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My stickerless Zhanchi is still my favorite cube ever, but today I decided to bring to work both my Zhanchis. I could never really figure out why I prefer the stickerless. Why does it turn so much better? Would my times be crap on the standard, black, stickered cube? I pumped out three crazy fast runs: 35.96, 37.73 and then…

Wow! Now…I’ve gotten to the point where .23 seconds is a vast improvement; this is unlike the old days where I could break a record by 3, 5, 10 seconds! Less than a quarter of a second is still a new personal best! However, what I’m really impressed by is the ability to get repeated low-30s. This is my second sub-32 and, with some additional luck, maybe the sub-30 is possible! That would be pretty sweet. Today is a good day!!!

I’ve finally done it!!! While the past two weeks have been tinkering with my new Gigaminx, I’ve returned to the classic 3×3 (seems so small in comparison!) and after a pretty impressive first two runs (36.56 & 39.89) I figured why not go for the five? 41 and 43-second runs were not quite as impressive leaving my average just over 40. I knew I needed a great run to bring that down and after an awesome last-layer skip, I finished at 35.15! Anything in that region is still exciting but to have it finish my average-of-five run at 39.31 seconds was thrilling! So – the final run times were:

36.56 / 38.89 / 43.80 / 41.17 / 35.15 = 39.31 Average

\m/

OK, 25 minutes is an absurdly long time to solve a cube, BUT it is also about four minutes faster than my prior record. Now, to be fair, I’ve only actually solved the cube twice for time. This time, the first two centers took two minutes each. All were done by the eight-minute mark or so and inner edges were done by 15. I don’t know specifics after that, but all-in-all, it was a long solve.

I should note that I tried a Gigaminx solve after. At 25 minutes I was just finishing reducing the thing to a Megaminx (whose record is nearly eight minutes!), so it’s safe to say that one took me a long while.

So…a new record. Not a great one, but it does the trick!

I’ve been consistently getting good times with the stickerless Zhanchi. My regular stickered Zhanchi isn’t tensioned well enough, it’s just not nearly as good as the stickerless. As for today’s solves, one 45-second run marred a pretty sweet run of five, a run that featured two sub-40s. This gave me my first sub-41 average of five, impressive considering I’m still using beginner’s method. (I still suck at F2L).

So, what were my times? Lessee…

41.00 / 47.17 / 45.76 / 36.50 / 41.54 = 40.39 Average

I love my stickerless Dayan Zhanchi. The thing is just the smoothest cube I’ve ever touched and solving it is such a joy. It’s been referred to as the butter cube because of its absurdly smooth turning.

And today, I figured I’d take 5 minutes and do some quick runs. Not only did I get another best average of five (41.09) but I also performed my second-fastest solve ever! 33.67 seconds is still more than a second and a half slower than my record, but also a second and a half faster than my old record! The fact that I averaged 41 seconds over five solves is amazing (but also mostly credited to that 33-second beast of a run). In any event, it’s a new record and a new 2nd-best record and for that, I’m pretty thrilled. My times:

42.32 / 33.67 / 44.72 / 43.78 / 40.96

I’ve done a few average of 5 runs in the past few months but I’ve never posted the results. Today is nice and quiet, as all the kids are in school and I haven’t had time to speedcube in a while. So, I tossed the awesome SpeedCube Timer on my phone and went to it. The results were satisfying, particularly because I haven’t gone for speed in weeks. The numbers don’t lie…let’s see how they were!

41.05 / 44.46 / 39.21 / 39.84 / 43.44

Back-to-back sub 40s! That’s pretty solid if I might say so! And after five runs, I averaged 41.6 seconds. I’m unsure what my old record was but I’m fairly certain I never had such a low average of 5. Not bad! Guess it’s worthy of my Cube Records Page!