 Okay, since my last video where I talked about this original cube that I've had for the last 35 years, and yes, it has been 35 years. I've done some work on speeding up my my solve time, but there's only so much I can do. I mean this thing doesn't lend itself to speed at all, which was the whole point of that last video. I mean when I watch these the speedcubers work on their cubes, they're just using. You guys are holding your cubes very delicately and you're just using a finger to spin one layer at a time, including the center layers. Here, look at this. Even when I get started, I can't really do that with... That takes a lot of strength and it doesn't work. I'll tell you what happened. I was working on getting my my times better, and I have improved my time from about three minutes to about two and a half minutes, and I did that primarily by going back to my my traditional method for solving the cube and memorizing certain conditions that I had not memorized before, like particularly the in my method for solving there are seven possible combinations of orientations for the bottom corners and I had only had three of them memorized. Simply by memorizing all seven of those, I'm able to get my time faster, and by memorizing a the algorithm for solving bottom-side configurations. But anyway, here's what happened. While I was working on getting faster times, the cover for the the green centerpiece popped out spontaneously. Which has never happened before. In all the decades that I've owned this cube, no piece has ever popped out and no cover has ever popped out, but it happened on its own. So I loosened this screw by a quarter turn and put the cap back on. And the the opposite side, the yellow, I was able to pull out with my fingernail very easily. So I loosened that one as well. The other caps for the other centers would not come off. I was not able to pull them off with my fingernails at all. I was able to easily pop out the the red and orange caps with a miniature screwdriver. The same with the blue, which for me, again, is the bottom. This one's not going to come off with my fingernail. I needed a screwdriver for it. At first, I said to myself, I'm not going to use a screwdriver to pop these these caps off because I'll damage the cube. But I discovered I was able to hook my fingernails under the edges and raise them a little bit, but the caps wouldn't come off. But by raising them with my fingernails and using a miniature screwdriver, I was able to pop them off easily enough. The white side, though, almost wouldn't come off, even with a screwdriver underneath the lip. It simply wouldn't come off. It's because there were a couple of spots of glue under there. They were actually glued in. But the glue is so old now that the green center cap just popped off spontaneously. The top and bottom caps were still glued on pretty well, but they came off without damaging anything. And I loosened all the screws a quarter turn. And because of that, you can see this much looser, much, much looser than it was before. This has not helped the speed, though, because what's happening now is that the the various pieces are actually colliding with each other more when I turn, the looseness is allowing them to interfere with each other actually more than they were before. So although I'm able to to get my solution speed faster simply by getting my memorization better, the speed of the cube itself is just never going to improve. This thing wasn't built for speed. In my day, in the early 80s, when these are the only cubes available, speed cubing competitions were much slower than, of course, they are today. I can't remember what the the championship speeds were, but it wasn't... I'm thinking it was like around a minute. I may have that memorized all wrong. In fact, I think it was more than a minute. My speed of three minutes or so, and my friends with their speeds of three minutes or so, were considered super, super fast. And like I said in my previous video, when I'm with the average people at their homes at parties, three minutes is a real crowd-pleaser. And I guarantee you, if I'm at some random person's house and they happen to have a cube laying around, it's going to be one of these. It's going to be a cube that they got at Target or at a dime store, and it's going to be a cube like this. It's not going to be a speed cube. So being able to solve the cube in two and a half minutes now is still going to be extremely impressive. But here's, here's what I did. I got a, I went online and I ordered, and I ordered a new cube just to see what, if anything, I could do with it, and I'm going to open it up here. This just came a couple of hours ago. Let's see if I can get this open. I did a little bit of looking at YouTube videos and YouTube reviews and got this from the cubicle. Because people were saying that, first of all, I was intrigued by this idea of stickerless cubes. Of course, I've never, I've never had stickerless cubes. Not a three-by-three anyway. I have a small collection of cubic puzzles and one of them has no stickers. I may show, I may show you that someday if you're interested. This, I ordered this model, the Cyclone Boys model, because I was seeing people saying that it was good out of the box and everyone who did a review of it seemed to have the attitude that it was good for a good speed cube for beginners. So we'll see. Well, it's it's pushing itself apart just in my hands. Let's see, I, as an old-school cuber, I grip the cube very hard. I have a very strong grip on the cube. The younger solvers obviously are handling the cube very delicately. Like I'm having to, I'm just barely touching it right now. I'm just supporting it lightly with my fingers. Normally when I hold the cube, I'll pick it up off the table like this and see what this one, I'm pushing it out of alignment just by just by picking it up. I'm feeling some, some oil here. I guess it's lubed. I've never worked with cube lubrication before. And I'm feeling it. This is this is uncomfortable for me. I'm getting fingerprints all over it, but I don't, I don't like that. Well, let's see if I can turn the thing with, okay, with one finger. Yeah, okay. So yeah, turning the center is easy. All right, so here's, here's the thing. Speedcubing, the key to speedcubing is having the right equipment. I'm seeing that right now. So what you kids are doing with your 22nd and and faster solutions is you've rigged, you've rigged the start conditions. It's not so much that you're that you're better cubers. I think it's that you've, you've you've changed the start conditions so that you don't have to worry about. I see, I always see these, these kids opening up a box and the first thing that they're doing is checking corner cutting. And I see now why you're doing that is because like for one of these original cubes, if you wanted to make a turn, you have to turn it, you have to be precise. You have to turn it all the way and you have to line and you have to line up the cubes before you can move on or it's going to catch and sometimes it'll catch anyway. But you guys have changed the equipment so that you don't have to worry about being precise and that's where your speed comes from, okay? You kids, you meddling kids. Well, this is interesting. Now, see here I am flipping this thing with, with my fingers just like anybody else on YouTube and it's because of the equipment. Okay, all this time I was thinking that, that this younger generation of cube solvers are doing something different as far as solving the cube. No, they changed the equipment. Okay, all right. I'm going to, I'm going to play with this a little bit and see how fast I can get even with my old school solutions and see what this new, this new generation of equipment can do for an old school cubar like me. All right, see you next time.