Happy Halloween

Average of 10: new personal best time (26.31s)

I got a new best average today. It was also my first average where all the solves were sub-30s! :) Here are the details:

Average: 26.31s
Fastest: 23.95s
Slowest: 29.61s
Individual times: (29.61), 25.52, 25.55, 24.34, 27.93, 28.55, 24.99, 27.98, 24.31, 24.45, 29.52, (23.95).

The other personal record I broke today is the number of consecutive sub-30s solves: 18

For scrambles and timing I used Doug Reed's iCube iPAQ cube timer on my iPAQ hx4705.

Xtreme card manipulation

We've all seen people do card manipulation tricks before, but have you ever seen Xtreme card manipulation?

Xtreme card manipulation involves manipulating the cards while underwater, in the wind and... while the cards are on fire!

New personal best time: 20.87 seconds

I was cubing on the train this evening. I set all my best times on the train. The two reasons I can think of for this are: (i) the bright white lights on the London tube are excellent for cubing; and (ii) the majority of my cubing practice is done while on train rides.

Anyway, I was cubing on the train this evening and I set a new best personal time (non-lucky): 20.87 seconds. I'm so close to getting a non-lucky sub-20s solve!

I have done two sub-20s solves, but they were both lucky cases. One was a PLL skip and one had two F2L pairs solved after the cross. Definitely lucky cases.

First extended cross and new best lucky time

I got a new best lucky time today (17.16s). After I finished the cross, two of the F2L pairs had happily fallen into place. Basically, it was a double extended cross, but as I didn't see it during inspection and didn't work for it (it just happened!), this counts as a lucky solve.

I wish I had seen, and planned for, the double extended cross during inspection because the 17.16s would then be my actual new best single time. This would be very exciting because it's over 4 seconds faster than my current best time and it would be my first sub-20s non-lucky solve! Oh well. Will just have to keep working at it.

I did do a regular extended cross today as well. This was one I spotted during inspection and worked for (so it counts). It was a very fast solve for me: 21.69s. This was my fastest solve of the day and only 0.28s behind my current best time (21.41s).

Cubing success continues

I was cubing on the train this morning and I got a new personal best single time (21.41 seconds) and a new best average (26.80 seconds)!

The individual times for the average were: 24.76, 26.68, 27.85, 25.08, (32.66), 23.42, 25.89, (21.41), 29.28, 28.69, 26.13, 30.22

If only I could get these times in competition...