# Returning to cubing after 5-year(ish) hiatus! | Going to a competition again! | COLL and Color Netural?!



## Bh13 (Sep 2, 2020)

Hey All,

Yet another personal progress thread, mostly for my sake, but if I'm going to be keeping track, I might as well keep y'all updated as well!
After taking a 3-1/2 year break from cubing, I'm back at it, and sadly not as fast as I used to be 
So, I have decided to come up with some goals for myself to help foster consistent practice and track improvement, but I will not really be focusing on time.
Instead, I would like to expand my knowledge of cubing and understanding of all my favorite puzzles; through learning new methods and algorithms, understanding how different moves and algorithms affect a cube, and how to incorporate all of that into my solves (hopefully resulting in better times). I also want to start contributing more to the cubing community, which a few of my goals will hopefully help me accomplish.
I'll try to post weekly updates, but since I'm living that college life it might not always happen.

Anyway, here's my current goals!


*Methods/Puzzle Theory:*
- Learn all advanced Pyraminx methods (For now I'm just going to focus on L4E, Oka, and 1-flip)
- Learn 4-look last layer for mega (Eventually I'd like to learn 2-look, but It'll probably be a while before that happens)
- Learn last layer algs for OH
- Learn how to do BLD
- Get consistent at cross+1 from inspection

*Cubing Community:*
- Attend a competition again
- Assist in organizing a competition
- Lead the organization of a competition
- Become a WCA delegate

*Personal Progress/Time:*
Again, I'm not really going to be focusing most of my attention on improving my times (for now), these are just benchmarks I'd like to eventually reach - no rush for me to get there.
- Create a spreadsheet that can track personal progress (time-wise)
- Hopefully I'll be able to share this with the cubing community if others want to use it to track their progress as well.​- Sub-10 3x3
- Sub-5 Pyra
- Sub-60 mega
- Sub-45 4x4
- Sub-20 OH


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## Bh13 (Sep 9, 2020)

Week One Updates:

This week, the main goals I focused on were Pyra, BLD, and my personal time progress tracker. 

For Pyraminx, I've now learned all L4E algs, most of them intuitive. Recognition is still slow at this point, but I can tell that with some practice I'll get to be pretty efficient at recognizing cases and not having to think about what alg I need to use. Time goal for now is just to get back to where I was with keyhole before starting to incorporate L4E (around 5.5 average). Next method on the list is Oka.

BLD: I did some basic research into common methods and notation for BLD solves. Right now, I'm using old Pochman, which has seemed to work well so far. I'm a big fan of its simplicity and intuitiveness. The main things I focused on were getting piece labels and letters memorized, as well as understanding how to push from the buffer to different stickers/positions. Also tried a few untimed BLD solves - I was able to get all edges solved, still struggling a bit with consistent solving of corners, but I can tell I'm getting there!

One of the main areas of my focus this week was the cubing time spreadsheet, which I've actually been really enjoying. I'm hoping to have an online version available for download soon. I still have a lot of work that I want to do. I want to have the format feel a lot like the WCA personal record/time page, with the most recent session at the top. I also want to look into how to easily import session times from different timers into the spreadsheet, and then create an instruction page for people to reference. I'll probably end up adding some more events as well. 

Also, I registered for a competition! I'll be attending the CubingUSA Western Championship 2021, I'm signed up for all events except 4BLD and 5BLD.

That's all for this week!


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## Bh13 (Sep 16, 2020)

Week Two Updates:
This week, most of my attention went to Pyra and BLD, so those were the areas that saw the biggest improvement. 

For BLD, I had my first successful single! Time was 13:14.18. I've had several solves that have been pretty close, usually where I've been going wrong has been not putting corner pieces back correctly. 

For Pyra, I think I've finally gotten recognition and algs down for all L4E cases. My current average when purely using L4E has been around 6.5. I also started fiddling with Oka and Bell methods, but as of right now I'm just gaining familiarity with them. 

Minor updates: I've gotten back into Square-1, still working on lookahead for 3x3, and relearned Ortega for 2x2. I've also been trying to get comfortable with Yao for 4x4 and 5x5. 

That's all for this week!


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## Bh13 (Dec 11, 2021)

Week Three updates (or I guess week 66 if you include the over-year break I took... whoops)
Pyra: Familiarized myself with Oka, Bell, and L4E. Times are all over the place, right now I'm trying to get all the algorithms down using mainly intuition, with a bit of help from tutorials for the particularly sticky cases. Current goal is to just get comfortable using all three methods and keyhole interchangeably, and then adding in another method like one-flip or Oka.
4x4: Haven't done much
5x5: Did a few timed and untimed solves, I think for now I might stick with basic reduction for 5x5, maybe trying to transition to Yao once I become more familiar with it from 4x4.
3x3: Just getting back into it 
That's pretty much it for now!


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## Bh13 (Dec 17, 2021)

Week Four Updates:
I was able to get back into pretty much all WCA puzzles, I will probably need to relearn parity for Square-1 tho...
2x2: Just did some casual solves, luckily I remember all of Ortega, probably going to just stick with practicing that for a little while until I feel motivated to learn CLL or EG-1. Currently averaging mid 4 to low 5. 
3x3: Had a really nice session yesterday, 11.8 ao5 and 12.48 ao12. Just before I took a break from cubing I was averaging mid to high 11, so it was nice to see I'm pretty close to where I left off time wise. Did some work on xcross and planning first pair during inspection, as well as lookahead for F2L and recognizing PLL from just two sides. Seems like the work helped pay off a bit, I'm going to try my best to stay intentional with practicing untimed solves a lot more than I was before taking a break. 
4x4: Getting a grasp of Yao, I probably need to watch some tutorial videos to get a more thorough understanding of the nuances of the method though.
5x5: not much to report
6x6: I'm actually really enjoying this puzzle, which I didn't use to - it's a really nice change! I'm using a really old, unmodded Shegshou though, so I'm looking into getting a better 6x6. I'm thinking I'll get myself the MGC sometime at the start of next year, from what I've heard it's a great cube, especially for the price. 
7x7: looking forward to doing some solves and actually getting into it! I never really did that many 7x7 solves before taking a break from cubing, but with how much I'm enjoying 6x6 I feel like 7x7 deserves a lot more of my attention. 
Pyra: getting familiar with L4E some more, doing a lot of untimed solves just working on recognition and effective planning during inspection. averaging somewhere in the 6 second range right now, I'm hoping to get good enough with L4E, Oka, Bell, and Keyhole to switch between the methods depending on the scramble. So far it seems to be going well!
Mega: Need to sit down and learn 4LLL algs, not sure when I'll get around to it though.
Square-1: did a solve this week, remember most of the algs it seems, probably not parity though as I said. 
Also, I've got some time goals for most puzzles, don't have a certain time that I want to reach those milestones, just know I would really like to get down below these benchmarks:
2x2: sub-4
3x3: sub-12
4x4: sub-45
5x5: sub-1:45
6x6: sub-4:00
Mega: sub-90
Pyra: sub-5
OH: sub-20
7x7 & square-1: Not really set on any benchmark

I'm hoping to get into BLD soon as well as I was really enjoying it during my brief return to cubing last year.
That's all for this week!


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## Bh13 (Jan 11, 2022)

Week 6 updates:
I didn’t post an update last week due to the holidays and start of the new year, but I’m hoping to be a lot more consistent going forward with weekly updates. 
The big one for this week is that I’m registered for a competition! I will be attending the DeNxNver 2022 competition in February, competing in all events. With that being said, I do have some concrete goals now for times with the competition as the deadline. 
3x3: sub 12. This has been my goal for a really long time now, and I’d really like to reach this milestone by the competition. I’m hoping it will also be fast enough to get me into finals, but we’ll see. Right now I’m averaging low 12 on a good day, high 12 on a not so good day. 
4x4: getting sub minute would be neat, I’m right on the edge right now 
5x5: sub-2. I’m also really close to this one, which is also the cutoff for 5x5. 
6x6: sub-4. I’ve got a little ways to go on this one, I’m averaging about 4:45-5:15 right now, but I’m also using a 6-year old shengshou. I’m seriously considering getting the YJ MGC, which I think would help me out in cutting time as well. 
7x7: sub 5:30. I have no clue what I really “average” on 7x7 right now because I drop time with most solves haha. I think with enough practice this time limit shouldn’t be a problem. Also considering getting a new cube as I’m also using an old Shengshou as my main.
I’ve honestly been really getting into big cubes lately, so I was super pumped to see this competition open up!
I’ve been getting back into all other WCA events/puzzles, finally got back into squan, pretty slow but I’m thinking about learning most of the algs for 4 look last layers. Slowly learning more and more Mega algs as well. 
I’ve started getting back into BLD again, just using old Pochman at the moment. I haven’t had a successful solve, in large part that’s due to me spending most time becoming familiar with letters and knowing automatically what letter corresponds to which piece. Hopefully I’ll get some successes in the next few weeks! 
those are the big things from the last few weeks, thanks for reading!


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## Garf (Jan 11, 2022)

Bh13 said:


> Week 6 updates:
> I didn’t post an update last week due to the holidays and start of the new year, but I’m hoping to be a lot more consistent going forward with weekly updates.
> The big one for this week is that I’m registered for a competition! I will be attending the DeNxNver 2022 competition in February, competing in all events. With that being said, I do have some concrete goals now for times with the competition as the deadline.
> 3x3: sub 12. This has been my goal for a really long time now, and I’d really like to reach this milestone by the competition. I’m hoping it will also be fast enough to get me into finals, but we’ll see. Right now I’m averaging low 12 on a good day, high 12 on a not so good day.
> ...


For 5x5, 6x6 and 7x7: MGCs are good. For 7x7, I just decided to get the MGC and not try to build up to it. As for the 5x5 and 6x6, I thought about getting the YJ MGC, but ended up with a Yushi and Meilong M, because I wasn't so fast at 5x5 and never tried 6x6; and wanted to try to make the puzzles better.
For 3BLD I remember that Old Pochman made the edges too slow for me, and I would forget the corners. So I just switched to M2, and now the solves are so much better.


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## Bh13 (Jan 12, 2022)

Thanks for the advice! 
I'll check out M2 and see how I like it!


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## Garf (Jan 12, 2022)

Bh13 said:


> Thanks for the advice!
> I'll check out M2 and see how I like it!


I'm no master of 3 BLD, but I do know that Old Pochman edges are the most basic and worse way you can swap the corners. You are welcome.


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## Bh13 (Jan 17, 2022)

Week Seven Updates:
Waiting on my new 6x6 and 7x7 I got! They should be getting here tomorrow, as well as a $5 mystery puzzle (I purchased through thecubicle). Ended up going with the MGC 6x6 and the YJ YuFu for 7x7.
most of my time this week went to 3-7 and clock, so no chance to work on BLD sadly. 
Gradually improving in everything - getting sub-1 singles on 4x4 consistently, hovering right around 2:00 on 5x5, mid-4 on 6x6, and mid-6 on 7x7. Should be interesting to see how much time improvement I get from a six-year hardware upgrade with 6x6 and 7x7
A lot of time was spent on 3x3 this week, mostly working on lookahead and planning first pair in inspection (and learning some COLL cases… just for fun)
Did get a sub-8 single which was super fun! Not quite a PB but it was close! 
other updates: I’m thinking about trying my hand at YouTube, think I’ve got some good ideas for videos. 
Still working on Pyra, squan, and OH. Those are on the back burner for now though. 
thanks for reading all!


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## Bh13 (Jan 19, 2022)

Quick update: I would NOT recommend buying the YJ YuFu 7x7. Within five minutes of unboxing it I broke a corner piece 
Hoping that superglue will be an adequate fix, if so I’ll be turning very cautiously with the cube in the future. Should have just put in the slightly higher cost for a MGC, smh.


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## Eli Apperson (Jan 19, 2022)

Bh13 said:


> Quick update: I would NOT recommend buying the YJ YuFu 7x7. Within five minutes of unboxing it I broke a corner piece
> Hoping that superglue will be an adequate fix, if so I’ll be turning very cautiously with the cube in the future. Should have just put in the slightly higher cost for a MGC, smh.


That's very odd. Unless you have veryyy rough turning I imagine the puzzle is probably defective.


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## Garf (Jan 19, 2022)

Bh13 said:


> Quick update: I would NOT recommend buying the YJ YuFu 7x7. Within five minutes of unboxing it I broke a corner piece
> Hoping that superglue will be an adequate fix, if so I’ll be turning very cautiously with the cube in the future. Should have just put in the slightly higher cost for a MGC, smh.


Probably a defect. I recommend returning it to the store you got it from and replacing.


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## AJT17 (Jan 19, 2022)

Bh13 said:


> Quick update: I would NOT recommend buying the YJ YuFu 7x7. Within five minutes of unboxing it I broke a corner piece
> Hoping that superglue will be an adequate fix, if so I’ll be turning very cautiously with the cube in the future. Should have just put in the slightly higher cost for a MGC, smh.


The MGC is definitely worth the extra cost, it is so good, although my opinion is not the best because I only average around 10 minutes for 7x7.


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## abunickabhi (Jan 20, 2022)

Bh13 said:


> Hey All,
> 
> Yet another personal progress thread, mostly for my sake, but if I'm going to be keeping track, I might as well keep y'all updated as well!
> After taking a 3-1/2 year break from cubing, I'm back at it, and sadly not as fast as I used to be
> ...


Good breakdown.

I hope you achieve all your goals!


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## Bh13 (Jan 25, 2022)

This week I was pretty busy, so not as much time for cubing sadly 

Big thing I would say is I focused a lot on clock. Getting into the mid-20s average, still a long way to go. 

3-7: just practicing practicing practicing, no significant drops in time from previous weeks. I’m really enjoying 5x5, I got an old little magic (non-magnetic), which is surprisingly still an improvement from my outdated Shengshou. I think it needs a bit more breaking in and then I’ll be good to tension it to my liking. I was distraught to discover I am all out of lube though, so I looked into getting some, and holy cow there are so many options to choose from. I’m also seriously debating getting an RSM 2020, only $8 for an updated 3x3 is really really good. 

I think I’m going to start doing mostly untimed solves, with maybe an ao5 or ao12 each week to track my progress. It seems like with how many timed solves I’m doing I’m not really learning or practicing any new, good habits. I’m also thinking I might want to work through OLL and PLL again, either reworking finger tricks or learning new algs, considering all the algs I’m using currently are about six or seven years old. 

That’s about it for this week! Thanks for reading!


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## OreKehStrah (Jan 25, 2022)

Bh13 said:


> This week I was pretty busy, so not as much time for cubing sadly
> 
> Big thing I would say is I focused a lot on clock. Getting into the mid-20s average, still a long way to go.
> 
> ...


Yeah for $8 the RS3M 2020 is a great cube to pick up!
You could also try taking a look at modern ZZ since you would only need PLL and 7 OLLs.
Also try reconstructing your solves and sharing them. I'm sure lots of people would be glad to look over them and give you some tips/recommendations!


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## OtterCuber (Jan 25, 2022)

Bh13 said:


> This week I was pretty busy, so not as much time for cubing sadly
> 
> Big thing I would say is I focused a lot on clock. Getting into the mid-20s average, still a long way to go.
> 
> ...


Wow, you have so much competition experience and knowledge. You'll de-rust in no time!


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## Bh13 (Jan 26, 2022)

OtterCuber said:


> Wow, you have so much competition experience and knowledge. You'll de-rust in no time!


Thanks! I'm hoping for that!


OreKehStrah said:


> You could also try taking a look at modern ZZ since you would only need PLL and 7 OLLs.


Agh! A wild ZZ user has appeared on my thread! 
In all seriousness though I might take a look into ZZ and other methods (Roux? Petrus? Mehta?), if anything just to see what I think of them


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## Bh13 (Jan 27, 2022)

Update on the YuFu: I reached out to the cubicle’s customer support, and they will be sending me a replacement piece. I’ll definitely be a bit more careful with the turning just in case though. 
also thinking about getting some DNM-37


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## Bh13 (Feb 2, 2022)

Updates for this week:
Mostly focused on 3-5 this week, really enjoying these cubes right now
For 3x3, not much improvement time-wise, but then again I haven't done a huge number of timed solves, so it could just be a matter of not having enough data to go off of. Got a couple of sub-9 singles this week which was neat, I'm hoping to get a PB single sometime soon, might be a little while though considering it's 7.66 and I've only gotten one or two sub-8 singles since getting back into cubing. Fingers crossed though. 
I've messed around a bit with some color neutral solves just for fun, I really enjoy solving CN even if I'm not as fast. Seriously debating switching to pure CN after this upcoming competition though... we'll see what happens.
I've also decided I'm going to learn full COLL, I know it might not be the best use of my time or necessarily the most efficient way of improving speed, but I really like the sub-step and want to become proficient at it. Current goal is to learn ~10 algs per week, right now I've got about ten under my belt. So theoretically I'll have full COLL learned within about three weeks. We'll see if that happens.
4x4: Just working on becoming more and more proficient with Yao, I'm hovering right around the 1-minute mark right now. Biggest things I've been working on are transitions from the different stages and lookahead during these transitions. 
5x5: Mostly just solving, have gotten my average down to the high 1:40s. I think my goal for the next few months would be to get sub-1:30.
Other than that I haven't focused on a lot this week, I've been super busy lately with work and other commitments so sadly not as much time for cubing 
That's it for this week, thanks for reading!


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## Bh13 (Feb 13, 2022)

Updates for the last week (and a half)
The Denxnver competition yesterday went very well! I ended up getting a PR in everything except 3x3 and 4x4.
Overall I was happy with everything, I missed cutoff for clock and 7x7 so I wasn't able to get an official average for those sadly  Did get official singles though, so I'm happy with that. 
I'm going to be attending northern Colorado Cubing 2022, so over the next month I think I will be mostly spending time focusing on the events for that, which are pyra, mega, 2-4, and skewb. I also have some time goals for most of those events, and I think I will be deciding what algorithm sets/methods I want to learn over the next week or so. 
2x2: I would really like to get an official sub-4 average, I'm sure I could get there with Ortega, but I've also been wanting to learn EG-1 for a while now, so maybe this is the perfect opportunity for that. 
3x3: I think it would be really cool to get a PR color-neutral. I've been really starting to practice green cross now that Denxnver has passed, and it seems like I'm making a pretty good amount of progress on it. Sub-12 official average would be nice. I've also learned all of the H and Pi COLL cases now, so I've been spending a good chunk of time working on recognition and fingertricks. Probably going to hold off on learning any new cases until it feels like I have the current ones really under my belt. 
4x4: really my only goal is a PR average, which would be sub-53. I think with a bit of intentional practice I could get there, I feel like I'm almost completely familiar with Yao at this point, including all of the different combinations of edge pairing outside of the standard 3-2-3
Megaminx: Again, I really would like to just get a PR average, which would be sub-1:30. I've learned all of the edge permutation and orientation cases for 4LLL,, as well as about half of the corner permutation cases, so I think it would be completely reasonable to learn full 4LLL by the competition.
Pyraminx: I really want an official sub-5 average. I think if I really intentionally work on quick recognition of all the L4E cases I could get there - I already have them all learned, it's just becoming comfortable at this point.
Skewb: Hoping for a sub-10 average. This is the event I probably care about the least at this comp though, so if that doesn't happen I won't be too bummed. 
I also ordered some new cubes from the Cubicle; I'm slowly but surely updating my 5-year old cube collection . I got the RS3 M 2020, X-Man Bell magnetic pyraminx, QiYi QiHeng Megaminx (I didn't like the colors or piece design on the YuHu), and some DNM-37. I'm looking forward to seeing how much these cubes are upgrades from my current mains.
That's pretty much it for this week! Thanks for reading!


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## Bh13 (Feb 27, 2022)

Updates for the last two weeks: 
The past two weeks have been pretty busy for me, hence the lack of an update post last week. 
I'm starting to really focus in on Mega and Pyra, I've learned essentially full 4LLL for Mega, just missing a few cases for corner orientation, but I have a pretty good understanding of which algorithm sequences are needed to solve those. Average for Mega is starting to drop pretty steadily, I'm in the high 1:30s to low 1:40s most solves, I'm hoping to get consistently sub-1:30 by March 12th
For Pyra, I've just been mainly grinding solves. I've gotten a couple of sub-5 ao5s, which is super neat. Gaining familiarity with L4E cases again is going pretty smoothly as well. Overall average is mid to high 6 right now, hoping to bring that down to low 5/high 4 by March 12th. 
3x3: I've been doing a mix of things - working on efficiency with COLL cases I know, color neutral solves in my untimed sessions, and focusing on green cross familiarity have been my main focuses over the past couple weeks. 
Skewb, 4x4, and 2x2 are on the backburner for now, I do want to learn at least enough algs for skewb to be consistently sub-10 by March 12th, and I'm shooting for sub-4 2x2. I'm not going to learn any EG algs for 2x2, just Ortega is all I have time for right now. 
I would really like to start working on 3BLD, but I don't think I'll do that until after my Northern Colorado 2022, as I don't have enough time to practice all the events for that comp and get gud at 3BLD. 
That's about it for this week! Thanks for reading!


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