Highest Rated Comments


topppits27 karma

You can get a lot of help on r/cubers. On our wiki and FAQ you should find answers to almost everything, when you're just starting out.

You can find good beginner tutorials here, I'd especially recommend looking into the first two (the one from J Perm and the one from Feliks Zemdegs).

Before you start watching a tutorial though I recommend that you give it a try on your own. There are a couple different ways you can look at the Rubik's cube. One is the competitive aspect but there's also the one most people uninvolved with cubing mostly see - the puzzle aspect, the mystery, the magic. Check out this video: What Solving A Rubik's Cube Without Any Guides Taught Me. Even if you decide after being able to solve a couple pieces that you don't want to dedicate so much time or that you simply don't care about the puzzle aspect and just want to get into speedcubing go ahead and check out the tutorials.

Either way I recommend that you play around with the cube a bit before you watch tutorials. Just look at one piece and do a couple turns. try to put the piece into a different spot in a specific orientation and track what you have to do to get it there. After getting some basic understanding of how pieces move it will be much easier to follow tutorials and well, it's also fun to figure some of this stuff out on your own :)

If you have any further questions that aren't easily found on the r/cubers' FAQ or wiki just let us know in the Daily Discussion Thread - always the first pinned post on r/cubers and people will gladly help you out.

It's certainly a skill that is less mindless than most video games and similar stuff. I don't think you necessarily get smarter, but it's a good practise to keep your mind fit, well at least if you keep learning more stuff. It's a fun skill, it's impressive to others, certainly a conversation opener, but if it's not fun for you to do you probably won't do it for too long.

A skill that might transfer to your day to day life is learning how to learn and how you can achieve things that seemed out of reach if you just go there step by step with dedication and sometimes you'll even reach goals you thought were so impossible that you didn't even dare to make this a goal. When I started I never thought I'd be any faster than that like a minute - now my fastest official time for a single solve on a 3x3 is just a bit over 10 seconds. I never thought I could be able to solve a cube blindfolded and here I am having officially solved not only a 3x3 but also a 4x4.

My main tip: Have fun! It's such a fun hobby and you hast have got to love the community <3

topppits9 karma

That was a horrible answer and does not represent the openness and how incredibly welcoming the cubing community is.

I feel like it's a similar problem as in many tech professions that are mainly dominated by men. I think a bit simply has to do with interests but there's also the part where still some younger people "learn" that certain stuff is for guys and other stuff is for girls. I feel it's getting better and tbh in Germany we have a solid base of female cubers and it's growing. I hope with the next generations we'll get a better ratio.

I think there's also a lot of misconceptions when it comes to cubing and people who might actually really enjoy it don't even start, because they think you have to be good at math or sth like that.

By now maybe the problem is also the cause? Like, females thinking they might feel uncomfortable being surrounded by mostly males.

I play table tennis in a club and it's a bit similar. There are so few female players it's crazy.

Since cubing is still on the rise and getting bigger and bigger by the year I'm sure we'll see some changes and hopefully to the better :) Some better coverage on what cubing is (most mainstream media coverage on cubing in films and shows used to be on the lines of "he can solve it, he has got to be a genius!!!!") should also help. If you're interested in learning more about cubing, here are some good videos on speedcubing - by the mainstream media and also by cubers (those from Chris Olson are very professionally made). At the end of July there'll be a documentation on Netflix.

Also check out r/cubers :) Although the ratio isn't much different from competitions we have quite a few very active and very helpful female cubers on our sub.

topppits4 karma

Mind you, I started to get into speedcubing 4 1/2 years ago in early 2016, went to my first comp in late 2017. Now I've been to 8 comps (would be more already if it wasn't for covid19) and I've competed in 13 different official events.

One last tip I've got for you: Start with the right mindset. Getting into cubing and getting faster takes time. That's completely normal and it's like that for everyone. Don't expect to watch a 10 minute video and after that you'll be able to do it. Don't get discouraged if you don't understand something immediately. Just keep at it and you will get there :)

topppits3 karma

Maybe to make sure that it is actually solvable - assembling a 3x3x3 randomly you only have a 1/12 chance that it'll be solvable.

topppits3 karma

Imo the chances that anyone would be able to figure out a solution (method of solving) for a Rubik's cube in like 10 minutes like they show it in the film are 0%. While there are quite a few people who figured out a solution on their own, that usually consists of A LOT of trial and error. For some part it's logical thinking, but you won't get there without also investing a lot of time. Most people who figured out how to solve the Rubik's cube on their own took 1-3 months+. Even the inventor of the Rubik's cube, Ernő Rubik, is said to have taken over a month until he figured out a method to solve it.

Just two days ago /u/bufferoverflown posted a video to r/cubers that I recommend watching:

What Solving A Rubik's Cube Without Any Guides Taught Me.

This should give you a pretty good insight on what it is like to come up with your own solution and why the scene from Pursuit and Happiness and in general the presentation of cubing in the media sadly is most of the time very very wrong.

It depicts it as something only geniuses can do (very wrong) and that one can learn it in like a couple minutes or even crazier, figure it out by yourself in a short amount of time, when it typically takes people at least a couple hours to learn with a guide. This also puts the mindset into people that if they can't figure it out by themselves in like 10 minutes, that means they are dumb - which is absolutely not the case. Most likely one of the reasons why fewer people get into cubing - they start with very wrong expectations and get frustrated very quickly.

If you're interested to see some good documentations on speedcubing (mostly short videos) check out the ones linked here, e.g. Why It's Almost Impossible to Solve a Rubik's Cube in Under 3 Seconds | WIRED is a very good representation.

A while ago someone on r/cubers asked for common misconceptions that people uninvolved in our hobby have and I wrote a bit about that - heads up, it's a wall of text - maybe you find that interesting.