My speed cubing page
ws.binghamton.edu
My speed cubing page
1–10 of 56 posts
Re: My speed cubing page
#2It's pretty wild seeing how off the estimates are and how far things have come since then. This page about limits lists the expected fastest average at 11 seconds and the best possible average at 5 seconds [1].
Today, the best solvers have gotten multiple sub 5 averages [2] and most good solves can get sub 11 second averages with practice. In fact most intermediate solvers can get sub 17 second averages with advanced cube technology (better turning speed and fewer lock ups). I've even seen a 2.35 second solve [3]
[1] http://www.ws.binghamton.edu/fridrich/hints.html#limits
[2] https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/rankings/333/av...
Re: My speed cubing page
#3Speed cubing has advanced a lot in the last couple decades. The cubes have evolved like you wouldn’t believe, and the methods have been refined like crazy. World record average (5 solves, remove best and worst, do the arithmetic mean of the other 3) stands at 4.48 seconds. https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/records
The system described here is basically standard CFOP: Cross, First 2 layers, Orient last layer (OLL), Permute last layer (Pll). Though now most cubers don’t take advantage of the symmetry between algorithms, and instead do completely different algorithms for flipped cases. One reason for this is that most people aren’t perfectly ambidextrous, and the other is it can facilitate recognition.
The second most popular method, Roux, has also a lot of potential. Completely different from CFOP.
CFOP has been refined a lot. First the obvious: the cross is solved at the bottom, and so are the first two layers. That way you can better see the pieces that actually interest you: those that aren’t solved yet. And it saves you from flipping the cube over when it comes to solve the last layer. The first two layers are still solved mostly intuitively, but with a lot of tricks to make it faster, like pseudo slotting, key-holes… currently Tymon Kolasiński is the master of pseudo slotting, with extremely efficient F2L (and standing equal to him is Max Park, who is basically ambidextrous for this phase).
For the last layer there are also a lot of tricks, most of which requires recalling an ungodly amount of algorithms. Some are about inserting the last pair and orient the last layer (few cubers learn them all, but the set called "winter variation" is fairly popular). Sometimes the edges are already oriented, so we can orient and place the last corners (COLL), so at the end we only need to permute the edges (easier recognition, slightly faster algorithms than general PLL).
And then there’s ZBLL, from the ZZ method, where we start with edges already oriented, and we orient the corner and permute everything in a single algorithm. But there’s a crapton of algs to learn from, not even Tymon Kolasiński knows them all… well, one cuber does know them all (don’t recall his name, sorry), I believe his method to solve the last layer is to orient the edges at the same time he places the last F2L pair, then he goes ZBLL.
---
If you want to learn speed cubing now, I recommend https://cubeskills.com/ and https://jperm.net/ — or look up the Roux method if you don’t want to do like everyone else.
Re: My speed cubing page
#4Recently attending the World Championships for Athletics in Budapest, supporting my fiancée in the 5000m. I'm not super athletic myself, but one of the country's notable figures is Ernö Rubik, inventor of the Rubik Cube.
They had a social media thing going around where you could tag your country for a chance to get featured. From a 14 second PB in my youth, it was still pretty trivial to get somewhere in the 25-30 second range on the janky stock cubes they distributed to all the athletes. It was probably the most I did for Team Canada during that trip.
Re: My speed cubing page
#5It's pretty wild seeing how off the estimates are and how far things have come since then. This page about limits lists the expected fastest average at 11 seconds and the best possible average at 5 seconds [1]. Today, the best solvers have gotten multiple sub 5 averages [2] and most good solves can get sub 11 second averages with practice. In fact most intermediate solvers can get sub 17 second averages with advanced…
Cubes have probably advanced quite a bit, and the advent of social media now means that the kids just copy each others tricks within minutes these days. My kid and his cubing friends went down towards a 10s average between the age 10 and 12, so in about two years of active cubing. But having the head of a 12yo kid (and amount of spare time) is almost cheating. You can learn anything in 2 years. I'm sure they could have learned Mandarin instead in that time. But I'll take it over being really good at Fortnite which was the other option.
Re: My speed cubing page
#6For anyone looking to dip their toes into speed cubing or cubing in general I highly recommend checking out a YuXin Little Magic.
https://www.thecubicle.com/products/yuxin-little-magic-3x3
The cube is only $6 (recently inflationed from $5) and it's one of the best cubes I've ever used. I have a stack of these sitting at home that I sometimes give to people who show an interest.
Incidentally, YuXin makes some very smooth and affordable larger cubes. Their 11x11 is insanely fun.
https://www.thecubicle.com/products/yuxin-little-magic-11x11
Re: My speed cubing page
#7Speed cubing has advanced a lot in the last couple decades. The cubes have evolved like you wouldn’t believe, and the methods have been refined like crazy. World record average (5 solves, remove best and worst, do the arithmetic mean of the other 3) stands at 4.48 seconds. https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/records The system described here is basically standard CFOP: Cross, First 2 layers, Orient last laye…
Roux is such a fun and relaxing solving style. J Perm's YouTube tutorials are also top notch.
Re: My speed cubing page
#8It's pretty wild seeing how off the estimates are and how far things have come since then. This page about limits lists the expected fastest average at 11 seconds and the best possible average at 5 seconds [1]. Today, the best solvers have gotten multiple sub 5 averages [2] and most good solves can get sub 11 second averages with practice. In fact most intermediate solvers can get sub 17 second averages with advanced…
Cubes have probably advanced quite a bit, and the advent of social media now means that the kids just copy each others tricks within minutes these days. My kid and his cubing friends went down towards a 10s average between the age 10 and 12, so in about two years of active cubing. But having the head of a 12yo kid (and amount of spare time) is almost cheating. You can learn anything in 2 years. I'm sure they could ha…
It's boggling to me that 10-12 year olds are doing 10s averages. That's so cool. For many years it was a dream of mine to get sub20. Never got there.
Re: My speed cubing page
#9Speed cubing has advanced a lot in the last couple decades. The cubes have evolved like you wouldn’t believe, and the methods have been refined like crazy. World record average (5 solves, remove best and worst, do the arithmetic mean of the other 3) stands at 4.48 seconds. https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/records The system described here is basically standard CFOP: Cross, First 2 layers, Orient last laye…
Roux while still very much an underdog is gaining popularity as the method for one handed (OH) solves. The 2023 world champion of OH used roux to gain this title. I even heard of cases where people that use CFOP are now learning roux to use it exclusively for OH solves. The main advantages of roux for OH are that it requires fewer moves, requires no cube rotations (which are awkward to do with one hand) and you can use the table to act as a second hand when performing middle layer slices.
Re: My speed cubing page
#10Oh, another speed cube thread, some thoughts:
The method described here nowadays goes under the name of CFOP (Fridrich's page made it very popular, so in former days it was referred to the "Fridrich" method). It's still popular and got refined over the years, see this excellent comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37430854
Another interesting topic is the question which (cross) color you choose: There are 6 possibilities (colors) and in the beginning even top solvers preferred one color (white is the most popular) to simplify recognition ("where are my pieces?").
Later, top solvers switched to "color neutral" solving, which in theory gives you more efficient crosses, as you can choose the color that gives you the shortest solution. There even seemed to be consensus that if you want to be at the top you had to be color neutral.
However even more recently this has been challenged and "dual color neutral" (only choosing between white and yellow) seems to be the way to go.
The reason is that during inspection (in competition you have 15 seconds to "inspect" the cube meaning to plan your solution (partly) ahead of time) the selection process to choose the best cross obviously takes some time. There's a trade-off between investing time to plan the cross (and additional blocks) in inspection and selecting the color that should be preferred.