# Negative Time Solving Contest 2009



## macky (Oct 21, 2009)

*Announcing the Negative Time Solving Contest 2009*

It's that time of the year again! This is your only chance of the year to solve a cube in negative time as day light saving (DST) ends and time falls back one hour. DST (Daylight Saving Time) ends at 3am on Sunday, October 25 in many European countries. In most parts of the United States and Canada, DST ends at 2am on Sunday, November 1. See Time and Date.com to check the clock change schedule in your area. Results from Europe will NOT be posted until the results from North America come in a week later.

This year's scrambles have already been posted on the official contest page, which also has links to submission forms and past results.

Please note that each solve started (not just start the timer but actually make a move) before daylight saving ends and completed after it ends counts as a negative solve. This means that you can compete in multiple categories at the cost of a less negative time.

Good luck to everyone!

Best,
-macky


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## PatrickJameson (Oct 21, 2009)

Wow, it's that time of year already. Can't wait .


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## StachuK1992 (Oct 21, 2009)

Heh. SubZero! Reminds me of MK.


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## cmhardw (Oct 21, 2009)

Just to make sure I am clear on this do we have to begin every solve (i.e. execute one turn) for multi BLD attempts too? Or can we just do the attempt as normal, but make sure we start before daylight saving ends?

Chris


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 21, 2009)

cmhardw said:


> Just to make sure I am clear on this do we have to begin every solve (i.e. execute one turn) for multi BLD attempts too? Or can we just do the attempt as normal, but make sure we start before daylight saving ends?
> 
> Chris



Last year I just did the attempt as normal. The idea is that we did the entire multiBLD attempt in negative time. At least, that's how I see it.

So are you going to finally do some multiBLD? It figures you'd make your first serious attempt be one solved in negative time.


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## LNZ (Oct 21, 2009)

For people living in Australia and New Zealand, we get this chance in early April 2010.


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## cmhardw (Oct 21, 2009)

Mike Hughey said:


> Last year I just did the attempt as normal. The idea is that we did the entire multiBLD attempt in negative time. At least, that's how I see it.
> 
> So are you going to finally do some multiBLD? It figures you'd make your first serious attempt be one solved in negative time.



Cool thanks Mike, I will do my attempt as normal too.

Yes I think it's finally time I tried out multi BLD. A lot of people at worlds were saying things to me like "Why don't you do multi?!" or "Just do 2!" so I figure I should stop being lazy/scared or whatever I am being and just try it. We'll see what happens. BLD and 2am I don't think go very well together, but at least it will be fun to try! ;-) I also need to try to learn what I can do in 1 hour, I honestly have no idea because I never practice for "marathon" style BLD, but only "sprinting" style.

Chris


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 21, 2009)

cmhardw said:


> Mike Hughey said:
> 
> 
> > Last year I just did the attempt as normal. The idea is that we did the entire multiBLD attempt in negative time. At least, that's how I see it.
> ...



Great - I can't wait to see how you do! You should go for at least 5! I suspect you'd be able to handle 7 or 8, but the mechanics of it might make that challenging. I suspect you can have success with 5 first try, though, and probably pretty fast - you might be able to solve them in a negative half hour, even. 

What you could do is go ahead and scramble a 5x5x5 (and cover it up) along with your 3x3x3's, and start 2 timers before the starting time. Then memorize and solve the multi, and then stop the first timer. Then if I'm right and you can do them faster than you might expect, you can uncover the 5x5x5 and try memorizing and solving it before time runs out. Since you keep the 5x5x5 covered while doing the multi, you're really only getting one look at each attempt, so it seems like a legitimate attempt for both to me.

Me, I'll probably try a big multi. Last year's went pretty badly for me - I hope to improve.


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## Kxg (Oct 21, 2009)

Sub-WR, here I come!


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## ardi4nto (Oct 21, 2009)

Ouch, No chance for me doing this..
No daylight saving time here..


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## pjk (Oct 21, 2009)

PatrickJameson said:


> Wow, it's that time of year already. Can't wait .


Yeah, this last year went by so fast.

I'll definitely do it this time.


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## macky (Oct 21, 2009)

cmhardw said:


> Mike Hughey said:
> 
> 
> > Last year I just did the attempt as normal. The idea is that we did the entire multiBLD attempt in negative time. At least, that's how I see it.
> ...



Yep, just start the entire attempt before the time change. Good luck!


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## flee135 (Oct 22, 2009)

Haha, I remember last year was tough because I was at a sleepover. I'm glad I can get a better attempt this year (24 seconds last year? Really? I think I'll focus on speed alone).


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## V-te (Oct 22, 2009)

I'm still confused, would someone please clarify on what this is exactly? (yes I read the link)


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## JLarsen (Oct 22, 2009)

Basically you start a solve, and somewhere during that solve, the clocks get set back one hour, and you finish, thus giving you a negative solve time =P. You just have to start your solve at the right time, so that it ends after the time change occurs.


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## Tim Major (Oct 22, 2009)

I live in Australia. We have day light saving, but at a different time.


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## macky (Oct 22, 2009)

Yeah, it's too bad about the southern hemisphere, but I don't know if there'd be enough participants to warrant actually organizing a separate contest in the spring. You can always do negative solving by yourself.


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## JTW2007 (Oct 22, 2009)

I really hope I can do it this year. I can already imagine the weird looks when someone asks me what my best time is...


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## LNZ (Oct 22, 2009)

The southern hemisphere will get this chance in early April 2010.

For people living in Australia, daylight savings will end in SA, VIC, TAS, NSW and ACT on the first Sunday in April 2010 at 3:00AM. QLD, WA and NT do not observe daylight savings.

The Gold Coast region is famous for the time warp when you cross from Coolangatta (QLD) and Tweed Heads (NSW) in summer time.


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## Tim Major (Oct 24, 2009)

macky said:


> Yeah, it's too bad about the southern hemisphere, but I don't know if there'd be enough participants to warrant actually organizing a separate contest in the spring. You can always do negative solving by yourself.



Next time it happens I'll film a really long relay, (all my puzzles) and put it on Youtube saying, ** puzzles in less than a second. Lol, I'd change the title after a few days though.


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## macky (Oct 30, 2009)

Just a reminder that this is tomorrow night (Saturday night / Sunday early morning)! Again, all the information is at
http://cubefreak.net/negative/main.html


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## eastamazonantidote (Oct 30, 2009)

macky said:


> Just a reminder that this is tomorrow night (Saturday night / Sunday early morning)! Again, all the information is at
> http://cubefreak.net/negative/main.html



Or if you were in Switzerland (or Europe in general) like I was this weekend, you get 2 negative solves in one year!!!


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## macky (Oct 31, 2009)

eastamazonantidote said:


> macky said:
> 
> 
> > Just a reminder that this is tomorrow night (Saturday night / Sunday early morning)! Again, all the information is at
> ...



wow, that's awesome


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## JBCM627 (Nov 1, 2009)

(resurrects)

13 minutes to go for east coasters.


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## masterofthebass (Nov 1, 2009)

-59:46.19


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## JBCM627 (Nov 1, 2009)

-59:43.37 (you still beat me by a lot at least, Dan)


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## Faz (Nov 1, 2009)

Even though daylight savings isn't till april here, I did it with some people in Skype chat, and got 10.02.

EDIT: -59:49.98


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## PatrickJameson (Nov 1, 2009)

-59:48.37

Not bad. Pretty easy scramble.


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## JBCM627 (Nov 1, 2009)

I can't find a link to this anywhere, so hopefully Macky doesn't mind me posting this.
Results table:
http://cubefreak.net/negative/negative_speed.html


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## cmhardw (Nov 1, 2009)

2/3 on 4x4x4 Multiple Blindfold in a time of -8 minutes 35.95 seconds. I know exactly the error I made on the mistake cube, and when I made it. I wasn't sure if I did a single or a double turn on a slice so I guessed, and I guessed incorrectly  I'm sure I could go quite a bit faster than this for both memo and solving if I practiced a lot, but I was shooting for 100% success.

Man, a failure in multi BLD feels ten times worse than a failure in single BLD. I don't know how you multi guys deal with this feeling  I think multi is not really for me, though this was fun. Better luck for me next year I guess.

Chris


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## fundash (Nov 1, 2009)

I can't wait to do this, only 2 hrs left!


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## DavidWoner (Nov 1, 2009)

square-2

-58:53.55

Finally got that sub-1


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## King Koopa (Nov 1, 2009)

-59:48.14


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## fundash (Nov 1, 2009)

i'm going to do 3x3+Magic...


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## qqwref (Nov 1, 2009)

I'm going to attempt a relay with 60 different puzzles.


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## Mike Hughey (Nov 1, 2009)

9 / 10 on 3x3x3 multiBLD in a time of - 38.43 seconds. I mismemorized the eighth cube - I had parity left. (I forgot to repeat a piece when breaking a cycle.) My memorization wasn't working well at all, so I took a pitiful -21:27 to memorize. Luckily, I managed to finish solving in 20:44 (after a couple of bad memory pauses), so I still made a negative overall time. 



cmhardw said:


> 2/3 on 4x4x4 Multiple Blindfold in a time of -8 minutes 35.95 seconds. I know exactly the error I made on the mistake cube, and when I made it. I wasn't sure if I did a single or a double turn on a slice so I guessed, and I guessed incorrectly  I'm sure I could go quite a bit faster than this for both memo and solving if I practiced a lot, but I was shooting for 100% success.
> 
> Man, a failure in multi BLD feels ten times worse than a failure in single BLD. I don't know how you multi guys deal with this feeling  I think multi is not really for me, though this was fun. Better luck for me next year I guess.



Aww, Chris, it's all in how you look at it. As you've pointed out before, a failure is just a chance to learn from your mistakes - when you miss you improve. But I must admit that a miss on the negative time solving contest feels worse than normal, since you have to wait another year before you get another chance. So now I have to wait yet another year to get that fully successful negative time multiple cube solve I wanted.


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## fundash (Nov 1, 2009)

qqwref said:


> I'm going to attempt a relay with 60 different puzzles.



isn't it 70? http://pastebin.ca/1651295


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## JTW2007 (Nov 1, 2009)

-59:38.48 for me. Hopefully I'll do better next year.


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## qqwref (Nov 1, 2009)

fundash said:


> qqwref said:
> 
> 
> > I'm going to attempt a relay with 60 different puzzles.
> ...



You didn't notice that some lines don't have puzzles on them?

I edited the list to remove some long puzzles, new list at http://pastebin.ca/1651300.


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## fundash (Nov 1, 2009)

qqwref said:


> fundash said:
> 
> 
> > qqwref said:
> ...



ahh, sorry,I just looked at the numbers, not the words...


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## V-te (Nov 1, 2009)

- 59:25.58 =( I got nervous. Damn my stageless stage fright!!!


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## fundash (Nov 1, 2009)

NO!!!! 
I was terrible, i got -58:56.87


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## qqwref (Nov 1, 2009)

OK, so here's what happened.

After -13:52 my computer messed up and I lost ~61 seconds (51 seconds timed on stopwatch + 10 seconds tacked on to account for being slow to turn on the stopwatch) and the time for my 3x3 (I know it was -59:42.xx but I don't remember the xx), so then I restarted the clock and kept going, adding on the time that I had from before. As it turned out I had chosen a bit too many puzzles and I stopped the timer at -2 seconds (rounding everything up to the nearest second). So I couldn't make it up to 60 seconds, and I don't have any exact times, but I am sure that I did complete a relay of the following 53 puzzles in less than 0 seconds:

physical puzzles: 2x2x2; 3x3x3; Mirror Blocks; UFO; Square-1; Skewb; Golden Cube; Face-Turning Octahedron; Cmetrick; Platypus; Netblock UFO; Mastermorphix; 1x2x3; Floppy Cube; Super Floppy Cube; 15 puzzle; Void Cube; Missing Link (18)
computer puzzles: Cmetrick Mini; 3x3 through 10x10 clocks; Megaminx; 4x4x4; 5x5x5; 4x4x4 void cube; 5x5x5 void cube; 2x2 babyface (=4x4 centers); 3x3 babyface (=5x5 centers); 2x2x3 (Slim Tower); 3x3x2 (Domino); Impossiball; gb 1.2.1; gb 2.2.1; 3x3x3 Circle Cube; Dino Cube; Fat Dino Cube (gb 3.2.6); Lattice Cube; Helicopter Cube; Super-X; Skewb Diamond; Dino Octa; Trajber's Octahedron; Magic Octahedron; gb 4.2.3; Tetraminx; Halpern-Meier Tetrahedron; Master Pyraminx (35).


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## macky (Nov 1, 2009)

Partial results are up! If you spot an error, email me. smakisumi at gmail

http://cubefreak.net/negative/main.html


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## Tim Reynolds (Nov 2, 2009)

Awesome, missed it three years in a row...
I looked at my watch and saw 2:01 AM. Whoops. Next year I'll set an alarm or something.


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