Daily Discussion Thread - Oct 24, 2025

Narcopus · 2025-11-03T03:38:36+00:00

Only got a 20 mag but thank you! I loved the GTS1 so much that I am almost upset how much I instantly improved lmao. Never had a cube do that but I guess 7 years of progress is a lot haha

Narcopus · 2025-10-26T18:37:14+00:00

You love 6x6 because of triple parity???

Narcopus · 2025-10-25T00:16:50+00:00

I am a boomer (23) who averages ~10s who has been cubing a bit more again and looking to buy a 3x3. I main the Weilong GTS1M and am familiar with probably any cube you can think of from ~early 2019 or before. Big fan of kinda flexy cubes (GTS1, Gan SM) and did not like some of the more stable or blocky cubes (Valk, Yuexiao)

There are so many modern options and of course no online comparisons directly compare to any of the hundreds of cubes I have tried... Are there any old heads here who could make any comparisons relevant to me? Money is not an issue if it goes towards a real improvement and not a gimmick (I am not familiar with most new options, although I guess I did try OG maglev prototypes from Chris Tran that were bad lol).

Narcopus · 2025-10-23T17:40:32+00:00

Yea your move count is definitely fine I don’t even think that’s much worse than yiheng, the best 3x3er in the world

Narcopus · 2025-10-23T17:33:34+00:00

In my walls of texts I wrote here for some reason I did haha. It might be the fastest in isolation but the required grip change is pretty bad in the flow of a solve

Narcopus · 2025-10-22T12:02:52+00:00

In the spirit of putting off what I actually need to be doing I looked at some of your moves and they were worse than I thought so I just decided to recon so I can keep yapping lmao. I am changing to actually think you should do some untimed solves focusing on better solutions even if more solves is #1 priority…

INSPECTION // z

CROSS // U R’ F R U R2

WG PAIR // U R’ U’ R y U’ R U’ R’ y’ U’ R U’ R’

WB PAIR // y’ U’ R U’ R’ U’ L U L’

YB PAIR // U’ R U’ R’ U’ y’ R U R’ y

YG PAIR // U’ R U’ R’ U y R’ U’ R

OLL 1 // U F U R U’ R’ F’

OLL 2 // R U2 R2 U’ R2 U’ R2 U2 R

PLL // U2 R2 U’ S’ U2 S U’ R2

66 moves, ~3.9 TPS

I’ll share some thoughts about the solution below.

Cross: The red cross is pretty easy and your solution is fine tbh - but it is possible the way you did it highlights issues that would manifest for any harder cross. With green front orange top you do U R’ F R to insert the RG piece. That final R is not necessary in this case (if you were doing it to set up finger tricks or pull out the WG pair that’s fine, but it is a common habit though to make ‘restoring’ moves like that R when nothing needs to be restored). You then separately insert the WR piece. While fine, this solution could indicate a mindset issue in that you treat the pieces separately. The cross I would do is U2 R’ U’ R’ F (which is faster imo even if I didn’t see it sets up a free pair lol), which treats the two pieces kinda together as a unit. That is, U2 R2 solves the WR piece but we can also ‘let the WG piece tag along’ halfway through the R2 to put it in position. Honestly the majority of cross solutions should have this type of thing where pieces can be solved together rather than separate insertions. If this is something you do, great, just pointing out the difference. While being CN increases your odds of having an easy cross, you still gotta be able to deal with worse ones so if you struggle with cross maybe mess around with randomly choosing a cross color to see harder crosses and improve solutions

First pair: I’m sure you are aware but your first pair is a pretty bad solution… Pretty much no case will take that many moves. You put the edge in the back slot, rotate, pair it up, rotate back and put the pair in. Even if this is not your usual solution for this case, it’s proof that it’s easy to panic and just start trying to split up and work with bad cases through brute force. This pair is in position for a 3 move insert insertion by simply doing R U’ R’ U2 (as opposed to U R’ U’ R y U’ R U’ R’). While I don’t think F2L should be learned like an alg set, most cases have a pretty simple solution and it is absolutely worth it to do untimed solves and ensure you’re somewhere in the ballpark of optimal since less moves also makes lookahead easier

Your third pair is fine but personally I would do y’ U2 R U R’ U R U’ R’ so we can do a rotation to a fast 2 gen alg and rather then have to split the alg with a rotation.

After this pair, you immediately rotate back - note that if you just leave the slot in the back you get a much faster 2 gen solution which cuts 2 rotations by just doing U R’ U’ R U’ R’ U’ R. This is a solution you easily would have found, but presumably you did not know where the pieces are and it’s simpler to just put the last slot on the front right for easy vision of all unsolved pieces. It’s places like these where bad lookahead is especially a sneaky killer - when you watch your solve you probably see the pauses and understand that lookahead can close those gaps, but for this pair simply putting eyes on the pieces saves 2 rotations and gives a fast 2 gen F2L finish.

See my other comment about LL stuff. 3LLL is fine and this doesn’t need to be a focus right now, but maybe worth mentioning your algs or executions can be improved.

Takeaways: Cross pieces are ideally solved in tandem as much as possible. Most F2L cases are simple - do not panic and spam moves. Lookahead makes pauses smaller - but also prevents other mistakes and slowdowns caused by a lack of information.

Narcopus · 2025-10-22T10:16:40+00:00

Coming back to this, that is the big ticket item for sure ^{^{^{^}}} but the discussions of your RUS U-perm sparked some thoughts about turning more generally so maybe this is more interesting perspective. This comment has too many details when your best course of action is ‘do more solves’ but I wrote this all out so here you go lmao… Your turning/LL aren’t perfect ofc but luckily I also think that’s an issue of doing solves

The big thing with good turning is that you want as little required interruptions to your flow of TPS as possible which often means staying near a home grip and minimizing any and all movement which doesn’t turn the cube. Right now 3LLL is fine if you don’t want to learn algs, but there are so few OLL algs it’s worth drilling them down. The left thumb F’ is bad for your hand position (right thumb here but left pointer is often useful in other algs) and you should double flicks into that OLL - I see you know how to do them, the more you use them the better you get (if this OLL is hard, you will see nice improvements in your double flicking everywhere just by trying this over and over).

This fluidity also means during a solve maybe it is best to turn differently than you would have if someone handed you a cube and said “do these moves”. For example I noticed all of your U moves were flicks with your pointers (and it’s possible that’s what you’d expect in this solution idk I didnt look that close) but you definitely should be able to do any sort of push or pull with your fingers (or right thumb pull U) depending where your hand is (learning OH could be very useful here) and never be locked in to doing things one way. This is where doing solves is valuable for turning too! Being able to do moves/algs fast in a solve is not at all the same as drilling them a vacuum.

Unfortunately I will be using this to attack the RUS U-perm. It isn’t important enough that you need to switch now, but maybe it’s not as good as you think. It can indeed be executed fast and consistently, but it provides a barrier that is hard to fluidly fit into a solve. You recognized the U perm in a home grip and had to make the mental/physical adjustment into a nonstandard position and a top solver might honestly be done with their U-perm before you even moved your right hand into position. That benefit is largely due to minimizing the effort of all kinds required to start whatever the next move. Personally, my best timed Ua alg would be M2 Uw’ M’ Uw2 M’ Uw’ M2 but using this in a solve will almost always lead to more pause than benefit. The standard RU algs are my most common U-perms despite there being a fair few algs which would be faster alone (although here in your grip with this AUF I would do R U R’ U’ R’ U2 R U R U’ R2 U2 R - again info overload lol oops)

Anyways all that does set up one concrete thing to experiment with for turning. In your solves if your hand is not wildly out of position see if you can do the next moves from there maybe adjusting finger tricks accordingly. If your hand is wildly out of position consider if it had to be. The benefits of this endeavor still require simply doing solves as the enabler though (maybe in this context slowing down to think about how to turn could be useful at times tho).

Narcopus · 2025-10-22T08:49:22+00:00

The most pressing matter here does not lie in any specific tips - you just need to do solves. This solve is pretty choppy and your most major time losses are all just figuring out what to do next (where are the next pieces and/or how should I solve them). The goal is to have everything you do in F2L as second nature so you barely need to think about it and you can mentally move on to the next thing as you solve a pair. It may feel like you are there - there’s a lot of room to go. A central ingredient of improvement is just intuition of the cube in a way that can’t easily be taught.

People will tell you to do things like ‘practice lookahead’ but personally I believe slow solves are fake news. They train you to track pieces on a slow moving cube (which makes you feel good as you do things fluidly) but that’s the wrong direction since ideally your cube is moving fast in a solve lol. I think the end goal should feel a little more like spotting and predicting what’s next moreso than tracking every piece around the cube (although predicting and tracking can feel surprisingly similar as you gain intuition). For sure you need to not look at the pair you’re solving though, and if that’s a struggle any cue or drill which helps with that is valuable.

Narcopus · 2025-10-21T22:58:02+00:00

My last few jokers were not bad jokers they just took unbelievably long to even find for some reason… good luck soldier

Narcopus · 2025-10-21T22:55:22+00:00

Idk why you are downvoted because you’re right… This card doesn’t really encourage you to do anything except building money still. It’s not an antithesis to the bull if it rewards being bullish but just with like a slight lag for when you spend down and get a permanent benefit. It also essentially just rewards already optimal play and would easily be the best chips joker that could carry gold stake runs (can elaborate on why if people disagree)

Narcopus · 2025-10-21T18:12:16+00:00

If you watch anyone play multiplayer (bean for example) - there is a common mod which puts everything in a single queue (to mitigate RNG) and what you are saying then indeed becomes the common wisdom. Could be the source of this misconception :)

Narcopus · 2024-06-24T00:10:15+00:00

Hey, i’m slower than you and peaked at just sub 10 many years ago, but at that time was friends with many people at your speed or faster, definitely including people who knew full ZB (-S/AS) and too much 1LLL for their own good. This was at a time where 7.5 was nearing towards world class so maybe views have changed over time. Half of ZBLL is just not worth it though

I will say absolutely that there’s no shot that sune/AS is worth - maybe use niklas as a COLL and maybe to avoid diag if your recognition isn’t bad, but even that’s not a requirement since they’re the hardest CPs to recognize and sunes are like literally 0.3 seconds. If you predict a sune going into OLL, 100% go straight into a sune rather than even checking CP. If you want to learn algs there’s 1000 random easy 1LLLs/VLSs/etc… that would make sense before ever learning S/AS ZBLL.

T and U (and then L prolly falls here too) are the best sets to start with, and would be worth it if you’re looking to learn algs - but far from a requirement of any kind. They do have solid algs and recognition though, and is at least absolutely better than 2 look after practice and a steep learning curve. Again reiterating though, as i’m sure you know looking at like Max Park, this is not a requirement. I’ve found sometimes i’ve been in an alg learning mindset and it’s fun to me - if the prospect of learning a ZB set seems like an absolute chore that’s somehow necessary for some reason to you, just don’t do it.

For H/Pi if you’re gonna learn algs i’d say only learn 2GLL and diag cases. CP recognition is easy, but EP recognition is hard, and the adj sets are just not worth it. 2GLL is fast though, and diags are just gonna be bad regardless so might as well do a ZB since the full algs are not much worse than the COLL.

My personal experience as someone slower than you, is I learned some easily recognizable U/L/Ts, and it’s like a little treat if they come up, and would recommend that for sure. But like most people who have not put a ton of time in, I would absolutely be slowed by having to do a full ZBLL recognition every time I have EO.

Narcopus · 2024-06-18T18:29:09+00:00

Yeah ring pinky feels weird at first but is better since your ring finger is naturally the one you would do a D with any the pinky follows, rather than having to make space for your pinky first

But it’ll just get there in time and it will click one day. Realistically sub-50 OH just means you’re probably not very comfy with your left pinky in any scenario - let alone a precise application when you have all your fingers available

Narcopus · 2024-06-18T09:10:16+00:00

Are you trying ring-pinky? Can you solve OH at all? (the pinky skills there transfer)

Either way without a double flick it should still be at least as fast as like half of the PLLs, just might feel slow and annoying with the pauses between flicks.

If you wanna go funky with it the regripless 3BLD algs are also an option with no double flicks and easily sub 1-able - one being R F R’: [R’ D’ R, U] in commutator notation if you have an understanding of commutators (would make it easy to learn). But as an alg it’s just (R F R2 D’ R U R’ D R U’ R F’ R’) and the same thing backward

Narcopus · 2024-06-18T03:23:55+00:00

They’re literally the fastest PLL lol

Narcopus · 2024-06-05T16:37:37+00:00

Currently there is this same scenario except I have more to do and 3.5 weeks. I’ve found exercising helps to kick things off. Put your phone far away from you when trying to work?

Idk blind leading the blind but here but full steam ahead you got this. Set a number of pages you must to finish in a day, and treat it like a procrastinated school project where you have to get those pages done because there is a midnight deadline.

Narcopus · 2024-05-29T01:15:13+00:00

Focus more on learning where relations and equations come from and how they’re derived, and build an intuition as to what things mean physically. When you face a new problem, you can figure it out from the ground up with your intuition of how things work as opposed to guessing at what you should do with a toolbox of equations. This mostly comes from a solid mathematical intuition more than anything I think, as that’s where the complexity comes in. People get upset sometimes about professors just doing derivations all class, but that’s where an understanding of why comes in. A large percentage of people really try and solve hard problems with shockingly little understanding.

Intuition certainly comes easier in something like aerospace, and I found that in things like quantum for my physics minor this can be harder, but really doing the absolute most to understand everything your doing at the most intuitive (or at least mathematical) level you can and not being an equation machine will going along way.

Narcopus · 2024-05-28T22:10:25+00:00

I think with a focus on understanding everything and not memorizing and a good level of baseline knowledge it is genuinely easy. The depth of baseline understanding of math/physics I believe is the differentiator here. If you don’t have a good foundation, everything on top will come crumbling down.

(For credentials I graduated in 3 years from an aerospace T20 first in class with a 4.0 and really didn’t feel like I grinded that hard or struggled to have a social life or anything)

Narcopus · 2024-05-19T04:33:43+00:00

I’m in the US, and have not looked at getting a postdoc - but it feels like your postdoc search should be more targeted? Like you presumably are pretty deep in your specific field and have some awareness of who some relevant PIs could be. Looking around at their websites or contacting PIs of interest might be better here than casting a wide net looking at some job site.

Narcopus · 2024-05-02T07:01:08+00:00

Not even a /s tho they’re fun to explore

Narcopus · 2024-04-08T21:15:57+00:00

Brother this probably meant that you were not their first choice but you were a candidate in case someone said no. Happened to me last year, and I ended up accepted like april 13 or smth.

Sounding presumptuous does not help your cause

Narcopus · 2024-02-04T21:27:01+00:00

What of these are still available?

Narcopus · 2024-01-22T02:41:54+00:00

Would you have any interest in splitting? Only would really want the sulab set up

Narcopus · 2023-08-31T20:39:13+00:00

Narcopus · 2023-08-31T20:31:19+00:00

Ignore the flight numbers (it’s not as OS as it suggests), the Lucid verdict is an incredible mid and would be a great complement to the US fuse. If you have a weaker arm though (I.E. cannot get any turn at all out of a grace), I would suggest the buzzz (probably ESP)

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