More finger exercising: Skewb, Pyraminx, and 7 days book

(tags Rubik's Cube, puzzle, book)

There is a reason why I scope Toys 'R Us every week. Puzzles, physical puzzles that don't require electricity, portable physical puzzles.

I saw some alternative rotation shape puzzles on Rubik's Cube no hoshi. I thought, yeah that's nice. But then I found them at the store, so I picked up the "Skewb" and "Pyraminx", but passed on the more complicated "Dekaminx". The Pyraminx reminds me of my time in walking around with the family at the old Swap Meet. You know, people selling knock off stuff that maybe isn't licensed for over-the-counter sale. Back then I had a toy similar to the Pyraminx but my patience broke and so did the toy.

Let's see if I fare any better at trying to solve these by myself.

And then, by chance on one of my blogrolls I saw a link to this book Rubik's Cube 7 Days Concentration Training: Mastering Speed Cubing (ルーブックキューブ7日間集中トレーニング～スピードキューブ完全マスター) by Katsuyuki Konishi (小西克幸) (ISBN 978-4-88380-677-5). It seems to be a distillation or embellishment of the author's free site Planet Puzzle. The author himself is the current vice president of the JRCA (Japan Rubik Cube Association, 日本ルービックキューブ協会の副会長), and holds a number of contest records in the previous years. Amazon showed it as sold out, but my local Junkudo had it FTW.

This book is more promising that a previous Rubik's Cube book I bought because it teaches the basics of speed cubing, like Finger ShortCuts (FSC) and the pros and cons of doing the first step "blue cross" on the top, bottom, or side. There's even a "before you go crazy on the cube, make sure to do this" section, which starts off with "practice every day, even just 5 minutes" and "don't give up" which is good. But then there's more suggestions like "make sure to keep in good touch with your family" and "eat three meals a day" and "sleep good", which sounds kinda wonky.

Basically this book teaches you the LBL method that all the other recent books and puzzle supplements explain. The latter parts of the book do show the same endgame 57 OLL positions and 21 PLL positions, but the notation is different. It is possible that the moves are different as well, because some of the basic moves in the F2L are heavy on the F, R and U faces, unlikemy previous tutorials. The author suggests to "remember at the hyphens" within the notation, which really is helpful. In short, there seems to be more meat to chew on here. Plus the book readily references the videos available at the original site, so those who can't grok the Rubik's Cube notation aren't left out in the cold.

BTW, my average Rubik's Cube times are still hovering around 60 to 80 seconds. I measure them during my lunch break, but I only consider a 12 cube run an official time so no stats for now.