# 3x3x3 time limits?



## TioMario (Dec 18, 2009)

We all know that human beings have physical limitations. So, knowing that:
What do you think is the limit of a 3x3x3 speedsolve? We have seen Erik's and some other mind-blowing awesome cuber's times almost reaching 6 seconds.
Do you think the 6 sec barrier will be crossed and we will have sub-6 averages in the future?


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## 4Chan (Dec 18, 2009)

Yes.

EDIT: Average does sound implausible.


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## ianini (Dec 18, 2009)

I think the limit for a single solve is 6.05 or so.


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## Faz (Dec 18, 2009)

Sub 6 averages? No way.

Sub 5 (lucky) singles have already been acheived though.


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## anythingtwisty (Dec 18, 2009)

I honestly believe that any time is possible with enough practice and the right cube.


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## TioMario (Dec 18, 2009)

Sub-5...? LINK!


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## Faz (Dec 18, 2009)

Who says there is a video?

Breandan's 4.72 LL skip is in the Easy scrambles thread somewhere. I had 4.83 PLL skip but I scrambled wrong.


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## TioMario (Dec 18, 2009)

So, you don't think is possible sub-5 or sub-6 times without some luck on your side?


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## Carson (Dec 18, 2009)

Given that every possible scramble would eventually turn up... and given that eventually every possible combination of 5 scrambles would also eventually turn up... it is entirely possible that there will eventually be a competition round with 5 incredibly easy scrambles. When this happens, let's just hope that one of the "best of the best" is there and that he/she happens to very "on" during that round.


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## minsarker (Dec 18, 2009)

I honestly think sub 5 or sub 6 is possible with luck but without any luck, I dont see it happening.

Also the average is just impossible...

But who knows.


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## IamWEB (Dec 18, 2009)

This has to be method specific, because otherwise we can't predict these limits.


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## TioMario (Dec 18, 2009)

I mean, it doesn't matter what method do you use. I think that when you are at that point, the method is not relevant, the execution counts more.


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## 4Chan (Dec 18, 2009)

Some methods have a faster lower bound than other methods.


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## IamWEB (Dec 18, 2009)

This will sound really odd but: 4Chan is right.


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## Sin-H (Dec 18, 2009)

fazrulz said:


> Who says there is a video?
> 
> Breandan's 4.72 LL skip is in the Easy scrambles thread somewhere. I had 4.83 PLL skip but I scrambled wrong.


Breandan also has a full step 4.72. But it's tremendously lucky


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## Zubon (Dec 18, 2009)

Let's assume that an amazing method could be developed which allows solutions close to the optimal solution, around 20 turns. Then it would purely be up to how many TPSs you cold do. 

Assuming an amazingly fast cuber could do 6 TPS, that would allow an average of 3-4 seconds.

All we need now is someone who can find a near optimal solution within the 15s inspection time....  Anybody....? :confused:


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## Cuber3 (Dec 18, 2009)

Zubon said:


> Let's assume that an amazing method could be developed which allows solutions close to the optimal solution, around 20 turns. Then it would purely be up to how many TPSs you cold do.
> 
> Assuming an amazingly fast cuber could do 6 TPS, that would allow an average of 3-4 seconds.
> 
> All we need now is someone who can find a near optimal solution within the 15s inspection time....  Anybody....? :confused:



Well, if we plant a computer into someone's head with cube explorer loaded on it, then yes!


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## Hyprul 9-ty2 (Dec 18, 2009)

Sin-H said:


> fazrulz said:
> 
> 
> > Who says there is a video?
> ...


ARE YOU SERIOUS


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## Omniscient (Dec 18, 2009)

an the virtual cube it is possible sub 6


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## LNZ (Dec 18, 2009)

I have seen a 6.28 second solve on Youtube. So sub 6 seconds is possible. 

Given since the invention of the 3x3x3 cube, that less than 0.0001 pecent of all 4.32E19 states of the cube have been seen, I'll say sub 6 in an official WCA event will happen one day. It will take ten of thousands of events though.


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## Sin-H (Dec 18, 2009)

LNZ said:


> I have seen a 6.28 second solve on Youtube. So sub 6 seconds is possible.
> 
> Given since the invention of the 3x3x3 cube, that less than 0.0001 pecent of all 4.32E19 states of the cube have been seen, I'll say sub 6 in an official WCA event will happen one day. It will take ten of thousands of events though.


if a top guy gets a good run + LL skip, there you have it. Takes a lot of tries, though xD



Hyprul 9-ty2 said:


> Sin-H said:
> 
> 
> > fazrulz said:
> ...


yes I am serious


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## lorki3 (Dec 18, 2009)

ianini said:


> I think the limit for a single solve is 6.05 or so.[/QUO
> 
> no erik had a 4 seconds solve with a scramble got


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## Sin-H (Dec 18, 2009)

lorki3 said:


> ianini said:
> 
> 
> > I think the limit for a single solve is 6.05 or so.[/QUO
> ...


I have a 3.45 seconds solve with a scramble got.
faz did 3.27 on it.

the question is what will be done in competition...


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## Escher (Dec 18, 2009)

I don't think we will see anybody that can average better than 8 tps (the UWR for tps in solve is 8.18 with Breandans 7.21 I think), I guess that there will be people who use ZZ-ZB with say, a 44 move count on average. 
O wait, that gives us an average of 4.5s xD

I expect that somebody will hit 7-8s average in the future, but I don't think that it can go any (much) further without some _serious_ method development.


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## 4Chan (Dec 18, 2009)

ZZ-ZB is hard. )';
We need someone to get really good at it, maybe, that person could be you. 

(I think I'm the only who uses it, and I can barely eke out a sub-20 average of 5)


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## Omniscient (Dec 18, 2009)

Mark Waterman method is the fastest faster than Fridrich


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## 4Chan (Dec 18, 2009)

@Omniscient:

ಠ_ಠ


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## Pedro (Dec 18, 2009)

I don't think people will get under 9 seconds average in competition

at least not in the near future


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## Omniscient (Dec 18, 2009)

4Chan said:


> @Omniscient:
> 
> ಠ_ಠ



don't give me the look 
ps.off topic sorry


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## sz35 (Dec 20, 2009)

in my opinion the only way to avg sub 8 EVERY TIME is to learn full ZB (or ZZ+ZBLL) and to get the recognition down to less than a second. and than lucky solves can get sub 5 easily.


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## KwS Pall (Dec 20, 2009)

sub5? why not sub 4.99?


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## irontwig (Dec 20, 2009)

I would say that the #1 factor on how fast future cubers will be is not which method they use or how fast they can turn, but rather how many they are.


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## Tomk (Dec 20, 2009)

sz35 said:


> in my opinion the only way to avg sub 8 EVERY TIME is to learn full ZB (or ZZ+ZBLL) and to get the recognition down to less than a second. and than lucky solves can get sub 5 easily.



I don't believe that ZB makes you any faster, infact the inverse as you cannot practise the algorithms nearly as much and i would imagine the recognition in hell. I agree that the main factor will be how many very fast cubers go to competitions often.


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## gyc6001 (Dec 20, 2009)

there is absolutely no limits to the 3x3 time.
If you're lucky enough, you could get something like a 5 move solve and sub-1 is possible.


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## jms_gears1 (Dec 20, 2009)

assuming your average solve takes around 60 moves (that an average solve for people right?)

at 10 tps you could get ~6 second solves constantly, however i want to see anyone be able to do 10 tps...


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## adimare (Dec 20, 2009)




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## Athefre (Dec 20, 2009)

jms_gears1 said:


> assuming your average solve takes around 60 moves (that an average solve for people right?)
> 
> at 10 tps you could get ~6 second solves constantly, however i want to see anyone be able to do 10 tps...



Maybe 60 moves for Fridrich and Petrus. But I was averaging somewhere around 45 moves when I was using "Roux".


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## Cyrus C. (Dec 20, 2009)

adimare said:


>



That was prepared.


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## miniGOINGS (Dec 20, 2009)

sz35 said:


> in my opinion the only way to avg sub 8 EVERY TIME is to learn full ZB (or ZZ+ZBLL) and to get the *recognition* down to less than a second. and than lucky solves can get sub 5 easily.



For a second there I thought you said "inspection".


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## 4Chan (Dec 20, 2009)

Uhhh, ZZ+ZBLL.... hmmm, sub-5 average with that method would be tough.
REALLLLYYYY TOUGH. 

I was thinking the lower bound to be 7 or 8.

Also, Tomk, you have no idea how ZBLL is recognized, do you?
I mean, looking at an OLL case, and then 4 stickers is really hard. D:

Or even recognizing edge cycles!
That's as hard as determining a U, Z, H perm, and knowing if it's clockwise or counter-clockwise! D:

ZZ+ZBLL is a really good method. 
It just needs someone to be good at it, I'm not exaggerating when I say that 40-50 move solves can be achieved on average.


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## miniGOINGS (Dec 20, 2009)

4Chan said:


> Also, Tomk, you have no idea how ZBLL is recognized, do you?
> I mean, looking at an OLL case, and then 4 stickers is really hard. D:
> Or even recognizing edge cycles!



Do you know of any good ZBLL recognition tutorials?


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## 4Chan (Dec 20, 2009)

Only the text from Jason Baum's site.
It explains his notation on how to learn the cases.

I remember a thread in which hyperorientation can be used to recognition too. It had pretty pictures of 12 cases.

I can grasp the concept, but I don't think I'll learn that method, too much work to break old habits.


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## miniGOINGS (Dec 20, 2009)

4Chan said:


> Only the text from Jason Baum's site.
> It explains his notation on how to learn the cases.



I love text tuts...


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## adimare (Dec 20, 2009)

Cyrus C. said:


> That was prepared.



I'm aware. I think sub-6 averages won't happen because of the time needed to recognize and process patterns in the cube. I think training to reduce this time takes much longer than training to actually perform the turns.

The turns per second some of you guys are actually getting are much higher than what one would think because when you calculate them (amount of turns / time it took to solve the cube) the amount of time it took to solve the cube includes the pattern recognition. I'm pretty sure faz for instance actually turns at around 9 tps, which would make sub-6 averages a piece of cake if it weren't for the pattern recognition.


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## Cyrus C. (Dec 20, 2009)

adimare said:


> Cyrus C. said:
> 
> 
> > That was prepared.
> ...



Pattern recognition can be solved with one simple thing. *LOOKAHEAD*


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## jms_gears1 (Dec 20, 2009)

Cyrus C. said:


> adimare said:
> 
> 
> > Cyrus C. said:
> ...



umm if your turning at 9 moves per second, i dont think look-ahead is exactly practical....

when people tell you to look ahead its usually in conjunction with slow down..


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## adimare (Dec 20, 2009)

Cyrus C. said:


> Pattern recognition can be solved with one simple thing. *LOOKAHEAD*



If pattern recognition time could completely be eliminated with lookahead there would be no diference between the times of prepared and regular solves.


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## Cyrus C. (Dec 20, 2009)

adimare said:


> Cyrus C. said:
> 
> 
> > Pattern recognition can be solved with one simple thing. *LOOKAHEAD*
> ...



Exactly.


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## TioMario (Dec 20, 2009)

The human brain needs 0.1s to get the visual image, think what to do, and send an order to the muscles. If you have full muscle memory, you don't think what are you doing when you are executing algorithms, so the only thing that matters is recognition time.

*Using Fridrich as an example*, the fastest way to solve a cube is using 6 algorithms, 4 for F2L and 2 for LL. Why using algs for F2L?. Well, if you do intuitive F2L, your times will be conditioned by your recognition (we are thinking what would happen in a perfectly fast solve).

So, nowadays, the fastest cubers can execute some algorithms in less than a second, more or less. Let's just say that our perfect cuber can do all of them all ~0.90s each. And the cross, he could make it in less than a second too right? let's give him an avg of 0.9s.

[6 algs*0.90s] + [6 algs*0.1s] + 0.9s = 6.9s
(So our perfect cuber is able to have 6.9s non-lucky solves with no effort using Fridrich)

If he has an easy scramble, xcross, OLL or PLL skips... damn.

All in all, I think we are reaching the 3x3x3 time limit for the Fridrich method at least.


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## Cyrus C. (Dec 20, 2009)

More like 6.3, they can look ahead & recognize the case while doing the former step.


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## miniGOINGS (Dec 20, 2009)

Wait... your saying that the LL would take 1.8 seconds? PLL time attack should theoretically be 18.9 seconds then, because it requires no recog/lookahead.


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## TioMario (Dec 20, 2009)

Cyrus C. said:


> More like 6.3, they can look ahead & recognize the case while doing the former step.



Well, that's crazy fast anyway...



miniGOINGS said:


> Wait... your saying that the LL would take 1.8 seconds? PLL time attack should theoretically be 18.9 seconds then, because it requires no recog/lookahead.



Remember he's a perfect cuber, he has no girlfriend, friends, job, etc.


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## Cyrus C. (Dec 20, 2009)

miniGOINGS said:


> Wait... your saying that the LL would take 1.8 seconds? PLL time attack should theoretically be 18.9 seconds then, because it requires no recog/lookahead.



Probably a bit more than that, they'd need to have lots of endurance to go at that pace for 18.9 seconds.


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## Tyrannous (Dec 20, 2009)

averages id say only able to get like 6.5secs, i mean it would be harder to get any faster lol imho


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## miniGOINGS (Dec 20, 2009)

Cyrus C. said:


> miniGOINGS said:
> 
> 
> > Wait... your saying that the LL would take 1.8 seconds? PLL time attack should theoretically be 18.9 seconds then, because it requires no recog/lookahead.
> ...



Still, about how many moves is a PLL time attack, give or take?



TioMario said:


> Remember he's a perfect cuber, he has no girlfriend, friends, job, etc.



Sounds like me...


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## Cyrus C. (Dec 20, 2009)

miniGOINGS said:


> Cyrus C. said:
> 
> 
> > miniGOINGS said:
> ...



Around 125-175.



miniGOINGS said:


> TioMario said:
> 
> 
> > Remember he's a perfect cuber, he has no girlfriend, friends, job, etc.
> ...



Apart from the perfect cuber part.


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## miniGOINGS (Dec 20, 2009)

Cyrus C. said:


> miniGOINGS said:
> 
> 
> > Still, about how many moves is a PLL time attack, give or take?
> ...



That's only about 6 to 9 TPS depending on your number of moves.



Cyrus C. said:


> miniGOINGS said:
> 
> 
> > TioMario said:
> ...



Ouch...


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## TioMario (Dec 20, 2009)

miniGOINGS said:


> Cyrus C. said:
> 
> 
> > miniGOINGS said:
> ...



LMAO


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## Cyrus C. (Dec 20, 2009)

miniGOINGS said:


> Ouch...




Jeez your repetitive, you said that last time I zinged you.


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## miniGOINGS (Dec 21, 2009)

Cyrus C. said:


> miniGOINGS said:
> 
> 
> > Ouch...
> ...



Really? Let me check.


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## CitricAcid (Dec 21, 2009)

Hmm.....
Considering how far we've come in 20 years cubing wise,

I think in the future we will reach sub 6 averages.

Seriously.


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## PatrickJameson (Dec 21, 2009)

adimare said:


> Cyrus C. said:
> 
> 
> > Pattern recognition can be solved with one simple thing. *LOOKAHEAD*
> ...



Not necessarily. Prepared solves can also include finding alternative solutions to make the solve easier.


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## jms_gears1 (Dec 21, 2009)

PatrickJameson said:


> adimare said:
> 
> 
> > Cyrus C. said:
> ...



either way lookahead requires, slower TPS...


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## LewisJ (Dec 21, 2009)

TioMario, I disagree with 0.1 seconds for recog/transition time. A very very good human reaction time is 0.12 seconds - as in, you're sitting there highly alert waiting for something to happen and when it does you pinch your fingers or slap a button or something like that. Cubers often regrip between algorithms and can't recognize as fast as you want to believe. Of course there is lookahead but I doubt lookahead can cancel out regrip and reactions being slower than you think to make for 0.1 seconds between each step.

And PLL time attack is a good bit more than 175 moves.


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## Cyrus C. (Dec 21, 2009)

Oh man I'm an idiot, it's more like 200-300 moves.


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## Zarxrax (Dec 21, 2009)

CitricAcid said:


> Hmm.....
> Considering how far we've come in 20 years cubing wise,
> 
> I think in the future we will reach sub 6 averages.
> ...



Eh? Cubing was basically dead with no real improvement for like 20 years.


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## guitardude7241 (Dec 21, 2009)

*Click on the happy face to get a rating for this thread.*

-->  <--​


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## TioMario (Dec 21, 2009)

LewisJ said:


> TioMario, I disagree with 0.1 seconds for recog/transition time. A very very good human reaction time is 0.12 seconds - as in, you're sitting there highly alert waiting for something to happen and when it does you pinch your fingers or slap a button or something like that. Cubers often regrip between algorithms and can't recognize as fast as you want to believe. Of course there is lookahead but I doubt lookahead can cancel out regrip and reactions being slower than you think to make for 0.1 seconds between each step.
> 
> And PLL time attack is a good bit more than 175 moves.



Well, that's what biology says, and my analysis was pure therory.
Noone can tell something about what's going to happen in 5-10 years of cubing improvement like new methods... bionic arms lol.



guitardude7241 said:


> *Click on the happy face to get a rating for this thread.*
> 
> -->  <--​



That isn't even original --> Original post

Go find your own ideas !


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## mrbiggs (Dec 21, 2009)

Is there a limit on how low 3x3x3 times will get?


For single times, the limit doesn't exist. How low times get is influenced in large part by how lucky the solve is.

Average of 5 is better, but IMO suffers from the same problem. It's not very likely that you'll get three-four OLL skips in a row (or some such), but it only takes one world-class cuber to do so and suddenly you've got a very low ave5 WR on your hands. Honestly this isn't a problem yet, but if cubing sticks around for another 50 years we're going to see lucky averages come up much more often.

On the other hand, there's definitely a limit on how low times will get. We're just not there yet. We'll know when we are, as we'll start seeing WR times beaten by smaller and smaller increments, and WRs will start to get less common. They'll also start to get more lucky, which ties in with my paragraph above.

I think it's important to look at older, more established contests for comparison, and I think timed sporting events do a nice job. (100 meter dash, for example). Generally the world records in these events fall very quickly, then on a regular basis, then fairly rarely. Meanwhile, the amount that the records decrease by goes down. When I was in school at some point they showed me a graph of world records in some such event versus time with a best-fit curve showing how each record seemed to be getting closer and closer to some limit. I'd imagine that cubers in 50 years will be able to do so as well.

EDIT: Tried it, but couldn't get it to quite work right. (Using open office instead of excel and I'm not really familiar with it.) Looks like we don't have enough data in any case; 14 is a low number, especially since the first few are much higher than the rest and two happened on the same day. However, I'd be interested to find out if someone who's better at statistics can come up with a reasonable asymptote...


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## miniGOINGS (Dec 24, 2009)

Cyrus C. said:


> Oh man I'm an idiot, it's more like 200-300 moves.



Yea, I'm thinking like "125-175 moves for 21 PLL's equals... 6-8 turns per PLL? I really need those algorithms..."

200-300 moves is about 9.5-14 moves per PLL (depending on how you could moves). For 18.9 seconds that's 10.5-16 TPS. A tad faster than what I would think possible.


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## hawkmp4 (Dec 24, 2009)

LNZ said:


> I have seen a 6.28 second solve on Youtube. So sub 6 seconds is possible.
> 
> Given since the invention of the 3x3x3 cube, that less than 0.0001 pecent of all 4.32E19 states of the cube have been seen, I'll say sub 6 in an official WCA event will happen one day. *It will take ten of thousands of events though.*


Inverse gambler's fallacy :/
Really...There's been roughly a thousand threads on this topic. What useful information does this give us? It's all a bunch of opinions being pulled out of asses.


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