cross – adventures in cubing

Excuses…Excuses — (0:39) Ao5 with a Cast

March 9, 2014February 3, 2018Adventures in Cubing1 Comment

Here’s a dirty little (not-so-)secret fact: I’m a mediocre cuber. Indeed, mediocrity is, in a sense, the raison d’être of this blog.

me·di·o·cre [mee-dee-oh-ker]
of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad; barely adequate
synonyms: undistinguished, commonplace, pedestrian, everyday; run-of-the-mill
antonyms: extraordinary, superior, uncommon, incomparable

More accurately, I’d say that I’m a pretty good cuber, but a very mediocre speedsolver. My technique is decent. I know all PLLs and can execute them efficiently. I understand intuitive F2L very well, and have learned a lot of tricks for more complicated cases. And I’ve got about 60% of the OLLs under my belt. But when it comes to putting them all together into full solves, I’m just not that great. My cross stinks. My look-ahead is non-existent. And, under the pressure of the clock, I tend to confuse F2L cases and forget OLL cases. That’s why I average just under 30 seconds.

And that’s why I very rarely record full solves and, even more rarely, averages. Well, after my surgery and with this damn cast still on my arm (¡au voir mañana!), I thought I could record an average of 5 (Ao5) with a built-in excuse. And so I did. Here’s the video with a 39 second Ao5 (and with BIG apologies for so much of it being out of frame!):

(puzzle: Dayan Zhanchi w/ Cube Specialists fitted bright stickers; music: String Cheese Incident performing “Galactic > So What?” on 7.30.03)

Continue reading →

Cross Training

March 23, 2013March 23, 2013Adventures in Cubing1 Comment

It’s time to come clean: My cross skills suck.

It’s been 14 months since I wrote about more advanced cross techniques, which is only slightly less long than I’ve been at this cubing thing altogether. At the time, I was thrilled just to move on from the beginner’s method of forming a daisy on top. Memorizing the cube’s color scheme seemed like an accomplishment.

A year-plus later, I’m stuck at around 35 seconds. I’ve learned all 21 PLLs, have gotten pretty fast at two-look OLL (with a handful of OLLs one-lookable), and am competent with F2L (fast, but with lots of hunting still). But my crosses are still really clunky. Time to start focusing on the cross.

To set a benchmark, I did 5 Ao12s of just crosses. I spread out the sessions to make sure they were pretty accurate representations. Although there are a few stray bests, the 60-cross average was 6.75: Continue reading →

advancing the cross

January 25, 2012September 5, 2019Adventures in Cubing7 Comments

For the most part, I still currently use the Beginner’s Method (as taught by RobH0629‘s very accessible and excellent tutorials) to solve a 3×3 cube. Although I’m amazed that I’ve gotten down to 1:09 using that method, I realize that I’ll need more advanced techniques to cut my times. For example, on even my fastest solves, the cross takes me an average of 15 seconds; with new techniques, I should be able to halve that.

When I say cross, I mean forming a cross/plus-sign in the bottom face (usually white) by placing the white/red, white/blue, white/orange, white/green edges with their white halves facing down and colored halves lined up with each side face’s center cube. Like so: