# What times do you average for 3x3 speed?



## Dene (Mar 5, 2011)

Title says it all. It would be good to compare the results today to the results of a year or two ago.

Edit: I missed 14 whoops. That's what I was going to vote for too


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## IamWEB (Mar 5, 2011)

Sub-13 when I'm doing well?

EDIT: oic, poll.


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## maggot (Mar 5, 2011)

haha i would have voted 14! lie, im still sup-15 ; w; hopefully not close to my physical limit; w;


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## Rubiks560 (Mar 5, 2011)

I average comms.


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## Tillers (Mar 5, 2011)

I'm not sure I should be posting here, but I'm averaging about 72 seconds.

I have only been speed cubing for about a month, despite the fact that I have been able to solve the cube since I was 9 (31 years ago).


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## Zubon (Mar 5, 2011)

I think that the vast majority of people on this site average over 20 seconds. I think you should have included more options for those people. 

Three years ago, I averaged mid 20s. Now I average around 20 seconds.


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## amostay2004 (Mar 5, 2011)

Zubon said:


> I think that the vast majority of people on this site average over 20 seconds. I think you should have included more options for those people.


 
Anything above 20 doesn't really matter srsly


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## cubeslayer (Mar 5, 2011)

Zubon, is your avatar a portion of a chess board. If so, 1. Nf3 ( unless if you wish to go first, which by all means do so--I don't mind). And amostay2004, speed solving over 20 seconds does count. Be it 90 seconds or 13 seconds, speed solving is solving faster than one did a year ago, a month ago, an hour ago, etcetera.


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## ZamHalen (Mar 5, 2011)

19 ish so close to breaking it.....


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## Nestor (Mar 5, 2011)

amostay2004 said:


> Anything above 20 doesn't really matter srsly


 
Thanks for the inspiration and motivation

(25" avg here)


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## amostay2004 (Mar 5, 2011)

What I meant was anything above 20 should just be pooled into the 'slow' category (no offense here, I simply mean those who're either quite new to cubing or not serious enough to practise)


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## RyanReese09 (Mar 5, 2011)

Average of 100 is 14.23. Sub14 averages happen once in a while when I practice.

I voted 13 but...


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## AvidCuber (Mar 5, 2011)

17-ish. Have been stuck here for months, but haven't had too much time to cube either. I need to actually start practising instead of just posting on the forums


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## goatseforever (Mar 5, 2011)

LOL ITS 2011 AND SOME PEOPLE STILL AREN'T SUB-20??? WHAT ARE THEY, MENTALLY RETARDED? HAHA!


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## Inf3rn0 (Mar 5, 2011)

I generally average 18-19 but I didn't want to vote 19+ so I went for 18~.


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## qqwref (Mar 5, 2011)

You guys, the whole point of this thread is to look at how the faster people on this forum have gotten better over the last year or so. If you're not sub20 you should be improving a lot faster, and you should be trying to improve your algs and fingertricks, not worrying about your progress on such a long timeframe.

Anyway: I'm around 13 seconds average... sometimes my avg100 is over 13 and sometimes under, but around there in general.


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## Macht Spiel (Mar 5, 2011)

it has been around 3 months and my time is around 50 - 60 secs, I use 2LOOK METHOD and working on Fridrich F2L.
Please suggest me, as these F2L have made me slower .


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## Nestor (Mar 5, 2011)

Macht Spiel said:


> it has been around 3 months and my time is around 50 - 60 secs, I use 2LOOK METHOD and working on Fridrich F2L.
> Please suggest me, as these F2L have made me slower .



Switching to advanced methods always slows you down. The best suggestion is simply to practice a lot, eventually you will start seeing improovements.



amostay2004 said:


> What I meant was anything above 20 should just be pooled into the 'slow' category (no offense here, I simply mean those who're either quite new to cubing or not serious enough to practise)


 
None taken... I've been cubing for a little over a year now and I'm aware I could be way faster (if only I would spend more time speedcubing than puzzle solving). Is just that realizing you are still on the "slow" category is an uncomfortable truth.

At this time last year I was averaging 1:15', currently I'm around 25-26". Next year's goal: upper 15".


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## Dene (Mar 5, 2011)

qqwref said:


> You guys, the whole point of this thread is to look at how the faster people on this forum have gotten better over the last year or so. If you're not sub20 you should be improving a lot faster, and you should be trying to improve your algs and fingertricks, not worrying about your progress on such a long timeframe.


 
Yes and especially to get an idea of how many people fit into speed groups. There has been a clear and consistent trend in official competitions but at-home times are also interesting.


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## IamWEB (Mar 5, 2011)

It's an extremely broad "slow" category, though.


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## nlCuber22 (Mar 5, 2011)

12- I suppose.


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## Andreaillest (Mar 5, 2011)

19+. Eh, I'm slowly progressing.


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## SixSidedCube (Mar 5, 2011)

19 +  Im finally starting to get consistent(ish) ~20 solves


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## Dene (Mar 5, 2011)

IamWEB said:


> It's an extremely broad "slow" category, though.


 
Ya but no one cares about slow people. Any nub can get sub20 in less than 4 months these days.


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## AvGalen (Mar 5, 2011)

Dene said:


> Ya but no one cares about slow people. Any nub can get sub20 in less than 4 months these days.


 
not me though, and I am doing an average of 12 every day since january AND learned the G-Perms. I DID get a crazy sub 18 3/5 and a nice sub 20 10/12 but I am normally still doing 21 average. And I don't think anyone can call me a noob.
(am I the only one that is soo fast on bigcubes and so slow on 3x3x3?)


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## amostay2004 (Mar 5, 2011)

An average of 12 a day is hardly real practice though, it's only a few minutes of cubing.


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## Hiero (Mar 5, 2011)

It seems like the point of this thread has turned into how arrogant fast speedcubers are. Instead of encouraging the rest of the community, it's time to degrade anyone who is not as fast as you are. Feliks should make his own thread saying how anyone over 10 seconds really sucks and doesn't care about cubing, especially the really slow noobs stuck at the 13-14 second barrier. Anyone with a week of practice should be under 10 seconds.

I think the reason people who are under 20 seconds display such immaturity and little compassion for anyone else is probably because of the average age of speedcubers. Teenagers and 20 year olds are still in the mentality of "let me show you how good I am and how much you suck", instead of "hey, let me share my wisdom with you". The mentality of a young person is if they are at 20 seconds, then anyone over 21 seconds sucks, if they are at 15, then anyone over 16 seconds sucks and so on. 

I'm around 22-25 seconds, but I still get excited when a student of mine first breaks the 2 or 3 minute barrier with the beginner method. I tell them "oh, wow, you're getting really fast." That's how you encourage people, because for that particular student 2 minutes is fast. It's not good for most people to think the top speedcubers are arrogant a-holes. That's not something most people want to aspire to. Maybe it's a psychological problem where fast speedcubers get picked on by people because they are nerds, so now they need to show their dominance to the other nerds to feel better about themselves.


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## JustinJ (Mar 5, 2011)

Hiero said:


> It seems like the point of this thread has turned into how arrogant fast speedcubers are. Instead of encouraging the rest of the community, it's time to degrade anyone who is not as fast as you are. Feliks should make his own thread saying how anyone over 10 seconds really sucks and doesn't care about cubing, especially the really slow noobs stuck at the 13-14 second barrier. Anyone with a week of practice should be under 10 seconds.
> 
> I think the reason people who are under 20 seconds display such immaturity and little compassion for anyone else is probably because of the average age of speedcubers. Teenagers and 20 year olds are still in the mentality of "let me show you how good I am and how much you suck", instead of "hey, let me share my wisdom with you". The mentality of a young person is if they are at 20 seconds, then anyone over 21 seconds sucks, if they are at 15, then anyone over 16 seconds sucks and so on.
> 
> I'm around 22-25 seconds, but I still get excited when a student of mine first breaks the 2 or 3 minute barrier with the beginner method. I tell them "oh, wow, you're getting really fast." That's how you encourage people, because for that particular student 2 minutes is fast. It's not good for most people to think the top speedcubers are arrogant a-holes. That's not something most people want to aspire to. Maybe it's a psychological problem where fast speedcubers get picked on by people because they are nerds, so now they need to show their dominance to the other nerds to feel better about themselves.


 
You're totally misinterpreting this. The reason people are saying over-20 doesn't matter is that they're interested in seeing the progression of the higher levels of speedcubing, rather than the lower ones. Think of it this way, when people are trying to see the progression of sports, do they ask the people who aren't as competitive yet, or the ones at the top?


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## AvGalen (Mar 5, 2011)

amostay2004 said:


> An average of 12 a day is hardly real practice though, it's only a few minutes of cubing.


 
12 cubes a day * 365 days * 5 years = roughly 20.000 solves!
Solving 1 cube takes me about 1 minute (scrambling, inspection, solving, writing down times). So 12 solves take about 10-15 minutes.
Please go do that amount of push-ups every day and say it isn't practice!

(my way of saying that I agree that sub 20 solvers are underestimating how much practice it takes to get sub 20. PS, I just did 31.72 27.27 21.22 25.22 17.34 19.84 17.53 19.19 23.21 26.96 23.03 42.16 and there is a 3/5 sub 19 average in there. The really slow solves are messed up G-Perms)


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## Anonymous (Mar 5, 2011)

Hiero said:


> It seems like the point of this thread has turned into how arrogant fast speedcubers are. Instead of encouraging the rest of the community, it's time to degrade anyone who is not as fast as you are. Feliks should make his own thread saying how anyone over 10 seconds really sucks and doesn't care about cubing, especially the really slow noobs stuck at the 13-14 second barrier. Anyone with a week of practice should be under 10 seconds.
> 
> I think the reason people who are under 20 seconds display such immaturity and little compassion for anyone else is probably because of the average age of speedcubers. Teenagers and 20 year olds are still in the mentality of "let me show you how good I am and how much you suck", instead of "hey, let me share my wisdom with you". The mentality of a young person is if they are at 20 seconds, then anyone over 21 seconds sucks, if they are at 15, then anyone over 16 seconds sucks and so on.
> 
> I'm around 22-25 seconds, but I still get excited when a student of mine first breaks the 2 or 3 minute barrier with the beginner method. I tell them "oh, wow, you're getting really fast." That's how you encourage people, because for that particular student 2 minutes is fast. It's not good for most people to think the top speedcubers are arrogant a-holes. That's not something most people want to aspire to. Maybe it's a psychological problem where fast speedcubers get picked on by people because they are nerds, so now they need to show their dominance to the other nerds to feel better about themselves.


 
Why would you say that? You've been here since 2009, but you haven't even realized yet how much advice and common wisdom comes from fast people? Seriously, no no one is trying to be in your face about their times- they're just saying that the whole point of this thread is to track the progress of fast people. At this point, if you're not sub-15, you're really not even that fast- so if you haven't broken twenty seconds yet, you're just not fast at all. And were those insults necessary? Do you actually think that all the fast people here are not only out to get slow people because they're slow? That they're all nerd with inferiority complexes?

tl;dr That was an insulting and rather stupid thing to say.

[On topic] I average 16.


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## Hiero (Mar 5, 2011)

JustinJ said:


> You're totally misinterpreting this. The reason people are saying over-20 doesn't matter is that they're interested in seeing the progression of the higher levels of speedcubing, rather than the lower ones. Think of it this way, when people are trying to see the progression of sports, do they ask the people who aren't as competitive yet, or the ones at the top?


 
I don't see where the title or the original post said this at all. This thread was a remake of another one that was an attempt to group the times in better categories. The original thread included several categories for people over 20 seconds. Some people said 20-40 seconds was too broad of a category. This thread didn't present itself as just an elite cuber thread, but regrouping the times to make sense to people. If people thought 20-40 was too broad, then why make everyone over 19 seconds into one category? 

If you are interested now only in seeing the progression of the sub-20 levels of speedcubing, then make a thread titled that or put that description in the original post. I would understand that. Also, the extra bashing of people over 19 seconds isn't really needed. Posters didn't understand that this was focusing only on elite cubers. You can say something to the effect of, "I understand there are many cubers over 20 seconds, but this thread is focusing on people who are under 20 seconds and how much improvement they have made", instead of some of the other comments people have made.


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## Vinny (Mar 5, 2011)

I average just sub 20 so I voted 19+ though.


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## Hiero (Mar 5, 2011)

Anonymous said:


> Why would you say that? You've been here since 2009, but you haven't even realized yet how much advice and common wisdom comes from fast people? Seriously, no no one is trying to be in your face about their times- they're just saying that the whole point of this thread is to track the progress of fast people. At this point, if you're not sub-15, you're really not even that fast- so if you haven't broken twenty seconds yet, you're just not fast at all. *And were those insults necessary? Do you actually think that all the fast people here are not only out to get slow people because they're slow? That they're all nerd with inferiority complexes?*tl;dr That was an insulting and rather stupid thing to say.
> 
> [On topic] I average 16.


 

They are not all nerdy with inferiority complexes, but some definitely are and again, I don't see where it was said that this was to track the progress of only fast people.




Vinny said:


> I average just sub 20 so I voted 19+ though.


 
Nobody cares.


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## Anonymous (Mar 5, 2011)

Hiero said:


> I don't see where the title or the original post said this at all. This thread was a remake of another one that was an attempt to group the times in better categories. The original thread included several categories for people over 20 seconds. Some people said 20-40 seconds was too broad of a category. This thread didn't present itself as just an elite cuber thread, but regrouping the times to make sense to people. If people thought 20-40 was too broad, then why make everyone over 19 seconds into one category?
> 
> If you are interested now only in seeing the progression of the sub-20 levels of speedcubing, then make a thread titled that or put that description in the original post. I would understand that. Also, the extra bashing of people over 19 seconds isn't really needed. Posters didn't understand that this was focusing only on elite cubers. You can say something to the effect of, "I understand there are many cubers over 20 seconds, but this thread is focusing on people who are under 20 seconds and how much improvement they have made", instead of some of the other comments people have made.



There was actually zero bashing... just people pointing out that it's not that interesting to see "slow" people's progress. Why make everyone who's 19 + one category? Because I'm getting the feeling that this thread isn't for them.

EDIT: The fact that there's only one 19+ category is an indicator in itself that the point of this is to track faster people. Even so, Amos qq and Dene all clarified the purpose of this thread a little bit later.


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## JackJ (Mar 5, 2011)

AvGalen said:


> (am I the only one that is soo fast on bigcubes and so slow on 3x3x3?)


 
Nope. http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/p.php?i=2009CASA02


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## Zubon (Mar 5, 2011)

amostay2004 said:


> Anything above 20 doesn't really matter srsly


 
Well, maybe you might think that, but look at the results of this poll. It is obvious that the large majority of people who voted are well over 20 seconds. There are people who are young and fast, but there are also a lot of experienced and well regarded cubers who are still averaging over 20 after many years. Sub 20 cubers are a minority even on the largest speedcubing forum on the internet. Saying that the majority of people in the cubing community "don't matter" is not exactly accurate.


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## amostay2004 (Mar 5, 2011)

AvGalen said:


> 12 cubes a day * 365 days * 5 years = roughly 20.000 solves!
> Solving 1 cube takes me about 1 minute (scrambling, inspection, solving, writing down times). So 12 solves take about 10-15 minutes.
> Please go do that amount of push-ups every day and say it isn't practice!
> 
> (my way of saying that I agree that sub 20 solvers are underestimating how much practice it takes to get sub 20. PS, I just did 31.72 27.27 21.22 25.22 17.34 19.84 17.53 19.19 23.21 26.96 23.03 42.16 and there is a 3/5 sub 19 average in there. The really slow solves are messed up G-Perms)


 
What I meant about the few minutes of cubing is the actual solving times not including scrambling and writing down times that obviously don't contribute towards improvement. Even if you include those times, 10-15 minutes is very short. It's really not a lot compared to what most sub-20 cubers spend each day practising. 

And come on you should know practising for different things cannot be compared like that, the same way 10-15 minutes of pull-ups is not the same thing as 10-15 minutes of say basketball.

Also it's pretty obvious that people nowadays are improving a lot faster than they were 2-3 years ago because of better cubes, better algs, etc.

All of us who average sub-20 have clearly once struggled to get sub-20 average so I suppose we do know how hard it is to get there 


@Hiero: No one is degrading or bashing anyone for being slow here (except for goatsforever but in case you didn't notice he was just being funny). If you're that unhappy about people making threads for fast people only, go ahead and make a poll and have an 'under 20 seconds' category for fast people, and then 20-25, 25-30, etc. And for someone who calls us immature, you're being immature for stereotyping our 'mentality' like that. A lot of us get excited if someone we teach gets faster too no matter how slow there but hey, that's totally unrelated to this thread. I hope you get it.


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## Reinier Schippers (Mar 5, 2011)

voted 13+ its is now 1 year and 4 weeks since i started speedcubing seriously


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## amostay2004 (Mar 5, 2011)

Zubon said:


> Well, maybe you might think that, but look at the results of this poll. It is obvious that the large majority of people who voted are well over 20 seconds. There are people who are young and fast, but there are also a lot of experienced and well regarded cubers who are still averaging over 20 after many years. Sub 20 cubers are a minority even on the largest speedcubing forum on the internet. Saying that the majority of people in the cubing community "don't matter" is not exactly accurate.


 
Come on, I don't mean they 'don't matter' as in we shouldn't care about them at all. 
Yes, they are the majority obviously. Still there's nothing wrong with grouping them together as the sup-20 group. There's no real need to know how many are 20-30, 31-50, etc because there really isn't a point now is there? If Dene didn't care about them, he wouldn't have bothered to put the 19+ option and just stop at 19.


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## Hiero (Mar 5, 2011)

It's not like it really matters, but whenever we get one of these "objective" polls about how fast people are it's always centered around the OP personal times and what they think is important. If we are looking at the really elite, I would say you need to have averaged under 13 or even 12 seconds. That would put you in the top 250 or 121 respectively. Someone who gets 18 second averages and ranks 2000 in the world doesn't matter much more than anyone else. Someone who averages around 15 seconds only matters slightly more, but really has no impact on the top levels of speedcubing.


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## RyanReese09 (Mar 5, 2011)

Hiero said:


> It's not like it really matters, but whenever we get one of these "objective" polls about how fast people are it's always centered around the OP


 
Not really. If he was centering the poll around himself, he would have actually put 14, which is what he averages.

In all honesty, I agree with amos.


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## Dene (Mar 5, 2011)

AvGalen said:


> not me though, and I am doing an average of 12 every day since january AND learned the G-Perms. I DID get a crazy sub 18 3/5 and a nice sub 20 10/12 but I am normally still doing 21 average. And I don't think anyone can call me a noob.
> (am I the only one that is soo fast on bigcubes and so slow on 3x3x3?)


 
You know very well that if you spent at least an hour and a half almost every day just practising 3x3 then you would get sub17 in no time. Same goes for Mr. Hughey so don't try pulling that one out on me either  .

Hiero: If you care about the slower cubers then go and make a poll. The main reason I show little interest in them is because I know what it takes to get sub20 (sure it takes a good amount of practise, but really nothing compared to what it takes to get down even further; once you get to sub16 (if you ever do) you will realise exactly what I mean). I also know that slow people have such inconsistent and steadily increasing times that any results are going to change within a week. So what's the point of asking?

But if you care so much no one is stopping you from making your own poll. Just bear in mind there is a maximum of 10 options.

EDIT: Oh I also wanted to point to the interesting results we currently have, with a lot more cubers than there have been in the past pushing to the 13~ barrier.


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## Tillers (Mar 5, 2011)

If you are going to spend an hour and a half every day what would you do? Finger tricks, new or specific algorithims or just solve after solve?


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## Shortey (Mar 5, 2011)

holy damn, i avg the same as faz


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## Escher (Mar 5, 2011)

Hiero said:


> I think the reason people who are under 20 seconds display such immaturity and little compassion for anyone else is probably because of the average age of speedcubers. Teenagers and 20 year olds are still in the mentality of "let me show you how good I am and how much you suck", instead of "hey, let me share my wisdom with you". The mentality of a young person is if they are at 20 seconds, then anyone over 21 seconds sucks, if they are at 15, then anyone over 16 seconds sucks and so on.



I think actually right here you did a good enough job of showing how much you suck without anybody else saying so.

Just to make it clear however...
You seem to have forgotten that the majority of knowledge the speedcubing community has is based upon a bunch of 16-20 year olds in the early 1980s and a majority of the further advancements (i.e. improved algorithms, improved fingertricks, expansion of the community (thanks pjk), some BLD methods) have been made by yes, 16-20 year olds.

You've been to one small competition. Did you cube much with the people there at all? The idea that these 'teenagers and 20 year olds' don't care about sharing knowledge is ridiculous and it should take half an hour with 99% of them to realise how wrong you are. At least, that's my experience with every comp I've been to so far.

It's hilarious that you automatically assume that fast cubers 'must be nerds' and 'need to show their [social] dominance', clearly you talk to little/none of them. Sure it's a 'nerdy' hobby to get good at but it shouldn't take long in the community to realise that speed and levels of social problems do not correlate whatsoever.

There is little point being offended with this thread. In fairness to Dene, 'sub 20' used to be a bit of a holy grail and measuring that against nowadays standards makes sense. 

In the most basic sense of looking at the 3x3 speed event only and deciding what is at all fast, then yes, anybody who is over 20s really "doesn't matter". It's just a fact of a competitive sport that people who are not (yet) in the top 5-10% of a region/the world are not 'important' because they aren't pushing any boundaries. 

This isn't designed to 'put people down' or 'crush their aspirations' because fast people aren't good character models. If you want to be fast badly enough, then you'll just do it. What x,y,z says shouldn't come into the picture.

Also I checked the thread again before posting - what Dene said^


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## qqwref (Mar 5, 2011)

AvGalen said:


> not me though, and I am doing an average of 12 every day since january AND learned the G-Perms.


No offense, but if you're serious about sub20ing you should be making sure you know algs (which you can do kinda quickly) for all of OLL/PLL, and then you should be specifically practicing lookahead and smooth turning, rather than just doing a dozen solves a day and hoping it will help.



Hiero said:


> It seems like the point of this thread has turned into how arrogant fast speedcubers are. Instead of encouraging the rest of the community, it's time to degrade anyone who is not as fast as you are.


Uh huh, no. First, people only even brought that up because slower people are complaining that they don't fit into this poll (when they shouldn't). And second, everyone who doesn't have some kind of dexterity problem (like missing a hand, or being over 60) can do sub20 with practice. If you haven't, it's not that you as a person suck, but it generally does mean that you don't really understand high-level speedsolving. The difference between 20 and, say, 13 or 30 or 60, is that it's pretty fast but you can break that barrier with skill and practice alone - you don't need crazy tps, just some moderate lookahead and decent algs.

Honestly, if you are stuck at over 20 seconds, it means you are doing something wrong. That's all there is to it - unless, again, you have some kind of serious dexterity problem, you can't have perfect technique and good tps and still be well over 20. It just doesn't happen. So that's why the fast people think the >20 people aren't serious speedcubers. It's not that you suck and should be excluded, it's that you're basically a casual solver who hasn't put the same effort into optimizing your solves that a lot of other people have.


By the way, to people like AvG who are wondering why they are fast at bigcubes/BLD/whatever and not 3x3: you have to apply a different strategy in 3x3, because higher turnspeed is necessary. (Not all THAT high though - a consistent 3 tps will get you under 20 easily.) In bigcubes and BLD you can learn a handful of algorithms and get near the top with intuition. Not so on 3x3. It's important to work on fluid solves and lookahead, to decrease your pauses. I used to be really good at bigcubes and really bad at 3x3 too (I thought sub-15 would be impossible for me not too long ago, and that was after already improving a lot), but I've worked on 3x3 a lot since then and I've improved a lot too. You just have to spend the time, and practice the things that need improvement.


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## Narraeson (Mar 5, 2011)

I average 27 but my PB is 17.193 C:


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## Mike Hughey (Mar 7, 2011)

Dene said:


> You know very well that if you spent at least an hour and a half almost every day just practising 3x3 then you would get sub17 in no time. Same goes for Mr. Hughey so don't try pulling that one out on me either  .


 
No, it really doesn't. I had at least a month towards the middle of last year where I practiced an hour and a half almost every day, and I didn't improve at all - not even the tiniest bit. (I would show you my CCT records of my daily averages of 100 from that time, but CCT ate them.) I'm quite convinced the problem was that my practice wasn't the right sort, so I'm sure it was my fault, but I don't really know where I went wrong. After talking to Chester about it this weekend, I figure I'm going to do more with videos in the future and see if it helps, both watching other people's videos and taping myself and watching mine. I have a feeling I just have some really stupid habits that I'm reinforcing instead of fixing, and I need to find them.

And a little more on topic, I'm totally fine with this poll; it makes sense that we have a good poll to see how the groupings work out for the sub-20 folks. Perhaps we can have another one in another year and I'll actually be able to pick something better than 19+.

And Arnaud, I used to think of you as the best good big-cube, bad small-cube solver out there. Then I met Myles. Myles is awesome!


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## Dene (Mar 7, 2011)

Yea must be some really bad habits. Put up an avg 12 video so we can all be critical!


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## antoineccantin (Mar 7, 2011)

I average about 17-18 so I put ~17.

Last summer (2010) I averaged ~1:15.


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## That70sShowDude (Mar 7, 2011)

I voted ~12, because avg100 is pretty much a general cube average and it's just sub-12.8

Btw, every single 3x3 session that I do is at least 120 solves.


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## RTh (Mar 7, 2011)

Today I got my first sub-17 Ao5 =)

BTW, I usually practice by steps.

Sometimes I practice Cross + F2L, other OLL and PLL.

For example, I try to solve Cross and F2L in less than 11 sec. stopping timer and scrambling again after I finish. Or maybe I give myself a 5 sec limit for OLL and PLL and everyday I notice some improvement.

Just practising didn't seem to help much.


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## Escher (Mar 7, 2011)

Mike Hughey said:


> I'm quite convinced the problem was that my practice wasn't the right sort, so I'm sure it was my fault, but I don't really know where I went wrong. After talking to Chester about it this weekend, I figure I'm going to do more with videos in the future and see if it helps, both watching other people's videos and taping myself and watching mine. I have a feeling I just have some really stupid habits that I'm reinforcing instead of fixing, and I need to find them.


 
Specifically made a thread for people whose practice wasn't paying off 
Not sure if you saw... But yeah what Dene said, put up a video and explain how you spend your time practicing 3x3 and people can critique


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## Mike Hughey (Mar 7, 2011)

Escher said:


> Specifically made a thread for people whose practice wasn't paying off
> Not sure if you saw... But yeah what Dene said, put up a video and explain how you spend your time practicing 3x3 and people can critique


 
I did - I read it right away, and I've read it several times now. It is a very inspiring article, and I know it has some very good ideas, but I must admit it seemed a little too vague for me to feel like I really knew what to do. (Although I did get some ideas of how I might improve my practice, so I still think it helped somewhat.)

Perhaps I should post this there instead of hijacking the thread here, but I wonder if you could go through several days of practice and give examples of specifically what someone might do, showing how it matches the principles you give. If you do it for yourself, unfortunately it will probably seem way over my head; I wonder if you could do it from a perspective of someone who's averaging about 20 seconds instead (if you can manage to think that way).


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## Escher (Mar 7, 2011)

Mike Hughey said:


> I did - I read it right away, and I've read it several times now. It is a very inspiring article, and I know it has some very good ideas, but I must admit it seemed a little too vague for me to feel like I really knew what to do. (Although I did get some ideas of how I might improve my practice, so I still think it helped somewhat.)
> 
> Perhaps I should post this there instead of hijacking the thread here, but I wonder if you could go through several days of practice and give examples of specifically what someone might do, showing how it matches the principles you give. If you do it for yourself, unfortunately it will probably seem way over my head; I wonder if you could do it from a perspective of someone who's averaging about 20 seconds instead (if you can manage to think that way).


 
Sorry about the vagueness, an unfortunate side-effect of wanting it to be quite general and not having enough willpower to make it huge... Thanks for the props though 

Yeah, I'll be away for a week but afterwards I'll be happy to give a concrete example (2-3 day routine?) for 3x3 practice, I'll post it in that thread. I'll do my best to target advice for people around 17-20s, I do remember very well what it was like to be fighting against the 20s barrier


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## Mike Hughey (Mar 8, 2011)

Escher said:


> Yeah, I'll be away for a week but afterwards I'll be happy to give a concrete example (2-3 day routine?) for 3x3 practice, I'll post it in that thread. I'll do my best to target advice for people around 17-20s, I do remember very well what it was like to be fighting against the 20s barrier


 
Thanks -that would be GREAT!


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## Cool Frog (Mar 8, 2011)

After looking through my cube history (Graphy-qq and other timer) I have improved in the past 2 months 10-12 seconds, This has gotten me practicing more. 
I usually average 20-24 and get plenty of sub 19. (they seem like slow solves too)


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## AvGalen (Mar 10, 2011)

Conclusion: According to people that are already fast, it is easy to become fast as well. According to people that aren't fast already it isn't so easy. Maybe learning 100 algs and practising 1.5 hours each day just is considered totally normal by the fast people but it just isn't normal for me. I call that hardcore dedication.

(I also remember lots of people saying that you didn't need to learn OLL in order to get sub 20. OLL was only needed to get sub 12, until that time it was all about F2L)

I DO agree that it is easier to get sub20 now than in the past because tutorials are better, algs are better and cubes are better. But saying that getting sub20 is easy is just not true!

(also, for a competition it is MUCH more important to know the variation of times for slow solvers than for fast solvers. It doesn't matter if you need 15 or 16 seconds, but it does matter if you need 30 or 90 seconds. But that is not what this topic is about, just responding to some posts)


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## RyanReese09 (Mar 10, 2011)

A small tip (though highly useful) for solving.

Learn COLL, you don't have to know the algs for COLL, but learn recognition. It helps my PLL recognition IMMENSELY for all edges oriented cases where I can *know* for a fact what type of PLL it is.

I do not believe an hour of practice a day is needed. In a typical week I do one average of 100, then maybe a bit of untimed solving to improve lookahead and get more flow in my solves. Less then 10 timed solves perday, though one ao100 a week (that's only if I'm feeling like it too!)

You can't generalize fast people as the ones who learn mass algs and practice daily..because taht sin't always the case.


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