# speedBLD standard



## Stefan (Jan 28, 2010)

Mike just asked about speedBLD memo, which reminded me of proposing a standard so that we have meaningful comparisons, fun, and at least a chance to one day make it official. So here's my proposal.

1. *Same behavior as in normal BLD*, i.e., no turning/writing during memo etc.
2. *Only the time for blindfolded solving counts*, not the memo time.
3. *Memo time is limited to 10 minutes.* More precisely, the solve timer must be started within 10 minutes after you got the scrambled cube. Not memo for 10 minutes, then plan in your head for two hours, then solve.

Pretty straight-forward, nothing really new. The reason I post this is to hopefully achieve an agreement of a standard. That would motivate me to give it a shot. And hopefully others, too, and then when there's enough experience and people, maybe it can become official. Don't know the chances for that, but right now without a competition-practicable standard and without much experience and with just a few people having done it, the chance is zero.

Maybe 10 minutes seem short, but at least Lucas has proven it's doable, and few people have ever tried this and little thinking went into method development (compared to normal BLD or normal speedsolving). So I feel 10 minutes is reasonable. Also, this is a time I would be motivated to invest. I do not want to spend an hour on this, especially not if we don't have a standard and thus I'm getting compared to 10-minutes guys and 3-hours guys. That'd just be pointless and I have no interest in it.

Of course it's possible to use a regular BLD method instead of a regular speedsolving method. But that's not a bug, that's a feature. Trying to forbid regular BLD methods and requiring to use regular speedsolving methods is both pointless and unenforceable. There's not just black and white, for example one might learn an OLL alg set that keeps PLL intact so you don't have to trace pieces through OLL. Possibly done using 2-step OLL because it requires fewer algs. It is impossible to draw a meaningful line and to enforce it. And a big *benefit* of regular BLD methods being usable is that immediately a lot of people can do it. I imagine in the beginning, many people will in fact use a regular BLD method, except they'll look for shortcuts and practice the solve mentally in order to reduce pauses in execution. And then if it catches on and more people get into it, competition will be stronger and methods will be improved, eventually resulting in the best people actually using regular speedsolving methods because it's possible and faster.

Comments?


----------



## iSpinz (Jan 28, 2010)

You mean like this, right?


----------



## Stefan (Jan 28, 2010)

Forgot: For comparison, check these previous versions:

http://www.speedcubing.com/records/recs_bf_333_solve.html
http://www.speedcubing.com/records/recs_bf_333normal.html
http://www.speedcubing.com/results/...gionId=&years=&show=100+Persons&single=Single

In my opinion, those are incompatible, unenforceable and impractical. That's what I'd like to fix with the proposed standard.


----------



## Stefan (Jan 28, 2010)

iSpinz said:


> You mean like this, right?



Yes, like that. Sorry, should've shown it myself, forgot there are probably many out there who don't know it.

To explain a bit more: That's Lucas solving the cube blindfolded in 11.88 seconds using a mostly(?) speedsolving method, after planning and memorizing the solve in about 9 minutes. More info here: http://cube.garron.us/BLD/speed/


----------



## Mike Hughey (Jan 28, 2010)

For previous competitions (where the unofficial records you listed were set), I assume your rules 1 and 2 were present there as well? I would hope so, and it makes sense. I'm curious about rule 3, though - was there a time limit imposed, or were they simply trusted to not take too long?

Ten minutes seems quite challenging. It makes it so that you'd have to practice fairly much before you could make a real try - more than is true in some of the other events. Then again, I suspect that as we get more and more serious, we're going to want challenging times like this anyway. I suspect we should eventually have a ten minute limit on 4x4x4 BLD as well. And maybe we'll eventually even want ten minute limit for 5x5x5 BLD. It certainly seems possible that people will eventually get that good - Ville is essentially already there.

Of course, as you mention, you could always do a regular BLD solve. There are quite a few really good BLD solvers who can execute sub-30, so there's a bunch of people who could do it.

Overall, though, I really like your suggestions. Ten minutes is really a great standard for things in cubing, which is reinforced by the stackmat limitation. I like it.


----------



## pjk (Jan 28, 2010)

I like the idea as well. 10 minutes sounds good. I think that is a good time since, as Mike said, it will force people to practice quite a bit before competing. We need to make sure that the time limit is an effective time because we won't want to it change later when records begin. I really have no experience with speedBLD, so my opinion on the time limit isn't worth much. 

Lucas, how much practice did it take to go sub-10? I'd be interested in hearing what time you'd suggest.

Say it went official, would there be best of 3 attempts like most BLD events? Also, I'd suggest we choose another name for it than speedBLD.


----------



## deadalnix (Jan 28, 2010)

10m is really fast. I should be more than that !


----------



## maggot (Jan 28, 2010)

if 10 min given for examine will speed be faster for not BLD? i try 10 min and i only see F2L, which help speed, but OLL PLL is hard to plan. i dont know lucas garron method, but it is as fast CFOP when given plan time i see. you are right that when i try time myself without memo time i still normal BLD method to solve only i memo better commutator instead of hacking my way around as fast as i can. i like this idea because it will make people more fast for new BLD method and maybe we see people use in traditional BLD solve with no time for memo. people become more fast at memo new method instead fast memo and slow solve. this should make a lot of new method, like lucas'. i like this and think this will make more people like BLD because the solve is fast. a lot of kid cuber like turning fast. they dont like BLD because most method make you think in between turn. this will get more kid (maybe the more patient one) to learn BLD... good propose stefan


----------



## Kian (Jan 28, 2010)

I think these are perfect reasonable. Sounds good to me.


----------



## Mike Hughey (Jan 28, 2010)

pjk said:


> Say it went official, would there be best of 3 attempts like most BLD events? Also, I'd suggest we choose another name for it than speedBLD.



I think this is another big plus for the ten minute time limit. If it were to go official (or if a competition were to hold it as an unofficial side event), it would be practical to allow best of 3 with a ten minute inspection time limit. And speedBLD would be much more enjoyable as an event with best of 3 than it would be with best of 1 - people who are good at it would almost always get at least one successful solve.

From a practical standpoint, here's how I'd see it being done:

1. Judge places cube in front of competitor, covered, and readies stopwatch.
2. Competitor places hands on timer before beginning inspection. (Bear with me, this is not the counting time, but it's useful.)
3. Competitor removes hands from timer, indicating the start of inspection. At this point, judge should start stopwatch.
4. Competitor removes cover from cube and begins inspection.
5. At some point prior to the expiration of the ten minutes on the timer, competitor places cube back on surface, stops and resets the timer, dons the blindfold, places hands on timer, and starts it again.
6. Competitor picks up and solves the cube.
7. Competitor stops the timer.

The nice thing about this approach is that then the competitor has the advantage of knowing how long is available to continue inspection, and there's no need for communication from the judge about it. We could still have the judge give warnings at, say, 15 seconds and 5 seconds or something. The judge would of course stop the attempt if 10 minutes expire on the stopwatch and the timer has not been reset and restarted yet.

The only negative is that it's pretty complicated for the competitor; I could see there being a danger of messing all of that up when you're concentrating more on the solve than on the mechanics. Competitors would need to practice the mechanics of it to make sure they don't get a DNF from something stupid. But it seems fairly reasonable to me.


----------



## Mike Hughey (Jan 28, 2010)

Off topic: By the way, Stefan, I see you attempted this once in competition (Europe 2006). What was it like for you, and what was the result (I know it was DNF, but how much so)?


----------



## Henrik (Jan 28, 2010)

As far as I remember the time was around 45 sek, but I could be way wrong.

Stefan did you use you "normal" BLD method with some extra in there?


----------



## Stefan (Jan 28, 2010)

Mike Hughey said:


> For previous competitions [...] was there a time limit imposed, or were they simply trusted to not take too long?


Well... I heard that at WC2003, Geir had and took about 5 hours. The other competitions had limits of 1-3 hours, I think.



Mike Hughey said:


> Stefan, I see you attempted this once in competition (Europe 2006). What was it like for you, and what was the result (I know it was DNF, but how much so)?


Those results: http://www.speedcubing.com/results/c.php?top3=Top+3&competitionId=Euro2006
Originally, only Geir and Clement had registered for it. I didn't prepare, but I figured I'd have a decent chance to win using a BLD method if they both DNFed or were too slow. So I asked whether I could still join them and Ron squeezed me in, giving me 30 minutes. I basically used M2 for edges, and freestyle 3-cycles for corners (literally freestyle, as I had never done or thought it through before). Memorized by rote, practicing it mentally quite a few times. But then I screwed up executing the parity algorithm. An inofficial retry revealed I had misplanned one corner orientation, but the time was about 31 seconds. Clement did 23, Geir 28.

I like your procedure steps, didn't think of using the competitor's timer for displaying the inspection time. Without that, I thought about a different way to put my proposal: _It's like normal speedsolving, except with 10 minutes inspection instead of 15 seconds, and being blindfolded for the solve._ Same thing, different wording/perspective.



pjk said:


> Say it went official, would there be best of 3 attempts like most BLD events?


Depends on how many people get how fast and how competitions and community work when this is mature enough to be considered as official event. But yeah, I guess a best-of is more likely than average or mean.



pjk said:


> Also, I'd suggest we choose another name for it than speedBLD.


Why?


----------



## Mike Hughey (Jan 28, 2010)

I just thought of something else, which might be considered a positive or a negative for these standards. They would match the Guinness world record rules.

See this post. (Edit: it wasn't until after I posted this that I noticed you can see Stefan under my daughter's pink Hello Kitty umbrella right below this post. A nice bonus. )

I hate to encourage them, but perhaps this is a plus, because it would mean their "world record" category would actually match a category that we recognize, and we could more clearly say that our current 3x3x3 blindfolded event is simply a different event, not the same event with different rules.

I remember when I saw this post, I thought Lucas should go for the world record, since he could blow it away with something like 15 seconds.

It's also interesting to note that Ville (and probably Haiyan) can be quite competitive with their normal BLD methods. They'll probably average less than 20 seconds, given that they have 10 minutes to rehearse it in their mind before they execute it.


----------



## Stefan (Jan 28, 2010)

Ugh, found my older account of the story, differs slightly. Skip unless you're really curious...

_Around noon I was ready for speed blindfolded. Ron said I didn't register (not sure what happened, I thought I did, maybe it wasn't an option in the first version of the registration form) and he wasn't happy with squeezing me into the schedule, but I promised it wouldn't take me long to be ready and he let me do it. I took 25 minutes to plan and memorize the solve and would've been ready after half the time already. I didn't intend to use a speedsolving method but rather my blindsolving method with instant recall and some shortcuts. I did use my blindsolving method for the edges without shortcuts, didn't see any. One corner was solved, two only misoriented and the others were a 5-cycle. So that was three steps, one orientation and two 3-cycles I made up with 8-move commutators. On stage I sadly confused the corner orientation algorithm with an edge 3-cycle algorithm because they start the same way. I noticed and reversed, tried again, failed again, tried again, failed again but noticed it in the middle of the alg and got confused and had to give up. Ron let me try again unofficially and I got 31 seconds but I had misplanned one corner 3-cycle so two corners were left misoriented. Still, I was fairly satisfied since it was my first ever attempt at this and the time was good. Plus, Clement and Geir were faster anyway._


----------



## Stefan (Jan 28, 2010)

Mike Hughey said:


> Guinness world record rules.
> 
> See this post.



What do you mean? It sounds the same except using a new not lubed cube. Which of course is ridiculous. Also, I challenge you to find the Guinness record for this. I just tried and failed. I don't think Guinness matters in any way (except beer).


----------



## Sakarie (Jan 28, 2010)

I have only tried once, and that was almost a success, but a very slow almost success (like 40 minutes in total), but I think that 10 minutes sounds to little.

Yes, we've seen that it can be done in under 10 minutes, but what I think you should take in mind is that some of the scrambles are very easy, and it's not likely that you get a one move cross, with a pair, like someone did. (do you understand my point? And no, I was NOT saying this can't be done sub-10 with a normal scramble.)

I would prefer doing it the way it usually is in 4x4&5x5 blindfolded, at least in Sweden. It's usually (on 4x4) maximum three tries, or 45/60 minutes. That way, every one may succeed, unregarding how fast they are (if faster than 45 minutes), but those who are faster may get two or maximum three tries. 

And 5x5 I guess is maximum two tries or an hour, but you get what I mean.

So can't the rule be 
Maximum three tries, OR/AND maximum 45 minutes.


----------



## Mike Hughey (Jan 28, 2010)

StefanPochmann said:


> Mike Hughey said:
> 
> 
> > Guinness world record rules.
> ...



Oh, yeah, there is that stupid part about the new not lubed cube. And actually, the reason I referenced that post in our forum is because I couldn't find the Guinness record by searching for it normally. I know Guinness records are ridiculous, but unfortunately, a lot of the general public doesn't. That's the only reason for mentioning them, and I admit it's not really enough of a reason anyway. So probably we should just forget I even mentioned it.


----------



## Stefan (Jan 28, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> Maximum three tries, OR/AND maximum 45 minutes.



The issue with 4x4 and 5x5 BLD is different, because the memorization time counts so it makes no sense to spend all time on one attempt if you could do it faster. So your suggestion merely allows better solvers to do more attempts, but it doesn't change the nature of the individual attempt. With your speedBLD suggestion, one could spend the entire time on a single attempt and optimize and practice it to death. Which then is not comparable to an attempt of 10 or 15 minutes. It might thus practically force us to spend the whole 45 minutes on one attempt to be competitive. And like I said before, I'm not motivated to spend that much time on it, that feels boring. And I could imagine others have the same problem.

But I do acknowledge the problem. Of course I don't insist on 10 minutes, that was just a number I threw out to make an explicit standard proposal and because I think it's reasonable, given a few results I've seen. Maybe 15 or 20 minutes would be better. Lucas... help... need an educated opinion!


----------



## Chuck (Jan 29, 2010)

On topic: It sounds fun! I'll learn this.

Off topic: Multi-SpeedBLD would be interesting too


----------



## Lucas Garron (Jan 29, 2010)

I don't time to read the whole thread right now, but have you seen my 2009 proposal?

EDIT: Most people here seem to be suggesting 10 minutes. I feel this is too short, for now, although it fits conveniently on a Stackmat timer.


----------



## Stefan (Jan 29, 2010)

Lucas Garron said:


> Most people here seem to be suggesting 10 minutes. I feel this is too short, for now, although it fits conveniently on a Stackmat timer.


Probably because I suggested it. Stackmatability wasn't a concern for me, but future-proofness was. Wouldn't want to repeat the multibld evolution, lower the limit and invalidate old records. That said, this is mostly a concern once it's official. As long as it's only unofficial, I see less trouble with lowering the limit. So we could start higher now and decide on a good official limit if we ever get there.



Lucas Garron said:


> I don't time to read the whole thread right now, but have you seen my 2009 proposal?


Darn, I had a feeling we discussed this before. Need to read that again. Hope I haven't duplicated too much.


----------



## Mike Hughey (Jan 29, 2010)

I hadn't noticed that thread before, Lucas. Yours is not a bad proposal, but I see these issues:

1. I strongly prefer that the competitor place the cube before donning the blindfold and starting the timer. I think allowing the judge to place it creates far too much danger for issues, without any real benefit. I hadn't thought of the issue that people might change the scramble while inspecting, so I agree that the judge (or someone) should verify that the scramble has not been changed, and then hand it to the competitor to place it before starting the solve. Then again, I never thought of it before - this could happen today with regular 3x3x3 BLD. Theoretically, the judge should be watching for any surreptitious turns on BLD attempts during memorization - I wonder how many judges really pay close attention as they should to BLD memorization to make sure no one makes any turns? If we went with a 10 minute memorization limit, it seems like there's not enough difference between speedBLD and regular BLD to require verifying the scramble for speedBLD but not regular BLD.

I have to admit it disappoints me to think that it might be possible for someone to cheat this way with regular BLD. I hope no one has ever done that - it would be very sad.

In any event, I still think the competitor should place the cube before solving. Then it's the competitor's fault if it's misoriented.

2. As a competition organizer, I definitely see the benefit of allowing inspection to happen away from the timer. But I think that if our time limit is as short as 10 minutes, it's probably not that practical - variation due to timer not being available could give too big of an advantage to someone who is delayed. If the limit were 30 minutes, it probably wouldn't be as big of a deal. But having the competitor seated for the solve really would guarantee the time is strictly enforced, which is a nice advantage for doing it my way.

Overall, I think I like my rules better than yours (and I like the 10 minute limit, even if it is incredibly tough), but I could be persuaded to change my mind.


----------

