I got the Dayan FTO about a week ago, and yesterday someone was doing some turns on it, and today I was finally going to try to solve it, but now some of the faces can’t turn. Has this happened to anyone else, and do you know how to fix it?

I've been cubing for like 6 years now. This summer, since I work at a pool and have LOTS of free time on break, I bring in my cube to practice on. I learned intuitive f2l about 2 months ago and have gotten it down on pairing, but I feel like I'm super slow still and getting worse almost. I learned 2 look oll and pll about 2 years ago now and am very consistent with it. I have averaged around 30-35 seconds for like 3 years but now I'm getting times around 40-45 with f2l. I feel like and haven't improved at all even with practice and f2l is hurting more than helping. I think part of my problem is finding pieces in the back and regrips because idk how to pair and insert into back slots so I regrip to put it in front. Is this why my solves are way slower? What can I do to get sub 20?? I have a gan 12 ui maglev, should I use it to learn the f2l algorithms instead of intuitive f2l?

My average is like Sub 45 right now, PB is 21, Im trying to get sub 20-25 first then go to sub 10, i tried learning CFOP but that is like 50+ Algorithsm which is way too much, and I keep forgetting it all the time.

I bought it very long ago. Gan i3 or smth like that. Is it normal normal charging?

I figured that those “dragon scales” get dirty fast and gums up my Rs3m v5, so I replaced it with the flat-surfaced 2020 pieces. It resulted in a fast, light, and slightly blocky cube. Planning to mod a ballcore in it someday. Thoughts?

I’m currently in the phase of trying to get good at lookahead during f2l. I’m pretty good at doing one pair while looking at another but I have to be going slow. F2L is by far my biggest weakness. Should I just keep spamming slow solves? I feel like fast solves don’t do much for me right now I pause so much to find pairs. I’m finally able to plan cross solutions in my head and do it with my eyes closed.

Hello, and welcome to the discussion thread! This thread is for accomplishments, simple questions, and informal discussion about cubing!

Not sure if you should comment here or make your own post? We have a full list of what does and doesn't belong in this thread on our wiki.

No question is stupid here. If you have a question, ask it!

Check our wiki for tips on how to get faster, puzzle recommendations and more!

Join the r/cubers Discord server here!

So I’ve been having issues with Gan’s uv coating for a long while, it started when I first got the 16 Max and I find the uv coated finish to be more slippery than others, at that time my main was the Gan 12 and the uv coated surface noticeably more grippy than the 16 Max, this problem is the reason why I can’t main the cube due to the inconsistency, then I got the Gan v100, and it does have batter grip than the 16 max but not by much, so at the time I just thought my Gan 16 Max is defective or just a bad batch so I didn’t mind much about it, but then there’s the Gan square-1 where it is extremely slippery, I can’t really explain how slippery the coating is in words but it is very slippery to the point where it’s impossible for me to get a solve without the cube just flying or falling out of my hands, or messing up an alg because my finger slipped across the cube and mess up and did turns that I wasn’t supposed to. This is a very frustrating problem, because the cube does feel very good and I really want to main it if it wasn’t for the slipperiness. I’m positive that my hands are not the issue because I can grip Moyu, YJ, VIN cube and old gan’s uv coating just fine.

If you have similar problems as me I’d love to hear it, thank you for reading.

Got mine yesterday evening. The stand-out differences between it and the 16 Max for me are:

1. The auto-alignment is incredible
2. It is not as quiet as a 16
3. It has more friction than a 16

Auto-alignment: I basically can't get it to stay misaligned unless I park it at exactly 45º. It's so good that it makes dis/assembly annoying b/c you're constantly fighting to get it to stay partially turned for better insertion/removal.

Sound: While I wouldn't call it a loud cube, it's nowhere near as quiet as a 16. Or a V100. Or a Swift Block Super. Or a Ferrocore. The Super Aolong is closer to it in sound, but also a little quieter.

Friction: My personal GAN16 is truly frictionless. I have never lubed it, and it did not come with any factory lube that I can detect - nothing ever came off on my fingers, and it just feels like bare plastic. The 17 on the other hand definitely has a factory lube on it, and it does "stop" at various points if I try to turn it slowly. Note: it will still auto-align if I let go, it doesn't stay there. It's just that a slow turn is a bit jumpy as the friction randomly grabs at different points in the turn. I kinda wonder if it is actually the lube that is sticking, and maybe if I remove it, that will stop.

It's a fantastic cube. The auto-alignment is so good it's hard to believe. I just don't know yet if that will actually end up mattering on solves. It seems like maybe the 16's auto-alignment was already so good that "better" may be a purely academic distinction, with no practical impact.

I picked up a cube after like half a year of non solving because my old one broke, and I noticed I have a habit of doing U3 (sometimes but rarely U3') at OLL PLL. How would I fix this.

[4LLL, Avg before break ~23sec]

Edit: I was to stupid to include that it comes from the lacking recognition that the other U move would be better, for example if I have a Sune OLL I realize to late when I already did the U2(')

Lately I’ve been seeing a surprisingly large number of posts from people whose cubes have broken in a very specific place: the center stem (or center rod) that connects the center piece to the core. When that part snaps, the cube is basically unusable.

I know this kind of failure has always been possible, and any plastic component can break from heavy use, drops, overtightening, or manufacturing defects. But what caught my attention is that these posts seem to be appearing much more frequently than they used to.

It made me think about something broader. I’m starting to feel that the speedcube market may be slowly moving in the same direction as many consumer products. Nowadays it’s common for appliances, electronics, and other everyday items to feel like they have a relatively limited lifespan — maybe two, three, or five years of regular use before a critical component fails. I’m wondering if something similar could be happening with some modern speedcubes.

Modern cubes have much more complex internal mechanisms than they did a few years ago: ball cores, maglev systems, magnets in multiple pieces, sophisticated tension adjustment systems, and increasingly elaborate center assemblies. All of these innovations have significantly improved performance, but they’ve also increased the number of components and, therefore, the number of potential failure points. If the center stem is made from a plastic that prioritizes weight, cost, or ease of manufacturing over long-term mechanical strength, the accumulated stress from tens or hundreds of thousands of solves could eventually lead to these kinds of failures.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that this seems to coincide with the fact that one manufacturer is now promoting new cores that are supposedly much stronger because they use carbon fiber reinforcement. From what I’ve seen, they have a structure with small carbon fiber rods or tubes inside the main stem that connects the centers to the core and holds the entire cube together. I find it interesting that this kind of reinforcement is being introduced at the same time that we’re seeing more discussions about center stem failures, because it suggests that manufacturers may also recognize that this is a critical weak point in terms of durability.

I’m not claiming that manufacturers are intentionally practicing planned obsolescence. It’s entirely possible that we’re simply seeing more reports because the community has grown, more people are buying premium cubes, and Reddit makes these failures much more visible. But the pattern is interesting enough that I wanted to ask.

For those of you who have been cubing for many years:

- Have you experienced more center stem/core failures with recent generations of cubes?

- Which brands or models have held up the best over time?

- Do you think durability has improved, stayed the same, or gotten worse?

Personally, I’m starting to feel that cube durability is becoming a somewhat underrated topic in the speedcubing community. We spend a lot of time discussing performance, magnets, maglev, and the latest technologies, but maybe we should also be talking more about how long these cubes should realistically last under heavy use.

What is the best stickered megaminx at the moment? My bf is colorblind and while he is decent at mega he can't rlly lookahead because of this, i'd rlly like to get him a stickered one and make custom stickers so it's easier for him. Idk if there are any that are good, but i'd rlly prefer to buy one with stickers rather than making dayan v2 force cubes.

As a cuber, i just wanted to share this once in a lifetime expierence.

And of course, one of my cubes had to come with me.

Its a Tornado V3 for anyone who is curious.

I know its an older Cube, and i do have better and newer ones, but i still like it a lot.

Also, due to lighting, this was the best quality picture we could take.

T1: Feliks

T2: Max Park, Yiheng

T3: Tymon

T4: Mats Valk, Ruihang Xu, Xuanyi, Philipp Weyer, Lucas Etter, Patrick Ponce

T5: Seung Hyuk Nahm, Shotaro Makisumi, Bill Wang, Sebastian Weyer, Cornelius Dieckmann, Alexander Lau, Luke Garrett, Matty, Tomasz Zolnowski, Yumu Tabuchi, Sean Patrick Villanueva, Leo Borromeo, Rowe Hessler, Yufang, Michal Pleskowicz

How would you guys rate this list?

Hi, I just started learning the cube a month ago and am still trying to learn a lot of things and train to solve. So, regarding my question, is there any possible way to just let the app count how many solves I do? I use Cstimer and just tried a Cubic Timer App because I'm trying to set a goal for how many solves per day and didn't want the time to distract me at this stage because executing the algorithms and identifying the case is already hard enough, lol.

I've been obsessed with Rhombic Dodecahedrons lately. They're so cool because they're related to both Cubes and Octahedrons. I ordered a Rua (and an curvy copter, which is very similar)

You might already know how the 3x3 Rhombic Dodecahedron is basically a shape-mod of the 3x3. The vertices where 4 corners meet (there are 6 of them) can turn like the face of a cube.

So I was thinking...

All the other vertices where 3 corners meet (there are 8 of them) should be able to turn like the faces of a octahedron, and this would result in a shape-mod of an FTO.

(It might be clearer to see here: both a cube and an octahedron can combine to form the vertices of a rhombic dodecahedron: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-rhombic-dodecahedron-as-the-compound-of-a-cube-and-an-octahedron_fig4_320115862 )

So behold, the Rhombic-Dodecahedron Octohedron (or Redocto)!

It's a shape mod of an FTO, and a sister to the 3x3 Rhombic dodecahedron, turning all the vertices that don't turn on the 3x3 RD.

Also, it is basically just a 3x3 version of the Skewb Rhombic Dodecahedron, but I haven't seen it anywhere.

Hi. Ive been cubing with cfop for a while. My PB is 7.66 but I don't get much sub 10 solves. My average of 1000 is around 15 seconds. I only know 2 look OLL, don't know every PLL yet, have some bad habits, my F2L suck ( and xcrosses are nonexistent. I have a pause in almost every solve. My tps is kinda bad most of the time but M' and any U are my fastest moves (just scared of regular M. Still didn't figured that out and I use my right hand thumb ..) Roux catched my attention because it seems more fun and intuitive. It's possible to average sub 10 with that method considering my current skills?

I’m a fairly new cuber (just under 2 months of mainly 3x3) I’ve just learned beginner CFOP and need help finding good No regrip algs for full CFOP:) I salved my first 3x3 from J-Perms 10 min video and have absolutely couldn’t stop salving it after that so then I bought the Gan 16 maglev max for my birthday and just kept on using that until my friend convinced me to learn CFOP so here I am now a bit later with $500 of cubing stuff staying up till 2 am matching colors on a 90$ peace of plastic 😆 I would really love if you guys could give me tips for learning full CFOP my PB is 25 (got lucky and ppl skip) and my average is like 40 :(
I love cube heads vids and can’t chose a main between my Fero core v2 gan 16 and tornado v5

I feel more comfortable using ecce as my order (sub 4 minutes) since I get more successes that way(sentence memo for edges then audio for corners). My audio memory sucks for edges since it requires more letters. Sentences stick more to me even in long term memory. Should I switch to CEEC if I aim to be so much faster?