Zagros' Progression (all WCA events)

[Zagros]

Clearing my sessions, these are my PBs since last time.

3x3: 8.86 single, 11.23 mo3, 11.98 ao5, 12.61 ao12, 12.96 ao25, 13.28 ao50, 13.65 ao100, 13.73 ao200, 13.94 ao500, 14.15 ao1000
4x4: 41.61 single, 45.89 mo3, 47.75 ao5, 49.98 ao12 (!!!), 51.30 ao25, 52.15 ao50, 52.58 ao100
5x5: 1:30.72 single, 1:38.85 ao5, 1:41.39 ao12, 1:43.39 ao25, 1:45.70 ao50
OH: 27.09 ao50, 27.71 ao100, 27.81 ao200
Pyra: 2.74 mo3, 3.05 ao5, 4.06 ao12, 4.42 ao25, 4.51 ao50, 4.60 ao100, 4.83 ao200, 5.24 ao500
6x6: 2:59.11 single (!!!), 3:16.96 mo3, 3:24.49 ao12, 3:27.43 ao25
7x7: 5:22.73 mo3, 5:30.25 ao12
2x2: 1.64 single, 2.13 mo3, 2.51 ao5, 3.17 ao12, 3.57 ao25, 3.65 ao50, 3.74 ao100, 3.87 ao200
Clock: 8.68 single, 11.90 ao5, 12.46 ao12, 12.89 ao25, 13.21 ao50, 13.83 ao100
3BLD: 2:00.68 single

What I mostly focused on was replacing some of my ancient CFOP algorithms and practicing recognition and doing LL quickly, I memorized all polish flip Pyraminx cases as I just solve intuitively and I usually got a bad time when I got one of those, forced myself to lookahead as much as possible in pyra and 2x2 and ended up one looking a lot of solves (hence the absurd new ao5 pbs), and practiced BLD, currently 10/25 solves success and almost sub 2 minutes, consistently sub 2:30. I also dabbled in FMC, haven't really learned much but I was able to get 36 on the first scramble I tried (and it's not just absurdly lucky CFOP lol).

 

[Zagros]

Just had a really good session of 200 solves and got every single 3x3 pb, including single:

Scramble: L2 F2 L2 F2 U2 F2 U' F2 U2 R2 D2 L' B' R2 U L2 R' U B' F2 D
Inspection: z'
Cross: U' R' F2 D2
F2L1: U' R U' R2 U R
F2L2: F U R U' R' F' R U' R'
F2L3: U2 L' U' L U2 y' L' U' L
F2L4: d R' U R U' R' U' R
LL: U' R U R' U R U' R' U' R' F R F' U'
8.24 seconds, 49 moves, 5.95 tps

I'm quite proud of this single since, although there was a PLL skip, the F2L is actually not lucky at all and my tps is so high. If I reached that tps normally, I would average sub-10!

This solve was right after 9.93 meaning I got my first counting sub-10 (let alone two in a row), and also a 10.06 mo3. Overall I am very motivated that averaging sub-10 is attainable for me.

 

[Zagros]

I've practiced quite a bit recently and had a good 3BLD session where I got a new best single, a sub-1:50 mo3, and a sub-2:00 ao5, and was always getting under two minutes, whether a success or a DNF. As promised, I will in the next few days do first a four cube multi-blind, then attempt 4BLD. I believe a 4x4 is ~2.5 3x3s, but I don't want to push it on memo given the other challenges involved in 4BLD, so I will make sure I can do well beyond that with the multi-blind first. I've already done 2/2 in 6:02 which I do think is quite good given my 3BLD times.

 

[Zagros]

Weekly Competition update (2023-35)

I'm behind in posting this because I didn't really get anything good so I didn't want to, lol.

Two PRs:
Skewb single: 4.93. Yay.
2BLD single: 18.34. This was a +2. I've been doing the scrambles every week and just doing a layer and predicting OLL and hoping to skip PLL. When I DNFed all three solves, I simply did not submit my times. This was my first time getting a success.

But I did reach one of my goals by getting two successes in 3BLD, the fastest being 2:00.42. This was before my above update on BLD progress.

 

[Zagros]

I've been actually getting a lot better at blind very fast. I just got a new single of 1:14.06. It's a new best by quite a bit, although I have a lot of DNFs around that time. My typical solve is in the 1:30s now. I am still working on 4BLD, I just keep getting infuriating DNFs. I have one success from yesterday which was an extreme safety and the time was 24 minutes (my dnfs are all sub-15). I have been practicing doing 3-style for my corners, and I have successfully solved with this method, but it's hard to force myself to switch because of how much slower it is right now, and I'm really motivated to practice because of how much faster I am getting so it would be very disheartening to switch methods and no longer be fast for a while. I think I will keep practicing it on the side until it is comparable speed.

Edit for a note I had: I've noticed pushing my memo faster isn't as hard as one would think because the faster I go, the worse I can memorize because I don't need to remember as long. I'm going so fast now because I'm spending less time on corners than I did when I avged over 2minutes because I only need to remember them for 1 minute now. It's a nice cycle where being faster makes it easier to be faster.

 

[Zagros]

Weekly Competition update (2023-36)
Last week I got eight competition PRs:

2x2 single/average - 2.18/3.20
This was very good for me, but due to not having a stackmat at the moment I think I will back off on 2x2. I fear I may have trouble beating this once I am using a stackmat again.

4x4 single - 43.32
I'm not amused. I always get these singles but failed sub50 average yet again.

6x6 single/average - 2:57.43/3:07.33
My best nxn result this week. Includes my 3rd and 4th sub-3:00s ever.

2BLD single - 16.31

FMC single/average - 33/35.67
I'm happy about the single. I would love to learn to sub30 this event as that feels very respectable, but I may be too lazy to practice it.

Now my BLD results: I got two successes this week, with the best being 1:36.79. Much better than before, but you will see better from me soon. I got 0 points in multi by solving 2/4, sadly. I did finish in under 22 minutes which means I can try a lot more cubes. I'll probably do five cubes next time, I don't want to push it just yet. I also tried all three 4BLD scrambles and didn't solve a single one, although it was never more than three pieces off.

Unrelated to the competition, I have better 4BLD news which is that I got a good success (after DNFing all contest scrambles) of 13:45! I would like to sub-10:00 this event and my plan is to start doing 5BLD once I achieve this goal. However I believe accuracy is more important, as a success isn't much use if it takes me six tries every time. So I am going to try and get a few more casual successes before I start rushing speed.

 

[Zagros]

Somehow I keep succeeding, my next two attempts were successes within 25s of the same time, which means I actually have a 4BLD mo3. I'll take that as a sign I can try to push faster now. I've done enough attempts I've developed a memorization system. My memo problem with 4BLD is, unlike 3BLD where you don't have to really remember edges cuz you can just repeat the memo and execute quick, 4x4 centers have too many pieces for me to be able to do that. Even on 3x3, I can only reliably remember six letter pairs, so if I go past 12 targets I kinda just visual the last few. So far I am unable to keep all the centers fresh in my mind because of how many there are, so I am forced into actually committing the entire cube to memory. Which is slow. On 3x3 it's memo 8 targets and rush 12, on 4x4 it's memo all ~50. But I have come up with a system to do a quicker memorization for the centers which isn't quite as fast as the audio-type memorization for 3x3, but much faster that my normal memorization. The system involves five "bins", with two letter pairs in each bin. Often the last bin goes empty if I aligned the centers nicely. I find that with the bin system I am able to trace my centers and then go back and recall the first bin without any extra reviewing involved, although it isn't quite as fast as audio memorization because the execution isn't seamless, I pause for several seconds to recall each bin. Based on how fast this is and my general memo speed as I know it from multi-blind, I believe once I get more practiced at tracing I should have no problem being able to finish memo in sub 5 minutes, but that will take a lot of practice as tracing the wings still takes me quite some time. But I've gotten so much faster than I thought I would at my 3BLD tracing, so I believe I can reasonably accomplish this.

 

[Zagros]

I'm spending a lot of time practicing long bld events. I have a new best of 11:25 for 4x4 BLD, and I've just finished an 11 cubes multi attempt. I finished in 57:43, with 3:36 memo per cube. However I only solved 7/11. My memorization is fine, it's just always tracing errors. I only have 11 cubes so I will probably keep trying that until I can get to 11/11, but for now I want to keep practicing 4BLD to get more comfortable until I am ready to attempt 5BLD.

 

[Zagros]

Quick update, I was finally able to surpass 10 minutes on 4x4 BLD.

As promised, I will immediately begin practicing 5x5 BLD now. My other focus the past few days has been FMC, I was able to find my first DR->HTR solution in 31 moves. I developed a system to always be able to create a DR, however as I understand there is a lot of complexity to HTR, and I was only able to do this step due to having a simple case. I understand that it is against my better interest if improving my score is what matters, but nonetheless I am avoiding reading the tutorials for this method in favor of trying to figure out as much out as I can myself. The reason is because I do often regret that speedsolving is simply following the steps that someone else invented and I don't actually contribute anything to my solutions, so for FMC I would like my progression to be based on my actual intuition and understanding rather than memorizing stuff that someone else figured out.

 

[Lord_Oscar]

I know this is kinda unrelated, but

I JUST CANT STOP LAUGHING AT YOUR GODDAMN PFP

 

[Zagros]

I will be competing again finally in November! You can see me at Oklahoma Fall 2023. I am signed up for all events. I'll go over my goals before then. I will probably stop focusing so heavily on bld to practice these events now.

3x3 (PR = 12.49/13.90) my time goal is sub-13 average, my practice goal is to drill OLL extensively and make wiser f2l choices
2x2 (PR = 3.12/4.42) my time goal is sub-3.5 average, but I also want to finish learning CLLs and EG1s if I have time, I know 60% CLL and used to know 50% EG1 but forgot them.
Pyra (PR = 4.72/6.82) I want to make finals, should easily sub-5, and I have a tentative goal to sub-4, although that may be challenging.
Skewb (PR = 5.56/7.56) goal = PR
Clock (PR = 14.23/16.36) goal is PR but I have Rubik's brand so if I get a new clock before comp I may have better goals
Square-1 (PR = 51.01 single) goal is to get an average, I also want to learn how to do cubeshape efficiently before the comp
Mega (PR = 2:30.81 single) goal is to get an average

 

[Zagros]

I wasn't intending to clear my sessions just yet, but I decided to do it now because I have a comp and do all my comp prep in the same sessions.

PBs since last time:

3x3: 8.24 single, 10.06 mo3, 11.32 ao5, 11.62 ao12, 12.26 ao25, 12.73 ao50, 12.98 ao100, 13.28 ao200, 13.52 ao500, 13.77 ao1000
4x4: 49.98 ao12 (tied), 50.60 ao25
OH: 17.99 single, 22.40 mo3, 23.19 ao5, 26.24 ao25, 27.01 ao50, 27.17 ao100
Pyra: 1.98 single, 3.99 ao12, 4.29 ao25
6x6: 2:57.43 single, 3:04.99 mo3, 3:02.17 ao5
7x7: 5:12.83 mo3, 5:13.67 ao5
2x2: 1.55 single, 3.50 ao25
Clock: 8.35 single, 10.26 mo3, 11.40 ao5, 12.42 ao12
3BLD: 1:05.10 single, 1:15.68 mo3, 1:22.08 ao5, 1:31.06 ao12
Skewb: 3.07 single, 4.84 mo3, 5.41 ao5, 6.23 ao12, 7.13 ao25, 8.02 ao50, 8.24 ao100

 

[Zagros]

I've made some quick progress in some of the events I'll be competing in. For 3x3, I'm drilling OLLs for the first time ever and it's helping quite a bit. Mostly because I honestly didn't really try to do them that fast before. Which is silly. There's only so fast I can do an alg if I'm thinking about it terms of the move sets it's made of, after drilling it become total muscle memory and turns out like 80% of OLLs I can sub-1 with some consistency. I am also really trying to force seeing cross+1 in inspection on bad crosses. I have a habit of not even trying if cross is yucky, but really it's never that hard if you make yourself. My ao100 is hovering around 13.2, so I think I'm doing alright.
For pyra, I have always solved intuitively. Unfortunately this means I don't have really good recognition for different cases, and I struggle to one look even though I can track pieces easy enough because I don't know the solution immediately as an alg unless it's something obvious. So I am systematizing every L4E case and drilling them like algs. I am also seeing improvement in my turning, and am no longer frustrated by tips. I am averaging around 4.5, and sub-4 definitely feels within my grasp.
I haven't made much 2x2 progress. I am well-practiced in this event which means it's hard to make improvement in the short term. I haven't been learning algs yet as I am prioritizing for other events.
Skewb I am using intermediate method, I'm doing alright averaging about 7 flat. I struggle to have an intuitive grasp of the movement of this puzzle and am unable to do any sort of lookahead, unfortunately. I ought to be able to predict the corners+top color position in inspection, but that's turning out very challenging. I believe the hard part is my layers being too many moves, so my plan is to study better layer strategies.
I restarted megaminx for this comp. I'm using a very makeshift last layer method at the moment because I know ~0 mega algs, and averaging in the 1:40s. I'm trying to learn 4LLL, I believe I can easily be below 1:30 with this.
I also restarted Square-1. At the moment my average is 40s. I found that I already know all CP algs as they are the same is ortega PBL, so what I have to learn is EP mainly. I'm starting with the no-parity on top or bottom (so only U,H,Z perm) cases and I will do line eo U2 line eo if I don't have one. If I have time I will learn the other EPs, but before that I would really like to be able to do cubeshape efficiently. I'm only good up to depth 4 at the moment.
Finally Clock, I actually learned how to do 7-simul yesterday and today. I figured it would be a waste to get good with another method, so I should do it now while I'm not so good at clock. Really, it isn't too hard. The hardest part is remembering the order of everything, so it gets better as you get it down to habit. Much easier to remember your memo when you don't have to think "so which clock do I add next?". I practiced solves for 1hr and got the times down to 24s average, and my inspection is taking 17-18s. It's not super great, but as I just started I believe I can be faster than my old times and wca legal inspection before too long. I also every time I practice clock have been using my pinkies for the bottom dials just during scrambling to get used to it, and I decided when I started using this method to begin using the pinkes in my solves. You get used to it faster than I thought. I don't actually do the turns simultaneously yet unfortunately unless they are both +/-2 or less, but I believe I will incorporate this more and more as I get comfortable with the method.

 

[Zagros]

Good clock progress, day four of 7-simul and I am basically as fast as before. My record is 10.06 with sub-13 ao12.

 

[Zagros]

My 2x2 progress was very stagnant with Ortega, so I've been grinding CLL. I knew a decent bit of the algs already, but wasn't drilled at all and recognition too bad to really use faster than Ortega. I'm now at 12/42 good enough to implement in solves and did my first session of solves using them today, and the difference was kind of night and day. Every ten solves I just randomly get a sub2. I also try to use anti-CLL, although when I do use it the solve is more like low 2. Kinda crazy how this method actually works, lol. It's like magic, learn the algs and you're fast. Very motivated to finish learning as I think I might actually be able to be fast, I am pretty set on finishing CLL and EG-1 both before my comp in 40 days. I am currently using Pi and L in my solves whenever they come up, and I can predict OLL pretty much instantly so I know to try and one-look when I have one of those cases. After seeing how effective CLL is, I am updating my goals, I should be 100% capable of getting sub-3 at this competition. At the moment I can only one-look 4+ move faces if they are one of a few patterns that I know how to trace, but hopefully I'll get better at one-looking harder faces and also get better at recognizing the cases so it can still be worth it to use if I don't one-look successfully. As for my times today, I got a new record 1.12 single which was 10 moves, cancelling into a Pi CLL. I got in total five sub-1.5 solves, pretty crazy to be breaking my old records so much on scrambles that aren't even particularly lucky! One-looking is just op. Can't wait to be able to do this on every scramble.

 

[Zagros]

It's day 10 of comp prep so I am giving a quick update on every event.

3x3: I've been mostly drilling and slowly replacing some of my algs. I am now using a few S dot OLLs, lefty J-perm for Ja, finally replaced my trash Ra with the RUD one. No insane progress, but I have a new best ao100 by .02 and my ao200 is at 13.00, couldn't quite break 13.

2x2: On the CLL grind. I am very determined to be able to one-look every scramble by the comp. Recognizing cases isn't really hard, the problem is knowing the algs well enough. I don't have the algs instinctively connected to each case, which makes one-looking a lot harder because I had to keep thinking in my head "remember this is the one that starts with R' F" the whole time. However it just takes a few days for the algs to sink in good, I think the reason I'm struggling is because I'm learning more every day so there is always ~10 algs that are fresh and I struggle with, once I finish learning everything and practice a few days I think it should be alright. I know 30/42 CLL, but only 16/42 I've practiced enough that I'm implementing in solves so far.

Pyra: ~25% of solves one-looked, I struggle a lot for >3 turns to V. I don't think I'll be able to get perfect at that before this comp, so I'm just training L4E a lot, I should still be able to sub-4 with no one-looking but just recognition. I also intend to learn some algs. IDK what it's called, like Pyraminx EG. Where the first layer is wrong. There's only six cases per subset so I want to learn at least two swapped pieces and two flipped edges.

Skewb: I haven't learned anything, just been practicing. I'm finally catching on to the turning a bit, it felt really hard for me for a long time but I've been getting sub7 even on hard scrambles a lot, and lots of sub6 solves. The only thing I really have my sights on learning is all the L5C cases, since I only know the ones with the top already solved. I think it's only six cases I don't know? Not sure. Never really learned skewb algs before.

Clock: I am officially faster with 7-simul than I was before! My ao5,ao12,ao25 pbs all with 7-simul. No larger averages because I DNF them skull emoji. Sub-10 is definitely attainable, I don't know how soon though. 10.65 best ao5.

Square-1: I'm so slow at this puzzle. My best is 20.something so far. I'm just learning EPs, I know only 8/49. I kinda just don't turn fast so hopefully I'll gain momentum with that as I practice and start improving. I still haven't learned the cubeshapes beyond depth 4. I really hate that kind of learning, where everything flows into another case. I know it's supposed to make it easier as there is only one turn per case to learn, but for some reason I just find it really frustrating. If I still haven't learned the rest I will crack down when I finish all the NP/NP EPs. Not rushing super hard to finish this before the comp tbh, I find this puzzle frustrating right now.

Megaminx: I have been learning a lot of algs. I've learned EP and CP and today I started on CO, which I was very afraid of since there are more cases than on 3x3 but they are turning out to be really easy and will probably only take a few days to finish up 4LLL. I did an ao12 today of 1:32.92, I've got the goal of being sub-1:30 before competition, which I think I will easily achieve.

Overall good progress all around, and only 20% of my prep days are used. I should be good enough by then that even poor performance is PBs, but I'm not very nervous about that as I usually do well in comp compared to at-home.

Two quick notes:
One is risk-taking. In terms of spamming in solves. I internalized years ago that it was important to prioritize smooth turning and consistency, partly because I would get kinda frantic/frustrated hands when I tried to go fast and if I messed up a turn it would take like 2.5 seconds to recover and it just felt really bad to turn fast. I've been forcing myself to take risks, and it's working pretty well. Particularly important in events like 2x2 and Pyra. Previously if I saw a good scramble I could one-look, I'd play it very safe and collect the easy good time. But if you practice going all out and spamming those solves, turns out you will get better at not messing it up. Same thing on 3x3, though more about just last pair and LL as I can only go so fast in f2l. I'm seeing myself more often get these super fast satisfying PLL finishes into good times, feels pretty good.
The other note is on learning algs. I used to always put this off, literally taking several years to learn OLL. This comp gave me a reason to learn stuff so I have an ambitious set of algs to learn in the next month and I've been learning around 4-6 every day, and it turns out I kinda like it! It's addicting. I am very motivated to learn a bunch of stuff for every event, it kinda feels like it gives freedom. Like if I don't know the algs, I can't do the stuff other people can with their solves. Feels very good to always get a case I know.

 

[Zagros]

I recently got two huge lucky new best singles.

#1 - Square-1 single 14.94
First sub-20 lol, two slice cubeshape, obvious OBL (so basically EO skip), corners were just a 2 swap on top layer, and then one of the EPs I know.

#2 - FMC single 26
Scramble: R' U' F D F B L F' D' R F' R2 L2 B' R2 F' D2 F U2 D2 F D2 U B' R' U' F
(B' L' F) // eo
D' R' D2 L2 U D' R' F2 R // DR
F2 U D2 L2 U' F2 @ R2 U' B2 U D' L2 // 2e2e
@ = F2 L2 B2 L2 F2 R2
Full Solution: D' R' D2 L2 U D' R' F2 R F2 U D2 L2 U' L2 B2 L2 F2 U' B2 U D' L2 F' L B (26 moves)
I haven't figured out how to do a full HTR yet, although I can do either corners or edges but not both, so I usually try both and see how hard the other pieces will be to solve. In this case I could fully solve the corners so I did that, choosing which layers to turn to try and solve as many edges as possible and also the E slice. The E slice didn't fully work out so I have to do a U D' at the end unfortunately, but I got to 2e2e at 24. I thought I could get 29 or 30 for sure which would've already been a new record, but I found such a lucky insert it only added two moves. What I was most excited about was finding a below scramble-length solution. Lmao. The scramble is 27 moves, so if you just reversed it, my solution would still beat that.

 

[Zagros]

This might be of interest to some people. I have had a document with benchmark times across different events that I believe take a similar amount of effort to achieve. I recently updated it, and I think this version is a lot more accurate than my last attempt. There are a few problems, mainly lack of data for slower times on long events, and Skewb being a more recently added event ended up looking really weird so I manually adjusted a variable until I thought it looked better. Multi-blind ending at 60 is just a coincidence, it means my formula worked well. FMC ending at 20 is not a coincidence, I didn't know how to do that one and the same method I used for other events DEFINITELY didn't work, so it's pretty lazy. The ratio between events is NOT consistent at different speeds - for example, a slower solver would expect 2x2 to take a third as long as 3x3, whereas for fast solvers it approaches a fifth as long. However, I put the benchmarks close enough together that if you want to extrapolate between two benchmarks, it should be pretty close to what the formula would say. This isn't super scientific, there are a ton of places where I had to make assumptions, but it tracks pretty well for me, even though I did not base it off my own times at all. Please only compare events you actually put equal effort into - I don't wanna hear that seven minutes 5bld is way harder than sub10 3x3 if you have thirty thousand 3x3 solves and fifteen 5bld solves. The one main flaw is that I am pretty sure 3x3 is a bit harder than other events in every single tier, but it's really hard to avoid that since pretty much everyone practices 3x3 more than other events. You might find comparisons between non-3x3 events to be better than comparisons between other events and 3x3. But if you're like most people and practice 3x3 a bit more than other events, it should still be pretty good.

 

[Zagros]

I am finally making 2x2 progress. My post earlier was really motivated because of getting super fast solves, but that was mostly singles, and my overall average wasn't doing too hot. I am finally consistently better than "barely sub-4" now, just did a session of 50 solves and got a 2.49 ao5, 2.92 ao12, 3.05 ao25, and 3.22 ao50. I am currently implementing 26/42 CLL. I have learned recognition for every subset, so even on the ones where I'm not using the algs yet, I can pseudo one-look. I do actually still make EG-1 faces if they are 1-2 or easy 3 moves, I find I can still reach that ~3.2s and sometimes sub-3 on those cases now. I am definitely over-inspecting, depending on how hard my face is I can take 30-40s right now. I also got a new single yesterday! I know 2x2 single is silly, but I thought it was neat because it was my first time under 1 second! Scramble is R F2 U' F' U' F2 R U F, my time was 0.97 seconds. The solution is 10 moves, so I think that's not too shabby for a first sub-1, I actually had to go pretty fast to make this milestone rather than getting it off a really lucky 4-5 moves.

 

[Zagros]

New megaminx progress, I have got a 1:16.31 single, 1:24.33 ao5, 1:26.80 ao12, and 1:29.11 ao25. Finally getting sub-1:30 on average, and using 4LLL most solves, but not every solve since I still have some CP to learn. Since I've only been no-lifing my comp events, I started to worry that I was falling behind on nxn, so I did fifty 4x4 solves. My ao50 was 49.68 and I got new best ao5 46.58 and ao12 48.03. I had been grinding for sub-50 for ages and wasn't even that close, so I guess I'm just better from a few weeks of not practicing.