A year ago, I bought a $6 Duncan-branded “Quick Cube” after my last cube started literally falling apart. Since then, I’ve kept the cube at my desk and recorded timings throughout each day. The following is a visualization of a year’s worth of timings:
Sample count is about 12,500 which comes out to about 34 solves per day (wow…). Fastest solve for the year was 13.071 seconds due to some luck. I solve using a variation of a beginner’s method that was taught in the instructions that came with my first cube.
Beginner’s method steps (steps in red are combined in my method)
- Solve a cross on first layer
- Solve first layer corners
- Solve second layer
- Cross on last layer
- Last layer edges
- Last layer corners
- Orient the last layer corners
I used the same method all year. There exist plenty of methods that are way faster than mine but I’m not interested in dedicating the time to memorizing the algorithms involved. For anyone wondering, world record average of 5 solves is somewhere around 5.97 seconds (held by Feliks Zemdegs).
Sub-30s is fine enough for me. I consider that a goal reached and have no plans of pushing it further.
Data captured using the Cube Timer app on Android. Exported to csv and visualized using R.
