UK Champs 2015

I was lucky enough to be invited to watch the 2015 UK Championships at The Forum in Stevenage on November 7th and 8th.

With 194 entrants this was the biggest cubing event ever held in the UK. The Forum is a lovely venue with lots of natural light behind the cubers. Great for solving, not so good for taking photos on my compact camera.

All 18 official events were held, although I didn't manage to watch all of them!

The biggest surprise was that Alex Lau didn't win the main Rubik's Cube event. After breezing through the first 2 rounds with averages of 8.87 and 8.73 where his worst time was 9.93 seconds. Somehow Alex only managed 9.57 in the final (including 2 solves over 11 seconds) for 5th place.

Top of the table was Ciaran Beahan of Ireland with a new National Record average of 8.45 seconds.

Top 3 UK solvers were Robert Yau (9.38), Sameer Mahmood (9.41) and Breandan Vallance (9.52).

All the results for the competition are on the WCA results page.

Some notable performances that I saw:

Breandan Vallance won the 5x5 with new European Records for single 52.21 and average 59.51 in the first round.

Sanzar Haiwad set new national records for Afghanistan in the 2x2 of 4.75 (single) and 6.64 (average).

Oliver Frost won the 3x3 Blindfold (again) in 32.75 which was significantly less time than everyone else spent memorising...

Callum Hales-Jepp won Feet with a new NR average of 42.89 and still insisted to me that he hadn't practised in ages. He also won the 4-blind and the multi-blind (which I missed most of).

With over 200 people in the main room the serious multi-blinders were shipped off to a quieter side room for their attempts.

At lunch on Sunday there was a panel session where Alex Lau, Robert Yau and Oliver Frost answered questions.

The answers that stuck in my mind were:

Alex Lau - to avoid plateaus be careful not to develop bad habits. You can do that by practising in a very deliberate way and analysing what you are doing. Don't just practise when and how you feel like.

Robert Yau - he invented the 4x4 method by extending the work of others and working through ideas with other people. His name was given to it by other people and other people made the method popular by using it. Robert also got a laugh by saying that 4x4 and 5x5 were his favourite events because 30-60 seconds was a decent time for a solve ... I think he meant that it's not over too quickly like some events (for him) :)

Oliver Frost - this had never occurred to me, but remembering previous blindfold attempts is a real problem when doing multiple attempts in a short time. Oliver said that using audio-based rather than image-based techniques helps because audio sticks in the mind for a shorter time. Oliver also described what it was like to break a world record!

All 3 were very diplomatic when asked what they thought of Rubik's Brand cubes. Speaking of which, here are about 1000 cubes used to make a mosaic of a famous character. Can you see who?

This was a great competition. Tiring, as it was a long weekend with lots of events. But great fun. I really enjoyed it; and I'm sure all the competitors did too.

Practise and Get Faster

Having learned the ZZ speedcubing method, 7 OLL algorithms and 6 PLL algorithms I found that I could consistently solve in under 90 seconds.

But my goal was 60 seconds! So I started practising more. Probably for about 20 minutes a day. And I did get faster. Down to about 70 seconds...

Then I got a tip that just trying to solve fast all the time doesn't always help. My OLL and PLL steps were getting better, because I knew what I was doing there, but the intuitive parts at the beginning weren't improving at all.

What was happening was that against the clock I just went for the first EOLine moves that I spotted. And in F2L I always just went with the first pair I could see. Mainly that was because I found myself pausing a lot to look for pairs anyway... so when I did find one I just felt I had to go with that.

So instead of solving fast all the time I spent about 2 weeks looking for the best EOLine and the best F2L pairs. Or at least looking for several and choosing the least bad ones. That seemed to help me spotting pairs and I got more confident with those stages. When I did try and solve fast then I was panicking less and solving better.

Also at this stage I learned the 3 algorithms for the badly-connected pair cases which previously had flustered me and caused me to waste time or go wrong (see this post for details).

Remember that F2L takes up the biggest part of the solve time, so it is worth concentrating on getting good at that.

One other thing that helped me with EOLine was changing how I did the 6-bad-edge case, which is the one that happens the most often. The tutorials say that fixing 3 edges (adding 1) then fixing the remaining 4 is most efficient. But I found that often between planning the moves and executing them I would lose track of the last 4 bad edges. Instead I tried fixing 4 edges and then doing the last 2 - which takes slightly more turns but I find that I am much less likely to lose track of the last 2 edges... and also more likely to be able to put the 2 line pieces into a good position.

After the slow-solve practise I found that I could regularly solve in under 60 seconds and sometimes solve in under 50 seconds. My current PB at time of posting is 47.10 seconds.

Learn Some Algorithms - part 4

OK, nearly done. All you have to do now is permute the last layer (PLL). Or in other words, put the top pieces in the right places.

After OLL there are only 21 possible permutations for the last layer. That sounds like quite a lot. But like OLL you don't have to learn them all at once, or indeed at all, because you can get a long way with just a few of them.

The list of PLL algorithms on Bob Burton's site looks a bit daunting. But lets break down what we have into two stages. We have corners to position and edges to position. If we learn one algorithm for moving corners and another for moving edges then we can finish the solve with just those.

1) Corners - I found the T-perm really easy to learn because it flows so nicely. This swaps two corners next to each other and two opposite edges. We don't care about the edge swapping though because we are just trying to fix the corners.

It turns out that if the corners are not already in the right places, then the only possibilities are two corners swapped next to each other, or two corners swapped diagonally. For the first case you do the T-perm once, and for the second case you do the T-perm twice. If you want to go faster then you can learn the Y-perm and swap the diagonal corners in one go.

2) Edges - once the corners are placed then there are only 4 edge cases. The U-perm, the opposite U-perm, the H-perm and the Z-perm. Learn one of the U-perms first because all the other cases can be solved by doing two U-perms. Then if you want to go faster you can learn the others... which I think are all quite easy.

So, you can finish the PLL with just T-perm and U-perm. And you can finish it very fast with only T, Y, Ua, Ub, H and Z ... which is only 6 algorithms.

Later you might want to throw in some other PLLs that are easy to recognise and/or execute. I have also learned the two A-perms and will probably learn the J-perms next.

Learn Some Algorithms - part 3

Well done, you've solved your first 2 layers with ZZ so now you have a cross on the top of your cube for free!

This cuts down the number of cases for solving the last layer dramatically. Go to any competition and you will hear some CFOP solvers asking people if they "know full OLL" ... because they have to learn 57 cases ... so not many people do. As a ZZ solver you only need to know 7 cases and one of those is just one of the others repeated twice.

OLL - orienting the last layer - just means getting the top face to have all the same colour. In my case that's yellow because I solve with white on the bottom and green (or blue) at the front.

I think it's worth learning all 7 of these algorithms (cases 21-27 on Bob Burton's OLL page) because they aren't very hard to pick up. The cool thing about OLL is that you don't have to learn them all in one go - because each OLL algorithm doesn't affect the first 2 layers - if you do the wrong OLL then you just get to another OLL case. So you can try again. Just keep trying OLL algorithms until you get the thing done :)

Here's how I recognise the different cases:

There are the only 2 cases with one yellow corner pointing up.

This one is probably worth learning first. It actually has a name - Sune - because it is so commonly used. I recognise it as one yellow corner up with its neighbour on the right pointing yellow towards you.

After you learn the Sune then you pretty much know the Anti-Sune too. As the name suggests it is the same as the Sune but the moves are in reverse. I recognise it as one yellow corner up with its opposite corner on the left pointing yellow towards you.

There are the only 2 cases with zero yellow corners pointing up.

This is like a free algorithm, because you can do it as either two Sunes or as two Anti-Sunes. Because they both start with R and end in R' you can cancel those two moves out. I recognise it as two yellows pointing towards me (like headlights) and two pointing away from me.

The algorithm for this is nice and smooth if you do the R2 moves in opposite directions, rocking backwards and forwards. I recognise it as headlights towards me but the other corners pointing outwards.

The last 3 cases all have two yellow corners pointing up.

This is probably my favourite OLL because it runs so smoothly. I recognise it as two diagonal yellows up with the other two pointing towards me and to the right.

This might be my second favourite, even though it has wide moves in. I recognise it as two yellows up side by side with the other two pointing away from each other.

This is my least favourite OLL, because I can never do it very smoothly and still mess it up sometimes. I recognise it as two yellows up side by side with the other two pointing towards me like headlights.

Remember. Don't Panic if you can't remember which OLL to do, or which way round to hold the cube at the start ... do the headlights go at the front or on the left? ... because as long as you do the moves from one of the algorithms then you wont mess up the first 2 layers. If you do the wrong algorithm, or if you do the right algorithm but with the cube rotated wrongly, then at worst you will end up in one of the other OLL cases.

So don't be afraid. Learn a few OLL algorithms and go for it. It wont take you long to learn the 7 that you need for Full OLL as a ZZ solver :)

Learn Some Algorithms - part 2

Bob Burton's cubewhiz site is a great place for finding algorithms.

As a beginner, you will almost certainly be spending a lot of your solve time on the first 2 layers (F2L) so it is worth practising that the most. And looking to see how other people do F2L. Bob's F2L page shows quite a few techniques for all 41 corner-edge cases.

Remember though, if you use the ZZ method then edge orientation is fixed, so only 20 of those cases apply -

corner placed - 02, 07, 09, 11, 13
white on top - 04, 16, 18, 21, 23
green on top - 05, 25, 27, 30, 32
red on top - 06, 34, 36, 39, 41

But be careful because Bob's algorithms on that page do not all maintain edge orientation. The following do not - 02, 30, 39, 41 - and the rest are OK.

For the bad cases I use algorithms from Conrad Rider's site instead -

02 - (L U L U L) (U' L' U' L')
30 - F2 R' D R' D' R2 F2
39 - L U2 L2 U' L2 U' L'
41 - (U2 L' U L U) (L' U' L)

All of which looks complicated... but if you check through all those cases then there are only really 3 cases which are either not intuitive or where the intuitive algorithm is only a couple of turns extra.

These are the only cases that I felt I needed to learn. The 3 with the badly connected pair at the front.

Case 21 - both reds on the front - U2 (L2 U2) (L U L' U L2)

Case 30 - both greens on the top - F2 R' D R' D' R2 F2

Case 39 - opposites on top and front - L U2 L2 U' L2 U' L'

All of these algorithms are short, easy to learn and quite elegant. The rest of F2L just comes with practise, practise, practise.

Learn Some Algorithms - part 1

It is perfectly possible to solve a Rubik's Cube in under a minute using the beginners' algorithm on the official maker's website - Solve It - although you might need to be lucky and get mostly best-case positions.

I say it is possible because I have seen other people do it. I never managed to get under a minute myself using that technique... although I did get close a few times.

To go really fast you probably need to learn one of the modern speedcubing methods. There are several to choose from, the most popular being CFOP, but I am going to advocate an alternative which I think suits the older cuber.

The ZZ method has the potential to be very fast (with lots of practice) but you can "get away with" learning fewer algorithms than you need for CFOP and some other methods.

If you are already convinced :) then head over to Conrad Rider's text ZZ Tutorial website or watch Phil Yu's video ZZ Tutorial on YouTube. If not, then read on.

The "problem" with ZZ is that at first it looks really complicated. All that stuff about edge orientation at the beginning makes it look a lot harder than just making a cross (the C in CFOP). But edge orientation isn't really very hard to understand - you will soon get it, I promise - and the advantages of "fixing" the edges at the start are huge...

1) When solving the first 2 layers. If your edges are all oriented then you have half as many different edge-corner cases to deal with. Because normally you could have corner + oriented-edge or corner + misoriented-edge. But with ZZ you only ever have corner + oriented-edge.

2) Orienting the last layer. Because the edges are oriented, you always get at least a cross on the top when you have solved the first 2 layers. So instead of having to learn 57 cases, you only need to learn 7 cases for full OLL.

The other "problem" with ZZ is that "all the best solvers use CFOP". But that's just historical and self-fulfilling ... if people only learn CFOP because other people use CFOP, then CFOP will always be more popular. And there are great solvers that use ZZ - Phil Yu has regularly gone sub-10 in competition and done a 8.93 second solve using ZZ.

ZZ is popular as a one-handed (OH) method with many "top" cubers using it rather than CFOP for that event.

Learn How To Hold The Cube Properly

It sounds a bit patronising to tell people that they need to learn how to hold a cube properly. But this is probably the single biggest mistake I made when starting to learn speedcubing.

I didn't even think about how I held the cube until after I'd learned a whole load of algorithms. Then I realised that I needed to hold it a different way if I was going to execute the algorithms quickly. And guess what happened... when I changed my grip and hand positions all those muscle memories I'd built up were wrong... I found myself going wrong all the time in the middle of algorithms that I thought I knew really well.

In the end I had to effectively relearn a lot of what I had learned.

So, my top tip is start off with the right grip and hand positions and save yourself the trouble of relearning all those algorithms later!

Alex Lau has a great video (only 2 minutes long) showing how to hold the cube and do finger tricks.

He is a seriously fast cuber (I have seen him competing a few times) and knows what he is doing!!!

For the algorithms I am going to suggest later, you should concentrate on R, U, L and friends (R', R2 etc) ... with the odd F, F', D and D'.

I never use B or B'. One algorithm I use has one Lw and one Rw'. A couple of algorithms for the last layer have M and M2 moves.

Learn the Cubing Notation

If you are just planning on being a casual cuber then learning a special notation for moves might seem a bit nerdy, or over the top. But it isn't.

Firstly, the notation is really simple. So it isn't much effort.

And secondly, everyone uses it. So any source of help you seek will always use this notation.

Finally, having letters to remember rather than moves is easier for some people...

The official notation is defined by the World Cube Association. It is based on the notation originally proposed by David Singmaster, with some modifications.

L = left
R = right
U = up (the top)
D = down (the bottom)
F = front
B = back

The most important thing to remember is that each move is clockwise if you were looking straight at that face. So an L turn is towards you, but an R turn is away from you. This sounds odd but makes sense if you actually look at it on a cube... trust me :)

Adding a ' means turn the opposite way. And adding a 2 means do two turns.

RR = R2
R'R' = R2

RRR = R'
R'R'R' = R

It's worth pointing out that L2, R2 etc can be done either way. Sometimes you might see R2' which is a hint that R2 anticlockwise might be faster than clockwise, but it is the same move and up to you to decide which you prefer.

A couple of the algorithms I use have wide moves in, but not many. Lw just means turn the left face and the middle section together; and Rw is move the right face and the middle section together. Those are the only 2 wides I use... I think.

There's one final move which isn't official but does appear in some common algorithms. That's the M move... sometimes called an M-slice. Here you move the middle section only, in the same direction as the R face.

(in the official notation an M counts as 2 moves - Rw R'. Unless you are interested in fewest moves competitions then this doesn't matter at all and M is easier to remember).

As a beginner you can learn algorithms and then chant them as you move R U R' U R U2 R'

Later you will find that some moves have names like Sune, Anti-Sune, Sexy-Move; but mostly you will just get used to executing them and will do it from muscle memory without even thinking about the notation any more.

Another place you will see the notation is in all the common timing apps. Usually they will show you a scramble of about 20 moves to solve. It's a good habit to get into using these... just in case you aren't very good at scrambling the cube into good random positions yourself.

Edit: sometimes you will see algorithms containing brackets like this (R U R' U) (R U2 R'). The brackets are just there as a suggestion for grouping, they don't change the actual moves that you do at all. It might be that each group can be done as a single fluid move, or that the groups help you to memorise the algorithm... or both :)

Getting a Speedcube

There are lots of speedcubes available.  I have two -

1) Dayan Stickerless

2) Dayan Zhanchi

The first one was given to me by a friend who had a spare; and the second one I bought for about £10. I bought the Zanchi because I liked the other Dayan and wanted to try another cube that was different... but not too different.

For a beginner the only important thing is to get a cube that turns easily. By that I mean you should be able to turn the sides using only one finger.

If you can't hold the cube in one hand and turn the top face with just your index finger, then the cube is too stiff to solve fast. Most algorithms take 50-80 moves to solve the cube - so to get under a minute you need to be able to do about one move per second (if you have no pauses).

Other than that you can choose pretty much any cube advertised as a speedcube and it will probably be OK. Check out the reviews online to see what other solvers think are currently the best ones. Generally the Chinese cubes seem to be the most popular.

Bear in mind that if you want to have a go at a competition, then stickerless cubes are not allowed. Or rather, more precisely, cubes where the body is coloured are not allowed.

Practise

Before I go any further I should say that I don't have a magic method for speedcubing. As far as I know, every solving method requires a lot of practising to get reliably fast.

So if you are looking for a quick and easy route then, sorry, this isn't it.

What I can give you are some tips to help you avoid making the mistakes that ended up with me having to relearn steps the right way.

The topics I will cover on this blog are:

1) Get a speedcube
2) Learn the cubing notation
3) Learn how to hold the cube properly
4) Learn some algorithms
5) Practise
6) Get faster
7) Go to 4 or 5

And that topic number 5 is probably the easiest to explain...

Why?

I got a Rubik's Cube in the 1980s when they first came out. After about a month I finally managed to solve it. And over the next few months I refined my method into a technique that could reliably solve a cube in 2-3 minutes.

That seemed pretty good back then, since most people couldn't solve the cube at all.

Now the world record is 5.55 seconds! Woah, that's fast.

I'm in my forties now, so I don't expect to have the dexterity to get that good. But can I solve a cube in under a minute maybe? That's what I wondered. And here's how I got on.