M2M Day 65: The thing slowing me down
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For January, my goal is to solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 20 seconds.
As mentioned yesterday, I need to decrease my speed on the intuition-based parts of my solve (the cross and F2L) in order to achieve a sub-20 time.
After analyzing a few of my solves, there’s clearly one major thing currently slowing me down: Cube Rotations.
What is a Cube Rotation?
If I turn the entire cube clockwise or counterclockwise around its vertical axis, I’ve executed a cube rotation.
Executing a cube rotation doesn’t get the cube any closer to the solved state, but still costs valuable time. In fact, not only am I losing time executing the rotation, but I’m also losing time getting reoriented to the rotated cube. (For those who read about productivity, this is a bit like context switching, which has time implications beyond just the act of switching tasks).
As a result, when solving, speed cubers attempt to minimize their number of executed cube rotations, aiming for one or two at the most.
Today, before analyzing some video, I imagined that my cube rotating was minimal (perhaps 4 or 5 rotations per normal solve), but after filming myself, I realize I’m an aggressive cube rotator.
Watch as I execute 13 cube rotations just while solving the cross and F2L…
I execute Cube Rotations for two reasons
The first is because I’m trying to find the pieces I need to complete the cross and F2L. I’ll address this problem, which I call Inspection Pauses, tomorrow.
The other reason I execute Cube Rotations is to gain positional leverage. In other words, it’s easier for me to execute certain Rubik’s Cube maneuvers when holding the cube in certain, better-practiced positions. Simply, I’m rotating the cube into more preferable orientations.
While I’m nicely compensating for my weaknesses, this isn’t a healthy practice (if I want to get universally faster). It’s as if I learned how to play a guitar solo only in the key of A major, and every time the band plays anything different, I need to stop the band and ask them to transpose the song into the key I know.
Like a good guitarist, if I want to solve the Rubik’s Cube fast, I need to be comfortable with the full range of possibilities and all the ways they can be presented to me — whether that’s all the possible musical keys of a song or all the possible ways a certain maneuver is oriented on the cube.
How I plan to get better (introducing FRS)
In order to practice cube maneuvers from all possible orientations, and also in order to reduce Cube Rotations, I’ve created a simple exercise called Forced Rotationless Solving (FRS).
During FRS, Cube Rotations aren’t allowed. Instead, I must determine new ways to solve the cross and F2L, from new vantage points, without ever rotating the cube.
I’ve completed about 25 solves today using FRS and am already developing a knack for these new maneuvers. In particular, I’ve gotten good at inserting pairs in the back. I’ll explain specifically what this means in a future post, but generally it means that I can now (more comfortably) solve pieces on the back face of the cube, rather than having to rotate the cube 180 degrees to solve them in the front.
During the rest of the month, I’ll continue using FRS as a warmup exercise before I practice my normal speed solves.
Hopefully, I can drop the number of Cube Rotations during my solves into the low single digits.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
