The Language of Cubing – Week 2

This week I focused on learning how to read Cube Notation.  I have a fantastic app called CubeTime which scores my times and shows my average over time.  It also provides random scrambles to solve.

Providing a series of scrambles for me to solve has really helped to motivate me to learn the Cube Notation.  I am able to scramble a cube and then complete the solve and record my time all in the same app.

For the first few days, my times were slower than average, I think because I was focusing on the notation and I was less focused on the solve.  Then I noticed something happening!  I was starting to understand the cube a little bit better.  By scrambling my own cube, I was learning how the pieces relate to each other through the scramble.  This helped my solves because I was spending twice as much time handling the cube than I had before (my son would scramble my cube for me).

This is an example of a scramble.  At the top you can see the Cube Notation (L2 U F’ etc.), the centre of the screen is where I add my time after solving.  I use a regulation timer to keep track of my solves so I have plenty of practice before going to a competition.  The picture on the bottom left of the screen is what the cube should look like if I have scrambled it correctly.  The boxes on the bottom right of the screen show the most recent Average of 5 (AO5), Average of 12 (AO12), Average of 100 (AO100) and overall mean of all my solves.

These were my current stats as of Sunday, Feb 2.  I am really proud of myself!  In just one week using the app and focusing on not just the solve but also the scrambling, I have been able to reduce my overall Average of 5 by more than 5 seconds!  I also have a new Personal Best time of 1:00.920 which is 7 seconds faster than my best time at the last competition.

My son tells me that the next step to improving my speed is to learn the CFOP method – I don’t know what that is yet but I guess this will be my week to learn it!