Do you remember that one middle school project where you had a partner that had NO idea what they were talking about, and when the teacher asked them a question they began to desperately flounder about and gave an incorrect answer?

The news is this middle school partner.

There is no better example of the public’s misunderstanding of cubing than news segments about cubing.

These segments misrepresent cubing, perpetuating misinformation that enforces stereotypes and exponentially increases the barrier to entry for the hobby. How does it do this and what larger implications does this have?

I am writing this on 11/14/18 at 4:35 pm. Let’s search “Rubik’s cube” and see what comes up!

The third result is this: Meet the boy who can solve a Rubik’s cube in 12 seconds

SBS News

Alright let’s pick this to shreds!

“It was Christmas 2015 when James, a precocious kid from Brisbane, got his first two Rubik’s cubes – a 1.0 and a 12-sided Megaminx.”

This must be a typo, I have no idea what a “1.0” is. If they are attempted to say “10 and 12 sided megaminx” that is wildly inaccurate, a mega only has 12 sides.

“James… now has 23 Rubik’s Cubes – an impressive number for a seven-year-old.”

Ehhh… I suppose, but it’s very common to have a lot of puzzles. I’m currently at the border-line concerning number of 160 puzzles. When I first started I got past 30 in maybe 3/4 months.

“His current personal best for a traditional three-by-three cube stands at 12 seconds – not too far off the world record of 4.22 seconds”

This is laughable.

12 is great! In fact it’s very good for someone his age, but to say “not too far off” from 4.22. Oh man. In today’s level of competition .5 seconds can be considered a lot. If you ask someone with a personal best of 12 (like me!) if they are close to the world record holder Feliks, they’d laugh at you. Here are my results:

My PR (personal record), a term that means a competitor’s best solve in an official competition, is 12.84. Notice the ‘13,750’ next to it. That’s my solve’s rank. Not even top 10,000 in the world. I wouldn’t call that close to number 1. In fact, in an attempt to figure out the exact rank for a 12.00 second solve my webpage crashed loading all of the results.

Not only did this writer most likely round the number to a nice even 12 flat (a cardinal sin, we don’t round in official results), but they likely took James’ pb (best time at home). This time does not accurately reflect how fast he solves.

Notice the number next to single on my results, my average. My best average ever in competition was 16.91. It’s more accurate to say that I can solve a cube in 17 seconds.

That was an analysis only 4 paragraphs deep. So you get the idea, writers often don’t understand cubing and misrepresent it.

But I wouldn’t call it harmful to say that 23 puzzles is a lot or 12 seconds is close to the world record. What is harmful, however, is something that almost all cubing in the news does. It places cubers on an pedestal of intelligence.

Digging a little deeper we can see that the SBS article was just a promo for their child genius competition series. Unfortunately I’d have to sign up to watch it, but let’s just stick to what we know about James from the article.

Is James smart? Clearly, he is a genius by every definition of the word. Is James smart because he can solve a Rubik’s cube? NOOOOOOooooooooooooo.

News has an obsession with portraying cubers as geniuses, prodigies, and gifted individuals. This is not true, and a dangerous idea.

If people learn about cubing through the news they will never try to get involved. After all, who would even try to match the skill of a prodigy?

The sad truth is that there’s an ocean of misinformation pushed by journalists who don’t do their jobs and attempt to get clicks through clickbaited titles about geniuses.

There is a bright side. Sometimes in an ocean of garbage there can be a pearl. Just look in the comment section of Vox’s excellent video How a 15-year-old solved a Rubik’s Cube in 5.25 seconds. You will see many comments from cubers relieved that someone finally did their job as a journalist.

Until Vox decides to revisit the cube, we will have to deal with the garbage for now.

Today I’m going to be talking about the viability of full ZBLL. Is CFOP or ZZ CT the future of cubing?

I stated in my first blog that this is what a sentence would look like if I wrote a blog about cubing for cubers. In the eyes of a non-cuber it might as well be in a different language. In fact in any niche hobby there is always a set of jargon developed and understood only by that community.

What does this mean as far as the accessibility of the hobby? How does slang contribute to the understanding gap that exists between the general public and the cubing community?

Let’s take a look at a few examples to find out:

PB

Most people would probably say, “Where’s the J?” But we’re not talking about a sandwich today.

                                       PB&J Sandwich

PBs and PRs in cubing stand for personal best and personal record, both representing the fastest time a cuber has ever gotten out an in an official competition respectively.

NRs and CRs

Most people would probably be familiar with the WR. You can read all about WRs in a pretty famous book.

                     Guinness Book of World Records

I’m sure looking at a Guinness Book of World records makes getting a WR seem a bit easy given the enormous number of seemingly random categories. Surely in such a niche hobby there is ample opportunity for WRs, right? Sadly no. The World Cube Association has 18 events, and all of them have been optimized in official competition to a degree that requires considerable skill to actually break a WR.

Instead of only recognizing the world record holders, the WCA also decided to recognize those for their achievements in their respective countries and continents. Thus the CR and NR was born.

The area where this starts to get confusing, even for some newer cubers, are the expansions of these categories. Rarely do we say somebody got a CR, we say NAR (usually cubers say “nar” and not “N-A-R”), or North America record. Of course there are Oceanic records and Asian records, and records for every other continent.

Curiously we don’t split up NR any further. Maybe because USR sounds too close to USSR…

                                                                     The USSR (Soviet Union)

If you’re interested in learning more terms, my friend J-Perm made an excellent video on terms cubers should know.

Strange acronyms aside, why does it all matter?

The jargon associated with cubing developed in the first place out of convenience. There’s no need to clarify a long term if both people in the conversation know what each other is talking about. Thus in a community short hand talk develops over time through such conversations.

Of course this leaves out those without the base knowledge to decipher what the jargon means, which returns us back to the idea of understanding boundaries.

Slang or jargon is just another way in which niche hobbies like cubing walls itself off from the general public. Now there’s no issue with this, but we should just be careful to not make it so inaccessible as to drive away possible new cubers. Videos like J-perm’s above are excellent resources for the community to help bridge this gap.

If we want to continue to grow cubing we have to make the language of cubing accessible to the general public.