| The Story; A life in a Cuber's Eyes By: Richard Patterson Where should I start? Perhaps it would be appropriate to start in my childhood. I could not be exact, but I think the first time I was exposed the cube was around the age of seven. It wasn't too exciting then. If I remember correctly, I didn't even attempt a spin on it. It was merely a building block to my great Ninja Turtle layer. (couldn't afford the real Turtle layer...I had to make my own!) The first time I attempted solving it, around age thirteen, I decided quickly it was impossible to solve. And in my frustration, a friend and I went out to the back yard to play baseball with it. It is strong plasic, but is really not match for a metal baseball bat. As the pieces scattered through the air like hail, I never would have predicted I'd have a love for the puzzle. This savage act appeased my frustration for it at the time however. Early in 2002 a friend of mine started solving the cube. He even went to cube meetings every Thursday. It's really quite ironic that I spent many hours making fun of him for going. Of course geek, nerd, and dork were words among my arsenal. I was actually quite harsh about it, but his growing love for the puzzle at the time was a natural shield to my words. Even after all my negativity he would encourage me to learn a solution. It might be better to say he bugged the hell out of me. Finally to make him happy I learned how to solve...the first two layers. I actually got into it a little bit...I kind of enjoyed racing my friend...His three layers against my two. I watched him do a few Sunday Contests, and I wanted to compete! (but I was too lazy to learn the rest of the solution) So instead I would take averages of my F2L. Later on in the year, not long before I would learn to solve the whole cube, I started posting my F2L averages for Sunday Contest. Here's the big secret. I'm almost too ashamed of it to share. I created a fake character for the Speedcubing.com Sunday Contest. His name was Rico Jojamo, from Jamaica. I'm sure everyone thought it was kind of odd. He's still there in the archives if you want to search for him. I just wanted to compete with something...even if I was someone else. My closer cubing friends used to get a laugh from it anyway. Finally, I got tired of being Rico, learned the whole solution, and started competing as myself. And I sucked. My solves were taking so long even I got bored during the solution. Rico had died, and Richard Patterson had emerged : P A lot of people have asked me. "Doesn't the excitement fade away after you solve it the first time?" Somehow, I don't think the excitement ever will fade away. There are few things that are more chaotic looking than a scrambled cube; and in such a chaotic world, restoring the cube seems to produce a lasting satisfaction. I have few loves in my life, and the cube is the only one I can carry in my pocket. Someone suggested once that I marry my cube. I still haven't found a ring that will fit right... Enough cube romantics though. The truth is, I don't love my cube, I love the hobby. It's not a lifestyle! Unfortunately people fail to understand this, and I got a lot of hell throughout high school for it. The cube eventually got banned from all my classes. One teacher even accused me of trying to start a cult with it! Cult (n.) - a. A religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconvential manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader. Wow! Somehow my inane teacher had made a blunder. "It's not a cult at all Mr. Fetherston", I replied. Your move crazy man. Even if cubing was a cult, at least it would be a safe one. The only sacrifice a cuber will make is his own cube, and that's under extreme circumstances. The road to Sub-20 would be a bumpy one. Especially since my first averages were around 90 seconds. If I was going to be part of the 'elite', I would have to drop about 70 seconds off my time! The thought alone was overwhelming. It was at least reassuring that in the beginning, time drops pretty easily. I got my times down to about 70 seconds, and suddenly my time wasn't dropping so quickly. I had a very short fuse back then. My anger towards the cube for not letting me solve it faster led me to throw my cube and break it not once, or twice, but three times! It was around the third time I broke my cube that my cubing friends started naming their cubes. A fitting name for mine would have been "Cripple" (I thought it was quite funny, because you know, I broke it so many times....I shouldn't have to explain this dull humor....) However, I grew out of my angry phase, and my cube liked this very much. (I don't encourage abusing your cube...You're not a very good parent if you do) I learned the 4-look LL and my times started dipping under a minute. Then, a miracle! I broke a minute on average. What a glorius thing! Only about 40 more seconds to drop off and I could make it to my goal. I hate saying 'only 40', it's just not that easy. It was about the time that I was averaging 55 seconds that my another friend suggested that I learn the F2L. What is this? Corner/Edge pairs? This is crazy. He promised my times would get better though, so reluctantly, I learned it. My worst fears came true though! My times did not get better. They got worse. For several weeks my times were above two minutes. At the time I might have written the equation: F2L= x2 x= Avg before learning F2L Whoever came up with this method was crazy I thought. Yeah, this method is evil...Luckily no cubes were broken during the process. Then relief came after three weeks. My times started dropping. Dropping...Dropping...then BAM! My times were back to 55 seconds on average. And they continued to drop. My average finally leveled off after barely breaking 40 seconds. This 40 second barrier was a lot harder to break than its 60 second cousin. And rightfully so, we're getting closer to 0 : P I was having trouble keeping myself consistently under that level though. There was even a while afterwards where I couldn't break the barrier again. I even got in a fight with my friend about it. In my anger I told him I worked harder than him, and I deserved to be sub-40! Once again, in my ignorance, I was taking out my anger on something/someone that didn't deserve it. I apologized to him, focused a little more on my F2L, and got my average to be consistent around 38-39 seconds. What came next? The 3-look! There were 14 permutations to learn, and I was lazy..or...better is I am lazy, so it took me about two months to learn. The specifics in learning the 3 look aren't a necessity. Just know if you're learning them, to learn the best algorithms first, not just the first ones you come across. I think of the 21 pemutations, I've relearned all of the except for maybe 2 or 3. Even of those I re-learned, I'm relearning others. Pages: 1 2 3 |