# Negative Time Solving Contest 2008



## macky (Oct 21, 2008)

Announcing the Negative Time Solving Contest 2008

Continuing with what has now become a tradition, I'm once again
organizing the yearly Negative Time Solving Contest. The official page
is at http://cubefreak.net/negative.html, where the scrambles for
this year have already been posted.

DST (Daylight Saving Time) ends at 3am on Sunday, October 26 in many
countries in Europe. In most parts of the United States and Canada,
DST ends at 2am on Sunday, November 2. See Time and
Date.com to check the clock change schedule in your area. I will
NOT post the results from Europe until the results from North America
come in a week later.

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
simultaneously compete in 3x3 speedsolve, 3x3 blindfolded, and
whatever else your cubing heart desires, at the cost of some extra
time in your negative solve. I think a fun category would be "most
cubes solved blindfolded in a negative time." the whole thing needs to
be done in an hour, so you first have to decide on the number of
cubers to attempt, and then, taking into account your average
memorization time for that number of cubes, start memorizing at some
appropriate time before daylight saving ends.

You can find instructions for sending in your times on the link above.
Once again, thanks to Tyson Mao for bringing this great Caltech
tradition to cubing. Good luck to all participants!

You can post questions here.

Best,
-macky


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 21, 2008)

Dennis and Tim (and any other multiBLD enthusiasts who happen to read this):

Note that Macky is supporting multiBLD in negative time this year. You guys should see what you can accomplish!!!

I'm going to go for the North American negative time multiBLD record, anyway. (If either of you guys compete, my only chance at the world record is for you to both have bunches of DNFs.)

Macky doesn't have many scrambles up yet, but he said he's going to add some more. I told him you guys probably need at least 15.


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## flee135 (Oct 21, 2008)

woo, looking forward to it. It's right after my orchestra concert, so I hope I don't forget... xD It'd be fun to do a bld solve this year too.


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## shelley (Oct 21, 2008)

Hopefully I'll be able to stay up long enough. Last year I missed it for the first time since 2004. I was too tired after an evening in Las Vegas (we ended up walking the entire length of the Strip and then some; it didn't look THAT far on Google Maps, but those hotels are huge!).


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## pjk (Oct 21, 2008)

I'll definitely give it a go.... if I remember to.


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## pjk (Oct 26, 2008)

It is coming up soon for those of you who may have forgot or didn't see this.


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## ConnorCuber (Oct 26, 2008)

Aw... my province isn't affected by DST


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## macky (Oct 28, 2008)

There's an error with the submission form. It was working fine when Lucas made it for me last year, so I'm not sure what's wrong now. I'm not learning PHP in three days, so if the problem persists, please email the result to smakisumi @ gmail. Sorry for the inconvenience.

-macky


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## pjk (Oct 28, 2008)

macky said:


> There's an error with the submission form. It was working fine when Lucas made it for me last year, so I'm not sure what's wrong now. I'm not learning PHP in three days, so if the problem persists, please email the result to smakisumi @ gmail. Sorry for the inconvenience.
> 
> -macky


Macky, if you send me what you have so far I can look over it and try fixing it for you. I may be a server-side issue as well if it worked fine last year.


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## Lucas Garron (Oct 28, 2008)

pjk said:


> macky said:
> 
> 
> > There's an error with the submission form. It was working fine when Lucas made it for me last year, so I'm not sure what's wrong now. I'm not learning PHP in three days, so if the problem persists, please email the result to smakisumi @ gmail. Sorry for the inconvenience.
> ...


It's a matter of having the right files in the dir. I sent him the files again, and hopefully he'll be able to fix it.


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## pjk (Oct 28, 2008)

Lucas Garron said:


> pjk said:
> 
> 
> > macky said:
> ...


Ah, okay, glad to hear it.


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## macky (Oct 31, 2008)

I had all the files. Still not fixed.

Warning: fopen(negative_speed.html) [function.fopen]: failed to open
stream: Permission denied in
/home/macky/public_html/negative/negative.php on line 45

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in
/home/macky/public_html/negative/negative.php on line 46

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in
/home/macky/public_html/negative/negative.php on line 47

Warning: fopen(negative_dump.html) [function.fopen]: failed to open
stream: Permission denied in
/home/macky/public_html/negative/negative.php on line 49

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in
/home/macky/public_html/negative/negative.php on line 50

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in
/home/macky/public_html/negative/negative.php on line 51

Any idea?


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## macky (Oct 31, 2008)

I've relinked to a copy of the submission page on Lucas's site (http://cube.garron.us/misc/negative_time/negative_form.html), and that one's working fine. Remember, DST ends on Sunday at 2am, meaning Saturday night! Again, the contest's main page is
http://cubefreak.net/negative.html

Enjoy,
-macky


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## Mike Hughey (Nov 2, 2008)

I'm getting ready; in a few hours I'll be working on a 7 cube multi. It's been a while since I've gotten 100% - I hope this can be a good one.


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## macky (Nov 2, 2008)

Good luck, Mike! It's only a few hours now. I'm hoping to see a lot of participants!


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## pjk (Nov 2, 2008)

I plan on doing it, should be awesome.


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## JBCM627 (Nov 2, 2008)

Am I the only person to have submitted a time so far? Or is the script not working on Lucas's site too?

Also, can I see the results page again without having to resubmit the form?


@Macky, its kind of late, but: it looks like you just need to make "negative_speed.html" and "negative_dump.html" read/writable


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## macky (Nov 2, 2008)

No, so far 5 people have submitted.


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## Jason Baum (Nov 2, 2008)

I submitted my result, but I'm not sure if it went though. I kept getting an error message. Macky, can you check this for me? If you didn't get anything I'll just e-mail it to you.


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## macky (Nov 2, 2008)

JBCM627 said:


> Also, can I see the results page again without having to resubmit the form?



Sorry, I don't want to use up Lucas's bandwidth without permission.



JBCM627 said:


> @Macky, its kind of late, but: it looks like you just need to make "negative_speed.html" and "negative_dump.html" read/writable


How would I do that?
(...wait, but then you know how to find the results anyway.)


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## macky (Nov 2, 2008)

Jason Baum said:


> I submitted my result, but I'm not sure if it went though. I kept getting an error message. Macky, can you check this for me? If you didn't get anything I'll just e-mail it to you.



I received the result. Nice time!


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## Hadley4000 (Nov 2, 2008)

-55.31 on megaminx  I even managed to video tape it


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## JBCM627 (Nov 2, 2008)

macky said:


> JBCM627 said:
> 
> 
> > @Macky, its kind of late, but: it looks like you just need to make "negative_speed.html" and "negative_dump.html" read/writable
> ...


Not sure, right-click and properties? chmod 777 path/file? Depends how you access the server/what kind of server it is.



macky said:


> (...wait, but then you know how to find the results anyway.)


Good point.
Results! http://cube.garron.us/misc/negative_time/negative_dump.html
(Lucas, you may smite me if you don't want this URL up.)


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## macky (Nov 2, 2008)

Well, it's a small file.

Got it. Right clicking in FileZilla brings up permissions. Thanks. I'll keep this in mind for next year.


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## Mike Hughey (Nov 2, 2008)

How very disappointing.

4/7 = 1 point, -12:46.12.

Cubes 2 and 6 were off by 3 edges; cube 7 was off by 2 corners and 2 edges. On 2 and 6, I had cases where I use commutators instead of M2 for edges, and I cycled them both the wrong direction, in exactly the same way.  (I hope I never make THAT mistake again!) On cube 7 I had mismatched parity memorized; I guessed that two corners were wrong, but the truth was that I got an edge wrong.

Oh well, even without the time change, it was a pretty good time for me. At least it wasn't a DNF (by competition standards).


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## macky (Nov 2, 2008)

Aww, too bad. Better luck next year.

I'm going to sleep. Maybe there will be a lot of participants on the west coast, but in the eastern zone it's a relatively poor showing this year.


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## Fobo911 (Nov 2, 2008)

-59 min. 40.05 seconds.


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## Lucas Garron (Nov 2, 2008)

JBCM627 said:


> Good point.
> Results! http://cube.garron.us/misc/negative_time/negative_dump.html
> (Lucas, you may smite me if you don't want this URL up.)


Prepare to be DEVASTATED!

Uh, I don't really care if anybody looks up that page (or uses the puny bandwidth). It's just badly formatted, has a broken table, and I think it's nice not to see the results until they're all submitted. 

Also see http://cube.garron.us/misc/negative_time/negative_speed.html, http://cube.garron.us/misc/negative_time/negative_BLD.html, and http://cube.garron.us/misc/negative_time/negative_other.html


EDIT: Note, I had thought Macky's site wasn't working because the files weren't there (hence couldn't be accessed). Other than that, I couldn't think of anything else to fix, since it worked last year.


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## DavidWoner (Nov 2, 2008)

-59:43.94

i was stupid and first submitted it as -00:16.06. then I performed poor math and resubmitted as -59:45.92. god I feel dumb right now. please forgive me, last night was very wild and I am going on very little sleep.

on a side note(or is it on topic?), did anyone else think that this was an easy scramble? I had a 29 move f2l with a lot of easy cases, and then a super fast LL.

looking back I did quite a few rotations, not including the one before solving, they totaled y x2 x2 x2 x x z (U+d). they did really interfere though, i guess that the tradeoff involved with f2l on left.

spoiler if anyone hasnt done it yet
scrambled with white on top, green on front, did yellow cross
cross: z2 R r U r2 y R2 U2 (6)
1st pair: R U' R U x2 U' R U (13)
2nd: x2 U R2 U2 R' U (18)
3rd: x2 R U R' U' (22)
4th: x U' R U R' x U R' U' (29)
OLL: z f R U R' U' R U R' U' f' (39)
PLL: (U+d) R U' R U R U R U' R' U' R2 (52)


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## Fobo911 (Nov 2, 2008)

Vault312 said:


> -50:45.92
> 
> i was stupid and first submitted it as -00:16.08. please forgive me, last night was very wild and I am going on very little sleep.
> 
> ...



Yeah, the cross was very easy for me, and my F2L for me was relatively fast as well. I also had the other U perm at the end, so I felt sexy.


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## DavidWoner (Nov 2, 2008)

What's with the slashes before apostrophes on the results page? Also can we please get rid of my first two 3x3 submissions, they make me feel bad.


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## macky (Nov 2, 2008)

Temporary results are up! Vault312, I've edited out your first two submissions (but I used the comment from your first submission).

If I missed someone's result, let me know. I'll check again later to see if there are new results.


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## Lucas Garron (Nov 2, 2008)

Vault312 said:


> What's with the slashes before apostrophes on the results page? Also can we please get rid of my first two 3x3 submissions, they make me feel bad.


Just wondering, how did you do a 16sec 3x3x3 around a 9.xx clock?


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## DavidWoner (Nov 2, 2008)

Lucas Garron said:


> Vault312 said:
> 
> 
> > What's with the slashes before apostrophes on the results page? Also can we please get rid of my first two 3x3 submissions, they make me feel bad.
> ...



I guess I didn't. Good lord I should have taken a nap before doing this.


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## macky (Nov 3, 2008)

I think the results are pretty much final now.

http://www.cubefreak.net/negative.html#results

There were 42 participants representing 6 countries (plus Smerbia). Of these, 2 participated in Europe and the rest were from North America. This is the largest turn out ever for this annual event, now in its fifth year! Here are the top 3's for 3x3:

*3x3 Speedsolve*
Jason Baum / USA / -59 minutes, 49.43 seconds / I did ZBF2L and ended with this ZBLL case: F R U' R' U' R U' L U' R' U L' U2 F'

Jun Hyuk Kim / USA / -59 minutes, 48.20 seconds / ahaha, that was fun, but i got in trouble by my parents :S

Stefan Huber / Austria / -59 minutes, 46.91 seconds / not really good (bad PLL recognition), but better than last year 

More:
Felix Lee was the only person to successfully solve a 3x3 blindfolded, with a time of -54 minutes, 53 seconds.

Two people, Michael Gottlieb and Henry Fung, solved a 7x7 in negative time. Michael's winning time was -54 minutes, 18.78 seconds.

Mike Hughey got a 4/7 for multiBLD in -12 minutes, 46.12 seconds. Major props for trying this, and if you try again next year, I hope to see a 100% !

Thanks to all participants, and to Lucas Garron for the submission script. That was fun!

Best,
-macky


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## shelley (Nov 3, 2008)

Ack, noes! I was out of town, and I did do the solves (I passed out before 1am and woke up right before 2 in time to do them) but I couldn't submit it till now.

Speedsolve: 18.59 real time (-59 minutes, 41.41 seconds)
BLD: 2:02.34 real time (-57 minutes, 57.66 seconds)


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## Stefan (Nov 3, 2008)

Andrew Nelson cheated. His comment for his square-1 result says "3 cubes, all started before the timechange".

And Hadley was lucky he's so slow with megaminx (or was that intentional?).


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## qqwref (Nov 3, 2008)

Uh, isn't that what you're always supposed to do when you're doing multiple negative time solves? The way I understand it he did three negative time sq1 solves (at once) and then submitted the mean of the three negative times.


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## blade740 (Nov 3, 2008)

I'm Andrew Nelson. I started about 5 seconds before the time change. I did a U turn on two sq-1's, then picked up the third and solved it. I looked down at the time, and it was 18.XX (I put 18.99 as per generally accepted procedures). I picked up the second, and set it down by the time the timer said 41.XX. Finally, I picked up the third and solved it, finishing at 1:15.XX. I averaged the three and sumbitted that.


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## Stefan (Nov 3, 2008)

But you're not supposed to start with cubes when solving square-1 (ok, ok, so maybe it was a lame joke).


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## blade740 (Nov 3, 2008)

You don't end with cubes either, to be fair.


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## Stefan (Nov 3, 2008)

You mean width/height/depth aren't all the same? Hmm, I never measured that. And I could imagine it differs between versions.


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## blade740 (Nov 3, 2008)

On every square-1 I've seen, the diagonal cross-section is square, rather than the face of the puzzle itself. It ends up being a difference of maybe 3mm, but it's there.


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## flee135 (Nov 3, 2008)

shelley said:


> Ack, noes! I was out of town, and I did do the solves (I passed out before 1am and woke up right before 2 in time to do them) but I couldn't submit it till now.
> 
> Speedsolve: 18.59 real time (-59 minutes, 41.41 seconds)
> BLD: 2:02.34 real time (-57 minutes, 57.66 seconds)



looks like I'm not the only one with a successful BLD solve. 
I did expect more people to do it though.


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## macky (Nov 3, 2008)

Shelley, I added your results.

Stefan, so I guess there's no problem?

The only thing I need to ask about is this:



Vault312 said:


> Lucas Garron said:
> 
> 
> > Vault312 said:
> ...



Let's clearly say which solve was actually negative. It's fine to have a positive time submitted as a failed negative attempt--my 3x3 speedsolve time in 2004 was positive. All the results should be accurate to the best of your knowledge.


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## Harris Chan (Nov 3, 2008)

Competition on Saturday (Had so much fun there!) + Streph Throat = Sleep early on Saturday = No Negative time solving this year for me. Oh well.

Congrats to everyone who did it!


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## Stefan (Nov 4, 2008)

Macky: Yeah, no problem, just a weak joke gone awry.

Andrew: Gah, I'm getting old. You're right, that's the way to look at it. I should've actually remembered, I think I once pointed this out at the twistypuzzles forum myself. And forgot.


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## DavidWoner (Nov 5, 2008)

macky said:


> Shelley, I added your results.
> 
> Stefan, so I guess there's no problem?
> 
> ...



the 3x3 was the only one where I actually started before DST, the others were DNFs then I guess. I'll get it right next year...


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## Lucas Garron (Nov 5, 2008)

Vault312 said:


> macky said:
> 
> 
> > Shelley, I added your results.
> ...


Ah, good to know. Another thing to add to the form next year (I added DNF this year, hackily).


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## qqwref (Nov 5, 2008)

It's not a DNF, just a positive time solve


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