do the F2L completely without help from the book. I could finish the cube if I used the contained LL algorithms.
June 2012: I worked on learning algs. By then I had started really caring and working on it a lot more. I would do my first solve soon, given that I had more time after just leaving 3rd grade.
June 24, 2012: I was on vacation at the Lake of the Ozarks (We go there annually in June with our extended family). That night, I had done many solves without the book. The last solve before I went to bed, I got to CP (it was a weird LL system that made it hard to transition to 4LLL, EOEPCOCP), which was the last thing I needed to learn. I was about to open the book. Then, I decided not to and tried the algorithm from memory. I got it right. (It was an Ab perm, x R2 D2 R U R' D2 R U' R.) I don't count this as my first solve because I had looked at the algorithm from the book before, and then solved the case. I don't remember exactly what happened that night, but I know it was a very significant achievement, whatever it was.
June 25, 2012: The next morning, I got up and picked up a cube. I scrambled it, and then solved it. My first full solve. I did it again. Later, I timed myself for the first time with some people watching. It was around 7:15. My times quickly dropped, and I got down to 3:00 by the end of the vacation.
Late June, 2012: I found an old Rubik's 4x4 that was in my closet, and with the help of the book I solved it. I didn't get around to memorizing the parity algorithms for a while.
July 7, 2012: For my half birthday someone gave me a crappy Rubik's 2x2. It was targeted towards very young children and had silly stickers, which I forgot exactly what they were.
A few days later: My cubesmith order arrived, and I restickered the 2x2 with normal stickers.
I forgot exactly when: I decided to sit down and learn the 4x4 parity algorithms.
August, 2012: I got a QJ tiled 4x4 (which was really bad but much better than my Rubik's brand), a QJ megaminx, a QJ pyraminx, both tiled, and a stickered QJ 5x5. I don't remember the exact dates of these.
October, 2012: I got a LanLan 3x3, which became my main. I also ended up with a LanLan 2x2 at some point.
November, 2012: I switched to a Dayan Zhanchi.
December 2012: I got many cubes for Christmas, including a SS 4x4, SS 5x5, and a stickerless Zhanchi.
January, 2013: I got more cubes for my birthday. I also got something that would be the reason that I'm not sub-10 right now: a Minecraft account.
February, 2013: I got a 3x3 PB of 17 seconds. I also signed up for a cubing competition, UIUC Spring 2013. I built a Rubik's Cube in Minecraft, like just about every cuber who plays Minecraft.
March 30, 2013: I went to my first competition. It was awesome. I actually did pretty well for me at the time. I made the second round of 3x3, my best average was sub-27, and I got a 5.80 2x2 single. If you care, check my WCA profile.
April, 2013: Minecraft stole my life. Skip ahead 13 months.
May, 2014: My family went to Costa Rica. I brought a Zhanchi on the plane to pass time (my average shot back up to 45) and I lost it. Why do people lose Zhanchis so much?
Later, we were at a place with WiFi, and I was curious about cubing again because of losing the Zhanchi. I checked the WCA competition page. My mom said that she would take me to Indiana 2014 if I actually practiced (anything to get me away from MC, at the time lol)
August 23, 2014: I went to Indiana for a competition. I had beaten my PB, which became around 14 seconds, and I had gotten back down to my old average and then passed it up. I competed in 3x3, 2x2, 4x4, Pyraminx, and 6x6, all of which I beat my OPB on (well I had never done pyraminx before). Two of my Pyraminx times were the same down to the millisecond. They were the first two solves, and were 16.439s. My 3x3 average was 20.68. I was REALLY back into cubing this time, and I refused to let the MC curse fall over me again. I was one week into 6th grade, and was obviously very excited about my upcoming comp, so everyone knew about it.
November 1, 2014: I went to a competition on the day after Halloween. I completely forgot about that until I noticed the free candy they were giving out at where we ate dinner on the way there. My dad took me to this one. I knew a lot more about speedcubing then, but there weren't that many well-known cubers there. I was, of course, sub-20, given over 2 months to improve from 20.68, and I even got a sub-17 average (16.98) in the second round. I was kinda proud of beating the delegate and the organizer in the same round with that average. I was 11th, so I didn't quite make the finals.
yada yada
I got some cubes for Christmas and my birthday.
I got an AoLong v2, switched to it.
Beat my PB with an 11.99(9). The best sub-12 single ever.
I had that PB for a few months, until...
March 28, 2015: I went to... definitely not a competition except yeah. (You can tell I'm getting a little bored but I'm almost done.) Many of the same people were there, but then there was also Chris Olson (thanks for not giving me a +2 on an OH solve that was my competition best and wouldn't have been) Kevin Hays (quit showing off. How do you turn that thing so fast?) and Kennan LeJune (why are you so awesome at cubing?) However on the way there, I beat my PB: 11.71. 5 minutes later, I beat it again: 11.57. Then, at the competition, in the second round of 3x3, I got a 15.03 average. If you actually checked my profile, you would have figured out that at the time my 11.90 was my 3rd best solve overall ever. If I hadn't been cubing in the car, it would have been my PB. I have a video on my stupid channel of that ao5.
March 30, 2015: I beat my PB again. And again. 10.43.
June 12, 2015: I got my first sub-10 single. I also got 6 other ones on other days. 9.56. That beat my PB of 10.12. I used COLL and got a PLL skip.
July 9, 2015: I average sub-14, and my PB is 8.51. I am a speedcuber so therefore I win. Bye that was stupidly long and I'm hungry.

update:

Summer 2015: I continue improving, until school starts. At that point, my best ao5 was 12.74, and although I considered myself sub-13; in hindsight, I probably still averaged around 13.2. I started getting frustrated by the lack of competitions to go to. Finally...
November 7, 2015: I go to KCubing 2015. I made the finals of 3x3 and 2x2, 3x3 for the first time ever. I was 8th place in 3x3 and 6th place in 2x2. It was my first competition where I was "fast". I barely drop my 11.90 single, getting it down to 11.86. However, I get my average from 15.03 to 12.10, almost a 3 second drop.
December 2015: I am planning on going to Music City Winter 2016, and consequently, I learn Square 1.
December 24, 2015: As a Christmas present, I am set up to fly to OKC for OKCubing 2016 on 1/16. I was really not expecting this at all.
January 1, 2016: My second solve of the year was a sub-10- 9.91. My first solve, I'm pretty sure, was a 13.35+.
January 2, 2016: Music City Winter was fun. I finally got a sub-10 single officially, but only because of a PLL skip. I got my average down to 11.20 somehow. About 2x2, please don't ask.
January 15, 2016: I miss school to go on a plane.
January 15, 2016 @ ~2:00PM: I get a sub 8 solve. Not my PB, but it was notable because I had it on video.
January 16, 2016: OKCubing. It was in a kinda small room with no wifi, but it was still fun. Notably, a) I got 2 sub-10 singles b) I used COLL officially at least twice, and it resulted in a sub 10 single c) It was the first competition that I podiumed anything d) It was the first competition that I podiumed at least one round of 3x3 e) I beat my 2x2 OPB single after 14 months and f) more things lel
 
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1982 I picked up Rubik's Cube and purchased _Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube_ by James G. Nourse. I memorized that method, but preferred to solve the LL on the U face, so I inverted all of the algorithms there presented with a z2. This gave all the algorithms a left-hand bias -- I still prefer a left hand bias to this day.

1983 I picked up a Rubik's Revenge 4x4x4 cube, but it broke before I completed the first solve. I had a pyraminx and Alexander's star, but have since lost interest and both those puzzles. I still have a Rubik's clock, but it remained scrambled for twenty years until six months ago I worked through a solution - and have not touched it since.

No cubing interest until 2012, when my father presented me with his Rubik's brand and asked me if I could solve it. I did remember enough of Nourse's method to complete a solve after about half an hour. My wife said that in the car there were two Rubik's brand cubes floating about that she picked up from yard sales for the grandkids.

Now I discovered the U-Tube generation, and pieced through many videos of 12-year-olds presenting the "beginner's solution". Then I discovered the DIY Chinese speed cubes and picked up two Zhanchi's. What really hooked me was discovering Kocimba's _Cube Explorer_ and the ability to generate optimal move solutions. Over the next year I completed a catalog of all Edge-Edge with Corner-Corner exchanges, all three-cycles Edges and Corners, all Edge-Edge with Edge-Edge exchanges, all Corner-Corner with Corner-Corner exchanges.

Over the summer of 2013, I generated my own optimal left-hand bias PLL algs and committed those to memory. I figured that if I was to go through all the effort of learning an alg. that it might as well have an optimal move count. I was less concerned about triggers or fast executing algs. I preferred to approach the PLL execution as an instrumentalist, relying on dexterity to give a good execution

I discovered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU5LRlH4XCQ _How to Memorize for Blind Solving_ by stevenarducci. I figured the lettering system presented there was just as good as any, so I went about "relearning the alphabet" as it applies to edge stickers. I applied the system to the corner stickers also.

I discovered the TuRBo method, and preceded to begin acquiring the eight edge and eighteen corner algs. I only made it to nine of the counter-clockwise edge algs and found the "reversed-direction" algs too disconcerting. By now I had programmed a move simulator, and modified the 18 TuRBo alg set into a 6 "solid-diagonal" alg set. I stumbled into the BH method, but I found that my alg set was sufficient for now. However it did steer me to modifying some of my edge algs so that they did not twist the center faces -- should I ever venture into BLD solving larger cubes.

That is where I am now. Daily practicing BLD "under the table" solves, and working up algs and setup method sets. This separates the memorization practice from the method practice, which is where my focus is now. The practice is on reading into letter pairs, writing down those letter pairs, then piecing through my dog-eared notes for every corner/edge setup and solve.

There is no satisfaction like bringing out from under the table a completely solved cube after applying about 100 moves to it strictly from feel and notes.
 
In a way, I owe my cubing career to Kevin Hays. He went to the same high school as me, and I was in classes with his younger sister long before I knew what cubing was or who Kevin was. Even though he graduated the year before I got there, he's remembered there and I still heard about how a Rubik's cube world record holder had gone to my school. Eventually, on a whim, I looked up a video of his 6x6 world record single, and later that night, found a crappy Rubik's brand cube in my room and started messing around with it. I knew pretty much right away that I'd be hooked on it. I tried to learn CFOP intuitively, and I did figure out how to solve the first two layers on my own before caving and looking at algs for LL.

Right away, big cubes were what interested me the most and looked the coolest to me, perhaps because Kevin is the first cuber I ever watched. The first 6 months or so I was cubing, I focused on 3x3 and didn't put much effort into big cubes, but gradually, I started doing big cubes more. 5x5 was the first event I really fell in love with. More recently, 7x7 has been the event I've tried hardest at, and if there are any events I could be considered "fast" at, it would be 7x7. I don't have a decent 6x6, but once I get one, I'll probably practice that a lot as well, to become good at every big cube, as well as to get good at Kevin's signature event. :P
 
I first started cubing about two years ago, the summer before my 8th grade year. My friend James came to my house one day with a Dayan Guhong and I remember him solving it really fast (Probably about 35 seconds haha). He said his record was 22 seconds. During this time, at school, a few people could solve a Rubik's Cube but only in about a minute and a half. anyway, James taught me how to solve a side. After he had left I actually intuitively figured out how to solve the second layer of edges, but got stuck on the last layer. I used the "You Can do the Rubik's Cube" online PDF and was able to solve it from there. Being me, I was determined to beat James's 22 seconds.

After about 4 months I had learned CFOP and was averaging about 20 seconds (I was now faster than James, my first goal), and 10 months later I was consistently sub 15 and sometimes even 14. I then picked up Roux solving for a few months but I got frustrated since I knew I could solve with CFOP faster, even though I really liked the idea of the Roux method. I ended up giving up and switching back to CFOP and I don't really regret this because sticking with Roux probably would've made me stop practicing because of lack of motivation. anyway, after going back to CFOP I was sub 14 globally. I then was able to get down to about a 12 second average overall the next few months. I then stopped practicing as heavily for a bit (This was a few months ago). I'm now back to cubing and I still average about 11.5-12 but I can feel improvement.

Well, there's my poorly written story and I hope I didn't waste too much of your time

You're welcome,
Henry

;)
 
I saw a Rubiks brand at a car boot sale back in may last year and bought it for 50 pence (75 cents?) I remember the lady asking me: "your not one of those people who can solve it 30 seconds are you?" And I just said "not yet". 1 and a quarter years in and still going strong!
 
Okey, this seems cool.
Flash to December 2005, (5 year old me)Christmas Day and guess what I get...a chest for all of my toys leading me to clean my room (forced) and find a dusty old Rubiks Brand Cube. For the first day I tried it and being the 5 year old I was, I raged and tried to smash it on the floor but it bounced back like a brick so I left it on my desk and forgot about it entirely.
Fast Forward to last year... June 2, my friend brought in a horrible cube and once again I couldn't solve it. My dad saw me take an interest and ordered me a stickerless Dayan Zhanchi as my first speedcube. I got cocky and started competing with my friends and learned CFOP to early and sucked at it. In late August I learned full PLL and realized I had 50 algs left for full OLL :( so I gave up because I still sucked with CFOP and switched to Roux. Best decision I ever made. I also tried other methods Petrus, ZZ <3 to make sure Roux was right for me. The rest is on the forums.
 
I've had a couple of false starts where I stuck with it long enough to learn beginner's method and play around a while, but nothing much really.

A while back I introduced a friend's son to cubing and downloaded the BadMephisto app for him to learn from. He's gotten into it so I bought him a Zhanchi to replace his store cube and it rekindled my own interest. So, a couple weeks ago I ordered some new cubes and after a quick stopover with the beginner's method again I decided to learn Roux w/ 2Look from Waffle's page which is *much* cooler. I'm just now getting to the point where I can do a complete solve with only minimal looking at my cheat sheet. Next plans are to firm up my algorithms a bit more to eliminate the cheat sheet and then focus on block building for a while and begin timing my solves.
 
The first time I tried to solve the Rubik's cube was on July 1st, 2014 (Canada Day). I was at my friend's house, and on his desk was a SOLVED 3x3. I scrambled it without him noticing, and he got mad and made me learn how to solve it. I spent hours (5-6) on YouTube trying to understand the tutorials, and I finally did it! I was so happy! I copied down the algorithms and memorized them in an hour and started to get faster, getting a PB of 3 minutes 45 seconds on my first day. After about 50 solves, I was hooked. I wanted to know what the world record was. I asked my friend, and he said that its like 8 seconds by some random Australian kid (lol faz). I googled it, and found Mats Valk's 5.55 WR single. I immediately knew that I wanted to become a speedcuber. I spent hours on the internet searching for how to get faster, speedsolving methods, and speedcubes. Within my first week, I was averaging about 1:15 with the beginner's method. I decided that it was time to pick a method. Being the rebel kid I am, I first tried to learn petrus because it had few algorithms and the lowest movecount out of the "big four". I gave up after like 10 minutes because I couldn't figure out how to make a 2x2x2 block from the stupid text tutorial. I was left with CFOP, ZZ, or Roux. Now you know exactly which method I learned if you are reading this, but I was absolutely lost. I took ZZ out of the equation because of the number of algs, leaving me with CFOP and Roux. It was time for the big decision. I picked Roux because I hate being mainstream. That is literally the only reason. Gotta fight that mainstream boiys! I ordered myself a zhanchi from amazon, but I received a guhong instead. I popped it on my first turn. By August, I was down to 40 seconds, dropping my times quickly using my new speedcube. From there, I just kept improving. At the end of August, I ordered myself a lubix aolong and my times dropped quickly again. In September, I learned 3BLD and got my first success of 15 minutes lol. I didn't practice at all after my first success. By September, I had learned full CMLL. I joined the forums in October and was introduced to all you awesome people. Also, I was informed that my progress is insane. I was so surprised! I thought I was just moving along at an average pace lol. In November, my aolong was completely dead after going through thousands of solves. I decided to get a weilong v2 because I liked the aolong, but it was a little but unstable and misaligned frequently. Along with my weilong, I ordered a lingpo and an aosu. I rarely practiced 4x4 because my aosu needed a lot of breaking in and setup (and I averaged like 2 minutes lol), and I barely practiced 2x2 because my CLL layers sucked and I used 3x3 CMLLs and averaged like 8 seconds. I spammed 3x3 solves for dayz to keep up the epic improvement. Fast forward to April, and I had signed up for my first competition: national capital region 2015 in rockland, ontario. I ordered myself a stackmat to prepare. I was very nervous at the comp, and didnt do very well (at least in 3x3). I had fun, but I regret not talking to more people. I only talked to a guy named Quishi Wang, Antoine Cantin, and Louis Cormier, all very briefly. I was looking forward to meeting "rock1t" (username on speedsolving) but I couldnt find him lol. I got a pretty good 9.16 single on my first 3x3 solve that made up a 11.09 average (would have been a low 10 but i had a +2 and a DNF). I guess this was ok for me, but I was expecting better since I averaged about 10.2 at the time. I made second round for 3x3, but failed miserably. All the scrambles sucked *** and I couldn't pick a block in inspection. I still somehow made finals, and got 5th place (meh, couldve podiumed :p). In 2x2, I also made second round and finals with barely any practice, and also got 5th place. The cutoff for 4x4 was 1:15. My at-home PB was 1:09, but on my first solve, i got a PB single of 1:06. The rest of the average was ****. On my second solve, i was given the wrong cube, and had to identify mine. Luckily, I found it, but since I had seen the scramble, I had to be given an extra scramble. I solved the cube, and put it back for scrambling. What happened next you ask? Sarah misscrambled and I had to solve it again. "at least the centres are done!" -Sarah Strong, NCR2015. Finally, I did my second solve, and my third without any fails by me or staff lol. On the fourth solve, the scrambler popped my cube and i had to assemble and solve it. You all know how annoying it is to assemble aosus. I finished the fourth and fifth attempts without any more incidents. I somehow managed to do 9 solves in an average of 5, and my 4x4 round lasted like an hour. I got 12th place, with the awesome title of being the worst solver to make cutoff. After the comp, I starting practising 3x3 rigorously, doing at least 200 solves a day, but I had to stop practising for about 2 weeks to study for exams. I went hardcore nerd mode. After exams, I decided to practise all events that I can. Every day, I do 50 4x4 solves, 50 OH solves, 5 BLD attempts, 100 2x2 solves, and 100-400 3x3 solves (depending on how much time is left in the day).

PBs
PROGRESS
 
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i started kinda recently maybe around 3-4 months one day I was watching TheMaoiSha (a spanish cuber) and and wanted to solve a cube so the next day I said to my mom that i wanted a cube so she got me a dollar store one (was my main until stickers peeled off and put shampoo in my shengshou) i learned how to solve the cube from redkb and the first time i solved the cube without looking at the tutorial i got about 2 and a half minutes when i reached about 1 and a half minutes I
learned CFOP from paradox cubing and learned 2 look oll and pll from badmephisto then I became sub 40 and wanted to learn full pll so i started about 2-3 weeks ago and finished today (last alg was g perm) at first I was using badmephisto's algs but then I switched to chris olson's algs and now i average around sub 35
 
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