# Romania's Got Talent 2015 Final



## mitch1234 (Jun 13, 2015)

After the incident with Maxim Chechnev in Ukraine's Got Talent it is pretty shocking that a group of people used similar strategies to win the grand prize of 120,000 euros. Although the average viewer cannot tell the difference between an actual BLD solve and a CFOP'ed BLD solve it is still very frustrating that a group of people that aren't recognized as being top notch BLD solvers are getting massive recognition for their "blindfolded solving abilities".


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## newtonbase (Jun 13, 2015)

Fake mosaic too. 

I hadn't heard of Maxim before but someone this morning mentioned these guys and my YouTube search led to him. Everything about him looked fake too beyond a 3BLD ability. 8BLD on stage? Really?


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## theROUXbiksCube (Jun 13, 2015)

Wow this is pathetic and weasly just for 12K Euros, albiet a great prize.


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## timeless (Jun 13, 2015)

wow thats embarassing


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## SirWaffle (Jun 13, 2015)

It's a shame that an act like this wins when a legit act like Rami's didnt even make the next round :/


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## Deleted member 19792 (Jun 13, 2015)

It is pretty obvious that most of these Xyzs Got Talent cubing acts are fake. There are very few that aren't (i.e Rami and the kid who did OH and Feet at the same time). 

Stupid.


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## Praetorian (Jun 13, 2015)

pathetic degenerates


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## bubbagrub (Jun 13, 2015)

Sorry for being dense, but how do we think they're doing this? It doesn't look like they're looking through / under the blindfolds, so have they memorised CFOP solves for each cube? That seems even harder than doing it the normal BLD way... Or do they do some kind of switcheroo whereby they each get to do the one cube for which they've memorised a CFOP solve? I have a feeling I'm missing something obvious here...


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## Antonie faz fan (Jun 13, 2015)

who cares, the are nubs, the probably watched chris's tutorial.


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## Mollerz (Jun 13, 2015)

This thread disgusts me, your responses are not thought out at all and none of you understand what this helps, you are a backwards hivemind. They are not pathetic, they are not degenerates, it's not embarrassing. This thread is.

Firstly, the prize is 120,000€, quite a significant portion more than has been said before. There is certainly a lot of preparation gone into this, as shown by the quote below. Who cares if it's not the way we conduct solves at competition, this is still an impressive feat, and on top of all this, they have to do it live in front of a big audience, with millions watching, and they full well know that. They did a lot of work to win a national talent show. They did not lie to anyone, they tell everybody exactly what they are doing prior to doing it. They aren't trying to promote speedcubing and WCA competitions, let me repeat, *they are trying to win*. Next, this is great for speedcubing, a lot of people will see this and get into cubing as a result. When people get into it, if they get into it, they will see how these guys did it and understand. They won't bash our community for falsely advertising our abilities.



> From my basic knowledge of romanian, they presented 100 scrambled cubes, which they memorized before the program. They basically started by explaining what was involved in the memorization of a rubik's cube and what it takes to memorize the information for 100 cubes. Then they asked the judges for 4 random cubes of that set. 2 were then solved normally, and one was made to match the final one that was chosen.
> 
> The blind number was quite the high risk for live television and it must have taken a lot of preparation work, but it paid off in the end. Hopefully will attract more people to cubing over there, and I am happy the judges and/or the audience decided to award it.



Can't you just be happy for members of our community, sharing our hobby on a national scale, and ultimately winning?


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## bubbagrub (Jun 13, 2015)

Based on what I have seen so far, I agree, Mollerz: I can't see how they did what they did without it involving immense amounts of preparation and significant skills. Not to mention showmanship and balls, which goes a long way.


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## OrigamiCuber1 (Jun 13, 2015)

So these guys memorised a bunch of scrambles before hand? I don't see how that is bad. Isn't that Essentially multi blind but picking a random cube.


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## Tyler Comfy Hat (Jun 13, 2015)

I was going to say something along the lines of what Mollerz said, but I was too much of a wimp to speak up. 

But yeah, while they may not have BLD solved the way one traditionally would, that wasn't really what they were trying to show off. What they were trying to do was show off their memorisation skills. Think about it, they memorised the solutions to 100 differently scrambled cubes (Unless you wanna argue that the judges were in on it, and picked the only three that they could do, but nah), as well as how to get them to match the other scrambled states. And I'd say it takes a pretty hefty memory to pull that off. 

You _could_ argue that it's a bit unfair that they made over 100k in cash from this when most competitive cubers barely make anything from it, but eh, life's unfair, what can you do?


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## tseitsei (Jun 13, 2015)

Tyler Comfy Hat said:


> I was going to say something along the lines of what Mollerz said, but I was too much of a wimp to speak up.
> 
> But yeah, while they may not have BLD solved the way one traditionally would, that wasn't really what they were trying to show off. What they were trying to do was show off their memorisation skills. Think about it, they memorised the solutions to 100 differently scrambled cubes (Unless you wanna argue that the judges were in on it, and picked the only three that they could do, but nah), as well as how to get them to match the other scrambled states. And I'd say it takes a pretty hefty memory to pull that off.
> 
> You _could_ argue that it's a bit unfair that they made over 100k in cash from this when most competitive cubers barely make anything from it, but eh, life's unfair, what can you do?



It doesn't take any special memorization skills to memorize 100+ cubes if you have UNLIMITED time as they practically had... Whole BLD and MBLD solving is about memorizing cubes as fast as possible...


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## TheSeppomania (Jun 13, 2015)

Perhaps some of the scrambles exists multiple times scrambled on different sites, so there were only 10 different scrambles, or even less.


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## cashis (Jun 13, 2015)

tseitsei said:


> It doesn't take any special memorization skills to memorize 100+ cubes if you have UNLIMITED time as they practically had... Whole BLD and MBLD solving is about memorizing cubes as fast as possible...



no offense but id like to see you do it, then execute in front of a large audience live. their feat is impressive, period.



Tyler Comfy Hat said:


> You _could_ argue that it's a bit unfair that they made over 100k in cash from this when most competitive cubers barely make anything from it, but eh, life's unfair, what can you do?



nobody's stopping maskow from going on one of these shows and doing like a billion cubes with unlimited time. as cubers we have potential to do stuff like this.


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## Tyler Comfy Hat (Jun 13, 2015)

cashis said:


> in front of a large audience live.


Not to mention that it'd be on national television. I don't know about anyone else here, but I'd (metaphorically) crap myself if I knew a particularly big portion of my country were watching me cube, wondering how they'd react if I completely messed it up.


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## ryanj92 (Jun 13, 2015)

cashis said:


> nobody's stopping maskow from going on one of these shows and doing like a billion cubes with unlimited time. as cubers we have potential to do stuff like this.



maskow has done one of these shows already


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## FJT97 (Jun 13, 2015)

good point sepp.

and if it was like that, t wasn't something better than this ukrainian guy did.


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## BboyArchon (Jun 13, 2015)

cashis said:


> nobody's stopping maskow from going on one of these shows and doing like a billion cubes with unlimited time. as cubers we have potential to do stuff like this.


Indeed, he went to Poland Got Talent and reached the final (iirc)

And I think same as Mollerz, to the last point of his post.


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## Stefan (Jun 13, 2015)

Mollerz said:


> they tell everybody exactly what they are doing prior to doing it.



They told everybody that the cubes weren't properly randomly scrambled but set up in a special way, with scrambles pretty much all being the same? Are you sure?


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## Mollerz (Jun 13, 2015)

Stefan said:


> They told everybody that the cubes weren't properly randomly scrambled but set up in a special way, with scrambles related to each other? Are you sure?



I don't understand what point you are trying to make.


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## antoineccantin (Jun 14, 2015)

Mollerz said:


> I don't understand what point you are trying to make.



All the cubes were apparently scrambled the same (if you look at Stefan's picture). He's making a point that they didn't mention that, and made it sound like they were all differently scrambled.


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## Stefan (Jun 14, 2015)

Mollerz said:


> I don't understand what point you are trying to make.



I'm asking you whether they really did tell everybody that they didn't memorize 100 independently scrambled cubes but that they memorized only 1 solution and some scheme to make the scrambles look different. Because I don't understand Romanian and apparently you do.

I btw updated the picture from better spots.


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## theROUXbiksCube (Jun 14, 2015)

Stefan said:


> I'm asking you whether they really did tell everybody that they didn't memorize 100 independently scrambled cubes but that they memorized only 1 solution and some scheme to make the scrambles look different. Because I don't understand Romanian and apparently you do.
> 
> I btw updated the picture from better spots.



You can also see this because in the beginning they were the same scramble but in different orientations with x y or z random rotations to seem like each scramble was different, tricking the crowd.


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## cashis (Jun 14, 2015)

oh. disregard my previous post. new evidence changes my mind. 
lol this is some crap.


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## Stefan (Jun 14, 2015)

theROUXbiksCube said:


> in the beginning they were the same scramble but in different orientations with x y or z random rotations



No they weren't. Please don't water down the actual evidence with your fabrications.


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## theROUXbiksCube (Jun 14, 2015)

Stefan said:


> No they weren't. Please don't water down the actual evidence with your fabrications.



Sorry I dun goof'd on your amazing speculations. (((
But yeah, they were legit scrambled  i didn't see some patterns on the other side.


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## Stefan (Jun 14, 2015)

theROUXbiksCube said:


> But yeah, they were legit scrambled



What the...? You just went from one wrong end to the opposite wrong end.


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## Mollerz (Jun 14, 2015)

Stefan said:


> I'm asking you whether they really did tell everybody that they didn't memorize 100 independently scrambled cubes but that they memorized only 1 solution and some scheme to make the scrambles look different. Because I don't understand Romanian and apparently you do.
> 
> I btw updated the picture from better spots.



To be honest I don't know, I don't speak Romanian, this is from information I have been given. Either way I don't think they need to disclose that information. Is the act solving 3 randomly chosen cubes from random scrambles, no, of course they prepared it, we know that, the public doesn't need to know it.


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## Stefan (Jun 14, 2015)

Mollerz said:


> To be honest I don't know, I don't speak Romanian, this is from information I have been given. Either way I don't think they need to disclose that information. Is the act solving 3 randomly chosen cubes from random scrambles, no, of course they prepared it, we know that, the public doesn't need to know it.



Well if they didn't say that but pretended the cubes to be properly scrambled, then I consider both your _"They did not lie to anyone"_ and your _"they tell everybody exactly what they are doing"_ to be wrong.

Btw, found them, they're actually pretty good speedsolvers, just not good blindsolvers:
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/p.php?i=2012GLON01
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/p.php?i=2013FRON01
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/p.php?i=2010LEAN02
Names from here.


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## theROUXbiksCube (Jun 14, 2015)

Stefan said:


> What the...? *You just went from one wrong end to the opposite wrong end.*



Orrrr I meant the cubes other than the 3 used for memorizing? 
Context Clues


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## qqwref (Jun 14, 2015)

Mollerz said:


> Can't you just be happy for members of our community, sharing our hobby on a national scale, and ultimately winning?


These are not members of OUR community, and if they are, they should be permanently banned. Cheating in front of an audience of thousands or millions of viewers is completely unacceptable and deals a huge amount of harm to speedcubing as a sport and an activity.


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## tseitsei (Jun 14, 2015)

cashis said:


> no offense but id like to see you do it, then execute in front of a large audience live. their feat is impressive, period.



No offense but I could easily do it if I was given a week ( or even a couple of days of preparation time)... Even if I had to do it with real random state scrambles and not cheating with different orientations like they did...

Their "feat" is a hoax designed to impress non-cubers. I hate that. That doesn't really take any real BLD solving skill. Period.

Also this is very good post that I agree with 100%:


qqwref said:


> These are not members of OUR community, and if they are, they should be permanently banned. Cheating in front of an audience of thousands or millions of viewers is completely unacceptable and deals a huge amount of harm to speedcubing as a sport and an activity.


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## Stefan (Jun 14, 2015)

newtonbase said:


> Fake mosaic too.



What's fake about it?



theROUXbiksCube said:


> Orrrr I meant the cubes other than the 3 used for memorizing?



What memorizing? And why do you distinguish the three used ones from the rest? I have no doubt that they didn't know beforehand which cubes the judges would pick.

Here's another picture. I framed all cubes in that shot showing the same yellow+green+yellow middle stripe. You can also see that five of them additionally had that red+white+yellow stripe. But the third stripe was never the same. I suspect that all cubes were at most a handful of setup moves away from the one main scramble and that they used some simple rules for the setup moves.








Mollerz said:


> > ... They basically started by explaining what was involved in the memorization of a rubik's cube and what it takes to memorize the information for 100 cubes ...


Oh, I previously missed this as I didn't realize it's not a quote from this thread. Now I'm wondering what they said what was involved in the memorization of a rubik's cube and what it takes to memorize the information for 100 cubes.


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## cashis (Jun 14, 2015)

tseitsei said:


> No offense but I could easily do it if I was given a week ( or even a couple of days of preparation time)... Even if I had to do it with real random state scrambles and not cheating with different orientations like they did...
> 
> Their "feat" is a hoax designed to impress non-cubers. I hate that. That doesn't really take any real BLD solving skill. Period.



I agree with the second part, but I still think its harder than you think. Or maybe thats just me.
Now, there's evidence to support that they didnt even have 100 scrambles... So, yeah. Sorry


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## tseitsei (Jun 14, 2015)

cashis said:


> I agree with the second part, but I still think its harder than you think. Or maybe thats just me.
> Now, there's evidence to support that they didnt even have 100 scrambles... So, yeah. Sorry



Yeah.. They didn't have 100 different scrambles and even if they did... competent MBLD solver can memorize 20 cubes in an hour quite easily. So memorizing 100 random scrambles in a week is much easier than you actually think...


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## josh42732 (Jun 14, 2015)

Oh my gosh, people we have the best community on the planet, and we are just throwing it away over some solves that may or may not have been fake. Regardless of mine or your position, we should not let a trick/feat tear us apart! Let's just not reply to this thread and forget about it altogether. They may have put a bad name to the cubing community and made fun of BLD solvers, but remember that we are here for each other and that they are too apart of this community and we should congratulate them on not making a fool out of themselves. I'm sorry MBLD solvers for being offended by this video, but there are people out there who do this kind of stuff. This instance just so happen to be viral, and be on T.V.


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## Nuster (Jun 14, 2015)

How did they realistically harm the cubing community(this one or any other)? 
The public has no idea about proper vs fake BLD solves, in their eyes they are indistinguishable and equally incredible.
If this will bring more attention to speedcubing, why not? Ultimately, it's not like they were obligated in any way to adhere to WCA regulations for that show.
Whether or not to prepare those solves was their choice, and as actual speedcubers they didn't attempt to claim any official recognition from the WCA(or MBLD-ers).


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## noobium (Jun 14, 2015)

My only problem is that they didn't memorize 100 cubes like they presumably claimed. Instead, They scrabled 100 cubes the same way(probly their biggest accomplishment in this story) and then did a few setup moves matching each number(for example first digit is number of sexymove and second is number of hammerhead move to get back to the single scramble) making it super easy to go from a set-up to another or solving the cube. I dont think the cubing community will be affected negatively by that, but I am sure the judges would feel betrayed and be very disappointed that they give away so much money for a magic trick.


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## DeeDubb (Jun 14, 2015)

I think it's important to distinguish between competitive cubing and presentation cubing. This is presentation cubing. Like the stuff Steven Brundage does, or the stuff Anthony Brooks seems to be delving into. This is like pro wrestling while our competitions are like MMA.

We can't judge these based on the degree of "cheating" that is involved, but rather the impact on the intended audience. We are absolutely NOT the people this presentation was intended to impress.


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## qqwref (Jun 14, 2015)

Stefan said:


> Here's another picture. I framed all cubes in that shot showing the same yellow+green+yellow middle stripe. You can also see that five of them additionally had that red+white+yellow stripe. But the third stripe was never the same. I suspect that all cubes were at most a handful of setup moves away from the one main scramble and that they used some simple rules for the setup moves.


Nice detective work, this makes a lot of sense. So the cubes are in different positions, but just a short sequence (maybe a trigger or two) from the main scramble that they have probably practiced many times.



DeeDubb said:


> I think it's important to distinguish between competitive cubing and presentation cubing. This is presentation cubing. Like the stuff Steven Brundage does, or the stuff Anthony Brooks seems to be delving into. This is like pro wrestling while our competitions are like MMA.
> 
> We can't judge these based on the degree of "cheating" that is involved, but rather the impact on the intended audience. We are absolutely NOT the people this presentation was intended to impress.


Sure, it's entirely possible to make a performance involving cubing (although I think what Steven Brundage does is closer to using a cube as a prop in a magic trick). You can certainly show off some legitimate cubing-related skills. The problem here is that it's like pro wrestling where the audience doesn't know it's fake - you make people think you have done some very impressive and difficult thing, but in fact it's just an illusion and you have cheated your way there. Then someone will see this, and then watch a real cuber like Maskow or Oliver Frost or Kevin Hays do a solve, and wonder why they're so slow and bad at it. "But I saw a guy do it in under a minute on TV, and he wasn't even trying that hard..."


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## Tim Major (Jun 14, 2015)

qqwref said:


> These are not members of OUR community, and if they are, they should be permanently banned. Cheating in front of an audience of thousands or millions of viewers is completely unacceptable and deals a huge amount of harm to speedcubing as a sport and an activity.



You keep hating whilst they just pocketed 120k Euros. To a non-cuber, how is this different from normal bld solving? What harm can it possibly deal


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## TheSeppomania (Jun 14, 2015)

qqwref said:


> Nice detective work, this makes a lot of sense. So the cubes are in different positions, but just a short sequence (maybe a trigger or two) from the main scramble that they have probably practiced many times.


Thats just what i said at the beginning and thx for Stefan for the picture, i hadn't enough time today to look for a picture on my own.

What the problem is in my opinion, that people think they needn't memorize a puzzle to blind solve it and don't see the real difficulty of Bld, the MEMORIZATION.


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## Nuster (Jun 14, 2015)

DeeDubb said:


> I think it's important to distinguish between competitive cubing and presentation cubing. This is presentation cubing.


Exactly what I was trying to say.


noobium said:


> My only problem is that they didn't memorize 100 cubes like they presumably claimed.


That's quite a presumtion. As someone that speaks Romanian I can refute it and verify that they merely explained the basics of BLD(not claiming they would solve them using BLD). 
They also said all the cubes were scrambled differently, which is also true, most likely a few setup moves were made to differentiate all the scrambles, as Stefan presumed.


noobium said:


> I am sure the judges would feel betrayed and be very disappointed that they give away so much money for a magic trick.


Funny enough you should mention a "magic trick", in 2012 a magician won the same show.


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## adimare (Jun 14, 2015)

Stefan said:


> Here's another picture. I framed all cubes in that shot showing the same yellow+green+yellow middle stripe. You can also see that five of them additionally had that red+white+yellow stripe. But the third stripe was never the same. I suspect that all cubes were at most a handful of setup moves away from the one main scramble and that they used some simple rules for the setup moves.
> 
> http://i59.tinypic.com/6sgcuh.jpg



Also notice how perpendicular to the yellow+green+yellow stripe there's usually a white+green+orange one, all the cubes where you can see the green center that don't have the y+g+y stripe do have the w+g+o one.
Silly way to fake it.

They could have done something like figure out a scramble that results in a memo with no As, Es, Rs or Us in it (so every letter can apply to a corner or edge that's not the buffer), for instance U2 R U2 B' D2 R2 L B' U' R' U L2 F2 U2 R2 L2 U B2 D L2 U (memo XN ID QW LB OH PM / GB DM TH PN) and make that cube 1, cube 2 could be setup to be solvable using the same memo but starting from the second letter (NI DQ WL BO HP MG / BD MT HP NX), etc. That simple idea produces 20 different scrambles that can be solved with a single memo and don't look so obviously suspicious, throw in some rotations based on the position of the cube and I'm sure no one would notice any pattern without spending a lot of time looking into it.


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## qqwref (Jun 14, 2015)

Tim Major said:


> You keep hating whilst they just pocketed 120k Euros. To a non-cuber, how is this different from normal bld solving? What harm can it possibly deal


Yes, they threw our community under the bus for $135000. I shouldn't have to explain this to a grown adult, but gaining money has nothing to do with moral actions - ever heard of theft or embezzlement?


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## Nuster (Jun 14, 2015)

qqwref said:


> Yes, they threw our community under the bus for $135000. I shouldn't have to explain this to a grown adult, but gaining money has nothing to do with moral actions - ever heard of theft or embezzlement?


Threw a community under the bus?
You qualify that as theft? You are quite amusing.


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## Tim Major (Jun 14, 2015)

qqwref said:


> Yes, they threw our community under the bus for $135000. I shouldn't have to explain this to a grown adult, but gaining money has nothing to do with moral actions - ever heard of theft or embezzlement?



Except they didn't, they did more for speedcubing in the PUBLIC eye than you've ever done


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## qqwref (Jun 14, 2015)

Nuster said:


> You qualify that as theft? You are quite amusing.


You misunderstand me - my point is that you can't argue that, because they came out financially ahead, they did the right thing.



Tim Major said:


> Except they didn't, they did more for speedcubing in the PUBLIC eye than you've ever done


Frankly, I don't really care about getting more people into cubing at a very low level. People who learn a beginner's method and stop mean nothing to me. I'm only interested when someone gets fast or develops something new. And besides, what you saw was not "speedsolving", it was a magic trick claiming to be BLD solving.


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## Nuster (Jun 14, 2015)

qqwref said:


> Frankly, I don't really care about getting more people into cubing at a very low level. People who learn a beginner's method and stop mean nothing to me. I'm only interested when someone gets fast or develops something new. And besides, what you saw was not "speedsolving", it was a magic trick claiming to be BLD solving.


But how can you get serious speedsolvers without first getting "more people into cubing at a very low level" first.
And like I said before, they never claimed to be solving it using a BLD method. 
I understand the audience not knowing the difference between presentation cubing and competitive cubing, but shouldn't people here know better than to "get offended" by this?


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## Tim Major (Jun 14, 2015)

qqwref said:


> Frankly, I don't really care about getting more people into cubing at a very low level. People who learn a beginner's method and stop mean nothing to me. I'm only interested when someone gets fast or develops something new. And besides, what you saw was not "speedsolving", it was a magic trick claiming to be BLD solving.



If you don't care about that why are you so outraged? This performance certainly won't decrease people getting fast or developing something new. It will even increase the amount of people getting fast and developing something new as people will likely develop interest in Rubik's cubes as a direct result


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## Radu (Jun 14, 2015)

Hi all,

I will try to clarify some things as I was directly involved in thinking this number and helped the 3 guys all the way.

First of all when we registered for RgT we did this with the purpose of spreading our hobby around, which I consider we succeeded.

I see there is some debate about this number they did in the final and the “blindfolded solving abilities”. But before this I think you should know the bigger picture. 3 years ago, Cristian Leana (the guy with longer hair) went to RgT and got 3rd place with something including also BLD solving. It was a boom in speedcubing after that show and many newcomers appeared in our community. So people were already aware of real BLD solving as the guy was later invited in several shows, corporate events etc. and became quite known. Attendance at our WCA competitions increased a lot and people realized solving a cube blindfolded is actually possible, not fake.

After 3 years the 3 guys went now to promote cubing again in a TV Show, not a WCA competition. So I think we should get out a bit of the WCA Regulations mindset, because if we follow this judgment of prepared cubes you could say that also a hand scrambled cube that is solved BLD is fake… as it’s not WCA official and that they tricked the people. Btw. even the show producers made us some suggestions if they could do this or that because they wanted more spectacular things and some of the proposals seemed way more fake. Coming back to the final number: Everyone being aware of bld solving and maybe even bored of it they had to come up with something different. And actually it was quite hard to prepare the scene, all the 100 cubes without moving them and all the small details which seem so easy on youtube.

What makes the final number different and you don’t know was the message and the story that was told. A message that was spoken while they were solving and each finished the solve in a particular moment of the story that fit so well. The judges were almost crying in the end and this final number was not about bld skills as you all think, because they already knew about bld solving. Their number won because of the story, message about education and an emotional music cut that fit well.

What they explained in the beginning (because this seems to be very debated) is that no 2 cubes on the table are the same (which is true), solving 1 BLD is memorizing ~40 numbers (which again is true) and that the brain can memorize an impressive amount of information if numbers are grouped in patterns and in a certain order (which again is actually true to what they did). Their grouped the cubes in such a way they could recall any of them. They didn’t say once they memorized each cube, but only maybe left this illusion.

Again, that being said, the show was won mostly by emotions and story than their actual cubing skills. This was what moved the people. Only watching without understanding the number as a whole and paying attention only to the technical part is misleading in this case. The judges even said they don’t really care how they did this as it was such a beautiful presentation and nobody could have believed you can transmit emotions with a cube. They were almost crying after this number (without exagerating). So this is what actually made this number win, not what you think.

Yeah, I totally see the point of some of you, but I think you are a bit to extremist about this. It’s a TV show, not a WCA competition. It’s not like they got an unfair WR.

I hope this clarifies at least a bit of the debate.

Thank you,

Radu

PS – Martin (12), the little guy, started cubing after he saw Cristian in 2012. He is now the NR holder with 8.63s and 10.03 average.


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## scylla (Jun 14, 2015)

Fantastic! They combined magic with cubing and did what other cubers didn't succeed in. Make it a show! That's why they win.

I wish I would had this idea before them


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## bubbagrub (Jun 14, 2015)

These guys are not "nubs", they're extremely fast speed solvers who found a way to turn speedsolving into something that could win a nationally televised event. They staged an amazing, spectacular show using their (unquestionable, given the links Stefan provided) skills. They didn't (as far as I can tell) lie about what they were doing, they just did something that was different from the usual WCA events we're used to, and maybe used a bit of misdirection and clever tricks to change it from something that would impress us to something that would impress the general non-cubing public.

It's not clear to me how the "tricks" they use are inferior to the tricks BLD / MBLD solvers use in competitions: the latter are an accepted part of the process, designed to achieve optimal results in a pre-defined setting. Here, they had freedom to define the setting, and came up with the right set of tricks to make things work in that setting.

Surely it's also clear that this win in no way harms our community: I am pretty confident that there is no member of the public who saw that show and said to themselves "Hah! What a bunch of fakers. My respect for the speedcubing community is way down". It can only have had a positive effect, and should be, if you ask me, applauded.


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## TimMc (Jun 14, 2015)

Radu said:


> The judges were almost crying in the end and this final number was not about bld skills as you all think, because they already knew about bld solving. Their number won because of the story, message about education and an emotional music cut that fit well.



Thanks for sharing!



Radu said:


> the show was won mostly by emotions and story than their actual cubing skills.



Emotional intelligence is a pretty good skill. 

Tim.


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## newtonbase (Jun 14, 2015)

I have to say that since the start if the thread my opinion has changed. I've been persuaded that the tricks used were reasonable given the circumstances and that the exposure is good for the community.


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## Mollerz (Jun 14, 2015)

Thank you Radu for your insight, I hope everyone in this thread now understands.


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## Stefan (Jun 14, 2015)

Radu said:


> [plenty of background information]


Thanks a lot, that's good to know. I wish I understood Romanian and could experience it all myself 



bubbagrub said:


> They didn't (as far as I can tell) lie about what they were doing


Not in the most direct way, apparently, but lies come in many forms.



bubbagrub said:


> It's not clear to me how the "tricks" they use are inferior to the tricks BLD / MBLD solvers use in competitions: the latter are an accepted part of the process, designed to achieve optimal results in a pre-defined setting.


What BLD/MBLD tricks are you talking about?



bubbagrub said:


> Surely it's also clear that this win in no way harms our community: I am pretty confident that there is no member of the public who saw that show and said to themselves "Hah! What a bunch of fakers. My respect for the speedcubing community is way down". It can only have had a positive effect


You must have missed the argument that fake solves can make real solves look bad in comparison. And did anyone here really claim the public would think something like _"Hah! What a bunch of fakers. My respect for the speedcubing community is way down"_ or is that just a straw man you just made up?


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## RB (Jun 14, 2015)

Radu,

Thanks for your post!

Is it also possible to make the video with full performance, with reaction of judges, and with English translation? (just captions)
This would help to better understand details of the show.

Just FYI:
in 2013 on Ukrainian Got Talented a Russian cuber made a similar show.

Before the final one of the judges said: "Solving a Rubik's Cube is not a talent. It's a skill".
But after the show he said, "you have a talent in memorizing", which was true as that cuber was in wca top-20 in mbld at that time.
Not knowing that, a lot of criticizing people were screaming "the talent was in cube solving, and no talents were demonstrated".

During the show, before the solves the cuber whispered solutions, like "B2 R2 L2 first on two layers then on three ones then triggers" for 7x7, but negative people again were screaming "He didn't say that he will be solving by triggers. It's cheating!!!" whereas everything was clear.

There were many other things that only Russian-speaking people could understand from that Ukrainian show, which is pretty sad. That's why it would be very great to see in all details what exactly was on your winning show. 

Btw, the positive result on speedcubing popularity from ukrainian show was pretty much the same as after Cristian Leana's performance: Ukrainian speedcubing started blooming, sponsors came, good places were provided for wca competitions for free, and there were many other positive improvements. Now it's destroyed because of political changes in that country, but in 2013 growth was significant.
and I hope this victory on the show will cause speedcubing boom in Romania as well


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## bubbagrub (Jun 14, 2015)

Stefan said:


> Not in the most direct way, apparently, but lies come in many forms.



True, of course, but I'm still not convinced that they did anything worthy of being called liars.



Stefan said:


> What BLD/MBLD tricks are you talking about?



Well, I guess the method you came up with for treating a scrambled cube as a set of cycles could, in my opinion, be considered an amazingly clever (and effective) trick. My point is that it seems to me that what these guys did is no less "real" than that kind of thing, not more a trick, and no less valid. But maybe this is the problem -- what's "valid" in the first place? I don't intend to suggest that using OP is "invalid" or "just using a trick", and I similarly feel that what these guys did is reasonable and impressive. 

I feel like the main thrust of this thread is that what these guys did was not valid, in some sense -- not fair, or real, whereas the standard approach to BLD solving is, in some sense more valid. I realise I'm playing with fire making this particular argument with you, but hey... 



Stefan said:


> You must have missed the argument that fake solves can make real solves look bad in comparison.



I did miss that argument. But I think it's specious. That's like saying "one-handed solves make two-handed solves look bad in comparison". Or "Maskow's insane MBLD solves make normal 3BLD solves look bad in comparison". In what sense would the Romanian guys' solves make any other kind of solve look "bad"? I can't see it.



Stefan said:


> And did anyone here really claim the public would think something like _"Hah! What a bunch of fakers. My respect for the speedcubing community is way down"_ or is that just a straw man you just made up?



OK -- you got me. Yes it was a straw-man. I was trying to figure out what negative effect people anticipated. My point is that I'd be amazed if it has any negative effect on non-speedcubers and their interactions with cubing.


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## blade740 (Jun 14, 2015)

This performance is great, and I'm very happy for you guys! 

Sure, there's a "trick" to it. But nobody hates on magicians for not using REAL MAGIC. And these guys clearly know how to solve, both speedsolving and BLD. They even get the facts right - about memorizing the state of a cube, and then recalling it. And you know what? The "world class" BLD solvers are FASTER than what these guys are showing. You can't really say they're misleading people. The only "cheat" is that instead of memorizing 100 different cubes, they memorized one, plus a couple of simple rules to differentiate each one. 

I've often thought about what it would take to turn cubing skills into a decent stage show. BLD is something that's highly impressive to crowds, but the chance of failure makes it risky to perform live. Not only that, but the memorization phase takes time and isn't very entertaining. This technique gets around that - it allows you to practice the "default" scramble to lower the likelihood of mistakes and memorization errors. Plus, since the cubes are already memorized beforehand, the audience doesn't need to watch that part. 

Seriously, though. **** the haters. You'll be laughing all the way to the bank!


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## qqwref (Jun 14, 2015)

blade740 said:


> Sure, there's a "trick" to it. But nobody hates on magicians for not using REAL MAGIC.


Maybe people would be bothered by it, if it wasn't obvious they were magicians - if a lot of the audience members went away believing that the magician literally sawed a woman in half and fixed her again, or something like that. Imagine if those people then lost respect for actual doctors, because they saw a guy on stage do something that these so-called medical professionals could never do. Of course, that could never happen because normal people understand what doctors do and what magicians do.

...But normal people do NOT understand what cubers do, and almost certainly will not understand that this was the equivalent of a magic trick. How are people who've spent years of effort and hard work learning to be incredibly good at something very difficult supposed to compete with this?

I feel like I watched someone cheat on a difficult exam, without admitting to it but in such an obvious way that lots of observers can see they cheated, and now everyone else is supporting them because hey, they got more points than anyone else, that's all that matters right?


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## blade740 (Jun 14, 2015)

qqwref said:


> ...But normal people do NOT understand what cubers do, and almost certainly will not understand that this was the equivalent of a magic trick. How are people who've spent years of effort and hard work learning to be incredibly good at something very difficult supposed to compete with this?



I wouldn't call this the equivalent of sawing a woman in half. I didn't check frame-by-frame, but it at least appeared to me that they were using BLD methods and techniques. They didn't make any outrageous claims about their skills or the limits of BLD solving. And they didn't solve faster than high-level BLD solvers - I'm not sure how the editing of the program affected it, but the video runs almost a minute between the first moves and the first cube solved. And that's not including memo. What's there to compete with? 

They claimed that they had memorized the cubes ahead of time - true. They claimed that they were all different - also true, albeit only technically so. Still, I don't think they did anything that they couldn't have done "legitimately" - given adequate memorization time. Memorization was done beforehand off-stage, and I think it's implied that it took a long time. 

These solvers weren't competing in a WCA blindfold solving competition. They were demonstrating the ability to solve a pre-memorized rubik's cube on-stage. The only "misleading" part about the whole thing was that the mixed up cubes were only superficially different. And I don't speak Romanian, but it doesn't sound like they flat out LIED about that either. This is probably one of the best "public" displays of cubing skill I've ever seen, and one of the truest to the sport.


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## Stefan (Jun 15, 2015)

blade740 said:


> And these guys clearly know how to solve, both speedsolving and BLD.



That very much depends on what you mean with BLD. One of them has never even attempted BLD in WCA competitions, and his last WCA competition was just three weeks ago and BLD was offered there and he did do all other events and won almost all of them. I doubt he can do regular BLD.



blade740 said:


> I didn't check frame-by-frame, but it at least appeared to me that they were using BLD methods and techniques.



Maybe a little bit, to undo their special scramble modifications. Though I'm not sure they didn't mostly just spam lots of sexy moves to play for time. But in the end, I'm pretty sure they did a CFOP solve. You can at least clearly see OLL and PLL.


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## cubizh (Jun 15, 2015)

This is something that is quite common with pretty much all sports, there are a countless number of people out there doing basketball halfcourt trickshots, golf trickshots, baseball hits, pool combo shots, or (my favorite) football tricks. They are not entirely simulating the rules of the sport but just doing bits and parts of it for dramatic effect.

I think the discussion if this is right or wrong is mostly irrelevant, but if people want to discuss it further, it's worth thinking a little more about this and think about some questions.

- Is everyone that is doing this in other sports trying to make people who are more serious in those sports that are associated with the activity in the sketches look bad or shadow/diminish their competitive achievements and purposedly misrepresenting the sport?

- If you do a sketch unrelated to competitive cubing, without making any reference to the WCA and their regulations and not following any of the procedures used in competitions, should you be judged in what you're doing by those regulations or by your WCA results?

- If you pick up a 3x3x3 cube in a given state and you rotate its faces to the solved state while wearing a blindfold, can you actually say that you did a blindfolded solve?

- If you are a world class competitive speedcuber, can't you also participate in these types of programs and win, getting the recognition you deserve?

- If you are not a world class competitive speedcuber, should you not participate in an entertainment program and try to win?

- Should a 3x3x3 cube be banned to be used in a solve on a TV spot if it's not in a random state scramble, but a known scramble beforehand?

- Should people be participating in competitive speedcubing to get recognition from the general public or for the fun that it provides?

- Is an audience supposed to always believe everything they see and hear on TV in entertainment programs?

- If the end result is more visibility to cubing, more people asking questions and getting interested in the cube, more competitors and more sponsors in competitions, is it really worth to do all this or is it better to do a poorer set and get sent home early without any visibility, for the sake of not misrepresenting the sport?

- Would you do something like this if you were to win 120,000€ or would you waive that money because you may in some way be deceiving an audience and not make justice to the sport?

I may know some of the answers to these questions, but it's at least fun to ask.



Stefan said:


> Maybe a little bit, to undo their special scramble modifications. Though I'm not sure they didn't mostly just spam lots of sexy moves to play for time. But in the end, I'm pretty sure they did a CFOP solve. You can at least clearly see OLL and PLL.


Since you used a broad definition of a lie before in this thread, you won't mind if I just point out that you kind of lied here too.


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## Stefan (Jun 15, 2015)

cubizh said:


> - Would you do something like this if you were to win 120,000€ or would you waive that money because you may in some way be deceiving an audience and not make justice to the sport?



I think only rich people and poor people would say "waive". The rich people because they don't need the money, and the poor people because they're poor because they say "waive" to such an opportunity 



cubizh said:


> Since you used a broad definition of a lie before in this thread, you won't mind if I just point out that you kind of lied here too.



I don't think I did. What do you mean?


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## cubizh (Jun 15, 2015)

Stefan said:


> I don't think I did. What do you mean?


Oh, just that you were implying things as truths when you don't know with certainty if they are true or not.
You can't reconstruct all three solves from scratch and you can't see all the scrambles to know for sure what they did or didn't do at this moment in time. It is possible (or even probable) that they did that, but you don't know for sure.


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## Stefan (Jun 15, 2015)

cubizh said:


> you don't know with certainty if they are true or not


Well, I explicitly only said _"I'm pretty sure"_ and other uncertain formulations. Precisely because I do try to make it clear when I don't know something for certain. I do believe everything I said there, still feel justified in saying it, and wasn't trying to mislead anyone. So I don't think it qualifies as some sort of lying.


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## Isaac Lai (Jun 15, 2015)

I don't think that this type of thing brings about many negative impacts to the speedcubing community. Precisely because the non-cubing members of the audience cannot differentiate between 'fake' (or at least blindsolves made easier in this context) and real solves, they are even more impressed and more people will be more motivated to get into cubing.

I got into speedcubing because of a variety of reasons, but one of the contributing factors was seeing Gabriel Dechichi Barbar's solves on Discovery Channel's show Superhuman Showdown. It was't exactly 'fake' (he did a legit 3/3 MBLD), but it implied that he used a special method of visualising where the pieces would go during normal sighted solving. Essentially, I got the impression that he was able to one look solves (Yeah I was really dumb). Later on, I obviously discovered that this was not true, that BLD solving was very different from sighted solving, that he was definitely not a superhuman, etc. But if I had not watched that episode, I doubt that I would have gotten in speedcubing.


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## tseitsei (Jun 15, 2015)

qqwref said:


> Maybe people would be bothered by it, if it wasn't obvious they were magicians - if a lot of the audience members went away believing that the magician literally sawed a woman in half and fixed her again, or something like that. Imagine if those people then lost respect for actual doctors, because they saw a guy on stage do something that these so-called medical professionals could never do. Of course, that could never happen because normal people understand what doctors do and what magicians do.
> 
> ...But normal people do NOT understand what cubers do, and almost certainly will not understand that this was the equivalent of a magic trick. How are people who've spent years of effort and hard work learning to be incredibly good at something very difficult supposed to compete with this?
> 
> I feel like I watched someone cheat on a difficult exam, without admitting to it but in such an obvious way that lots of observers can see they cheated, and now everyone else is supporting them because hey, they got more points than anyone else, that's all that matters right?



+1 once again I agree with this completely.


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## cubizh (Jun 15, 2015)

Thank you Stefan for clarifying and making the obvious distinction between what you think is a clear indication of, with some degree of uncertainty and what an actual proven fact is, in what you've been posting.

I find moderate statements like 



antoinecantin said:


> All the cubes were apparently scrambled the same (if you look at Stefan's picture).



to be far better than 



cashis said:


> Now, there's evidence to support that they didnt even have 100 scrambles...





tseitsei said:


> Yeah.. They didn't have 100 different scrambles and even if they did...





noobium said:


> My only problem is that they didn't memorize 100 cubes like they presumably claimed. Instead, They scrabled 100 cubes the same way(...) and then did a few setup moves matching each number(...) making it super easy to go from a set-up to another or solving the cube.





qqwref said:


> Nice detective work, this makes a lot of sense. So the cubes are in different positions, but just a short sequence (maybe a trigger or two) from the main scramble



for the general understanding of what you were trying to show, that there are patterns in some of the faces of some of the cubes that suggest some type of connection or sequence among all the 100 cubes. Also that after applying a given number of moves to those three specific cubes, one of the faces is the same in all of them while they are solving them, but since you can only see 1 or at most 2 of the 6 faces of the cubes, you can't say for sure, due to lack of visual information of all cube states.



Stefan said:


> Maybe a little bit, to undo their special scramble modifications.


Please note I didn't exactly say you were lying, but "kind of", which is also an uncertain formulation  , since you are "sort of" implying that they've used one special scramble with modification moves added to them that required undoing, just by looking at one of the faces of the three chosen cubes while they were solving.

What I was really trying to say is basically the same as you, reaffirm that all the statements you made are probably true *but* lack a definitive proof, so people should probably refrain from judging/extrapolating what they did for sure and make inflamatory posts that don't lead anywhere and are unverifiable at this point.

Aside from this, I still think a mass audience that watches something like this is better, in the end, than a mass audience that doesn't see it at all. The people that watch something like this and get motivated to pick up a cube and get attracted to the sport far outweights (in importance, for the sport) any wrong or misunderstood opinion some people can get of what it takes to "properly" solve a puzzle. People are free to do what they wish with a cube, so there's no need to get angry or irritated about it.Same with people that are motivated into basketball after watching half court throws or motivated into pool after watching people do trick shots on YouTube. I haven't yet found professional pool players condemning these people for misrepresenting their sport.

The people that are genuinely interested will learn the ropes and become valid members of the community, the rest doesn't really matter as much. Do I think it would be better to have other sketches to have an equal amount of exposure than something like this? Probably, but unfortunately the world thinks differently with some rare exceptions and there's not a lot you can do to change.

Personally, I do speedcubing because it's something I really like to do myself, I am not insecure enough to care or be affected by what other people think about what I do, or when someone gives the idea they are better than me. 

If people like to discuss these subjects, I would also like to suggest a proper discussion of cubing ideas for programs like these that are acceptable/valid, feasible and spectacular at the same time, with potential to win and that would make most people happy, so that when someone decides to go on TV on a similar program, can have a pool of ideas to pick and modify/elaborate from, rather than have multiple "fake speedcubing on live TV police" threads, discussing the same concepts over and over and over again, everytime a situation like this happens, without a lot of progress.


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