I just got my fastest recorded (on video) 3×3 solve of 36 seconds. I’ll cut to the chase, and put the long-winded commentary below the media content for once. Here’s the video:
(music: “The War” from the Duplicity soundtrack; cube: properly Lubixed white 57mm Dayan Zhanchi with Cube Depot light matte sticker set)
At 36.10, this was not my fastest 3×3 solve; Continue reading
I just posted last week about some fancy edge insertion techniques I had learned. With those down, I realized that I was missing a good algorithm for addressing edges placed in the correct F2L slot but flipped. I finally came across this one, which works fantastically:
r (R U R’ U’) r’ U2 (R U R U’ R2)
I’ve got it down to about 2 seconds now, as shown in this quick video:
I previously had used (R U’ R’) d (R’ U2 R) U2′ (R’ U R) for edge flips. Continue reading
It’s been a few weeks now since I posted my PLL attack video. It’s not that I’ve been cubing less, but just that I haven’t had a lot of time for documenting things. A particularly busy month at work and family stuff — including a couple great birthday celebrations for my boys — evaporated my free time.
As of my last post, I had learned all PLLs minus the Gs. Since then, I’ve learned Ga well and Gb poorly. The two being inverses, I’m now able to practice them more fluidly.
I also stumbled onto and subscribed to TellerWest’s Youtube channel, featuring some really great “tricked out” algorithms that are far faster and more efficient (for the more advanced and dexterous of cubers). This particular F2L video caught my eye, since F2L edge inserts have been especially slow for me. (Edge inserts are when a corner is properly placed, but the edge is in the top layer.) After watching a few times, I realized that they weren’t the longest or hardest algorithms. So I gave them a try — and, in so doing, encountered my first S slice.
There are 21 PLL algorithms, with an average of 15 moves (QTM) each. Those are enormously intimidating figures for someone new to cubing — especially if that someone is, say, in his mid-thirties, has a demanding job, two kids, and, therefore, limited time and energy. And even more so if, as the four readers who occasionally glance at this blog’s carefully produced and curated content already know about me, that someone is just plain bad at memorizing. That’s why, when I began this curious adventure a little bit more than ten months ago, I did so with appropriate humility. I had no illusions of being a 10-second solver, and nary a thought of even consistently approaching 45 seconds. This would be a fun distraction — something I could do interstitially. A low overhead, low footprint hobby. For it to become anything more, I figured, I’d have to do all this memorizing. Perish the thought.
And now this. A video of my version of a PLL speed attack (explanation below), showing my timed execution of the 17 PLLs I know.
I’m not sure what compelled me to try, but, a couple months ago, before I had really ventured into PLLs, I decided to learn the Na Perm. It drove me crazy trying to master an algorithm that long, with a couple awkward (at the time at least) D moves to boot. It turns out the execution is really kind of elegant in a way that feels like the Sidewinder OLL (in that you sort of follow a F2L pair around around the cube).
Feeling frisky, I next turned to the Nb analogue. No dice. The most common Nb algorithm seems to be (R’ U L’ U2 R U’ L)2 U. But L turns are like kryptonite to me. Although you can develop a decent flow with that algorithm, the juggling back and forth from the left side to the right drove me nuts. Nb would have to wait.
Wait no longer. With the PLL headboard now reasonably notched — with nothing but Nb and G Perms left to learn — I decided last week that it was time. I played with the various Nb algorithms on the PLL wiki, and finally settled on this one, a sort of funhouse mirror of the Na Perm: (z) 2x[ (D’ R U’ R2′) D (R’ U) ] R (z’).
Here’s a video of both:
adventures in cubing 