Pedro and the Cube
Cubing Diaries #1 — A brief introduction to Cubing Diaries and to my history with the Rubik’s cube
Welcome to Cubing Diaries, a place where I, Pedro Miranda, will write articles about the most varied cubing topics.
I’m eighteen years old, I’m from Brasília, Brazil and I study law at the Universidade de Brasília. I like to listen to music, to read and to solve rubik’s cubes.
By my WCA page, you may be able to see more or less what are my mains events: currently, I’m focusing on 3x3, 2x2, 4x4 and Megaminx. Eventually, I plan on expanding my focus to 5–7 and OH, completing the list of a trendy speedcuber’s main events.
After looking back on the last year and thinking about the current one, I realized that the rubik’s cube is much more important part of my life than I recognized. Because of that, I decided to give the cube the attention it really deserves.
I still have many goals I want to achieve officially in comps, in the community and in general. I’d like to become sub-9 (8?) in 3x3, to podium a little bit more in the brazilian championships, to compete in many different places, meet new cubers, among others.
One of the things I’d like to accomplish is to create content sharing my opinions, visions and interests in the cube. I don’t see myself in a youtuber vibe; a podcast will have to wait for another opportunity. I decided, then, to write.
One aspect of writing that I find especially positive is how flexible it is. I can share stories, make technical analyses or even ponder about the state of the community. I intend, as this series progresses, to take advantage of this flexibility to explore the different aspects of the rubik’s cube.
I still don’t know how often I’ll publish new articles, but something close to one a week would be quite interesting. Before I even began to write this one, I already had a huge list of topics I wants to eventually explore. Some are very simple and depend only on me sitting down to write what is already in my head. Others require such a deep research that they scare me a bit. All of them, though, are very interesting (I hope).
As this is this blog’s first article, I choose a laid back topic and decided to tell the story of how I first got interested in the rubik’s cube until I became a cuber.
Hope you enjoy it.
Little Pedro
My relationship with the rubik’s cube is long. When I was nine or ten years old, my brother began to learn how to solve it. Initially, I didn’t really get interested in the cube other than laterally. Sometimes, I’d time his solves with a wrist watch. He averaged ~50 seconds.
One of the things that left me the most intrigued was a list, that I now know was of algorithms, that my brother was using. At the time, those algorithms didn’t make sense and nowadays they make even less. They were 4x4 or 5x5 algorithms. What algs could my brother be learning if he wasn’t even sub-30 in 4x4? L2E? Different solutions for parity? To this day I haven’t figured it out.
The 2x2 he had was quite a simple cube, with purple stickers instead of red. The other day, I tried and did an average of five with it and I had to really push through to get to the end. It wasn’t good or comfortable but, as was the case with most of the cubes at the time, it was what was around.
In a trip, my brother, after some effort, was able to finally teach me how to solve the 2x2 (A.K.A. THE cube for children). With the standard layer by layer method, with sune and the A PLL for second layer, I was able to get by. I ran to finish the 2x2 faster than my brother solved the 3x3. I don’t recall it exactly, but he probably won most of the times.
After the trip was over, I played around a little bit more with the cube but, after the initial interest, I put the cube aside. My brother’s interest, after some time, also died out. The cubes were forgotten in a drawer for some time.
Ressurrection
In 2013, three (?) years later, in eigth grade, a classmate, João Pedro, started to solve the rubik’s cube in class. I, that always have been very competitive, immediately wanted to take part in the fun. With the little I remembered of how to solve the 2x2, helped by intuition/brute force, I was able to solve the first layer, and nothing more.
I was a little frustrated, because I wanted to solve the 3x3 right away, and, according to my logic, there wasn’t much difference between a 2x2 and a 3x3, so I should have been able to get it by myself. I tried to solve the second layer with no success.
As soon as I got home, I grabbed my brother’s old 3x3 and learned how to solve the rest. I don’t remember exactly where I learned the final steps, but I know that right away I was solving the rubik’s cube (with white cross only :/).
This was the initial spark that got me into speedcubing. I had it in my hands (popping some pieces) at all times: in school, in english class and even in the bus.
I asked my father for a Dayan Zhanchi 3x3 (👌), that I didn’t know yet was a 50 millimeters one, and a Shengshou 2x2 (💩). With these cubes, I practiced casually a bit more, but without any real commitment.
Ivan
In the beginning of 2014, I met someone who would finish to lay my path with speedsolving.
Ivan was a student at my school one year my senior. Perhaps because he was older, he became to me, and I think I became to him too, a Gary, a rival for all disputes.
We were always competing to get ahead of each other. Every time we got a new PB, we couldn’t wait to exhibit this new trophy to the other one.
For a long time, this close race kept pushing us forward. In my first comp, Brasília Open 2014, he was able to beat me by a few seconds.
In the next year, I kept practicing a lot. I started to aproach sub-20, now with a regular sized Dayan Zanchi. To Ivan, specially, that was an important year. It was college exam year. I started to overtake him while he gradually lagged behind. To him, school and studying started to get in the way of cubing.
At some point of that year, he told me:
How can you find so much time to practice? Next year, in your senior year, you’ll have to slow down a bit so you can study for all your college exams.
In the next year, surprisingly (hihi), I couldn’t cube myself away from the cube. I was able to conciliate cubing with studying very well. I kept practicing on a very fast pace, and got the results I was waiting for. 2016 was my strongest year until then. I got a lot of podiums, PBs and friends.
Eventually, Ivan got into college and stepped away from cubing. I, on the other hand, got closer and closer to cubing. With it, I reached places I’d never imagine. I met new people, made friends and had opportunities that influenced me deeply, and to this day still do.
Initial conclusion
I thank my brother André for getting me into cubing in the first place. I thank my friend João Pedro for introducing the rubik’s cube in our class. Finally, I thank my friend Ivan for motivating me to keep practicing hard.
As I mentioned in the beginning, this first article was meant to show a bit of who I am and my history with the cube. I intend on writing about many different topics, from technical analyses of 3x3 solves to interviews with different personalities of the world of cubing.
In the next article, I’ll analyze a godly official solve from Feliks Zemdegs.
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