The Craziest Competition in Square-1 History

4 rounds of Square-1. 5 sub-6 averages. 3 world records. Northeast Championship 2022.

WRs here:

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[MaxSiauwCubing]

Such a well-made video. It helped me truly realize just how crazy this comp was—for me, all Square-1 solvers, and Square-1 as a whole. And you have absolutely contributed to making this such a revolutionary comp. It is with your tutorials that I've been able to learn CSP and nearly all the PBL I use today :)

[LukeGarrett]

Amazing video, watching this unfold throughout that weekend was crazy, and I can’t even imagine how it was for someone who was there competing

[DerpyCuber]

Amazing recap video! Thanks for including my lengthy summary haha :D It was great seeing you and you popped off in sq-1 this comp!

[YashBudhiraja]

i don't personally care for square one too much, but seeing leaps like this in an event is extremely exciting and motivating. congrats to you and everyone else on a great performance at this comp!

[gtcubes]

I just started getting into square-1 about a month ago and it’s since become one of my favorite events. Seeing all of this happen is crazy and I’ll definitely continue doing Square-1. (Just wish it was at more comps though)

[tuffz]

It was so amazing to witness this in person. Your coverage of this comp was amazing, and I really liked the use of graphs and data to emphasize your points.

[Oxzowachi]

Beautiful video Sam, you really captured all the important context necessary to fully appreciate the magnitude of this competition without rambling. Though, I'd like to share some honest reflections about the implications of Max's insane average, and hopefully I can look back on this one day and laugh:

Max's 5.02 marked the end of an era: the era of the "free" Square-1 World Record average. Up until that Sunday, there were several people who had a good chance of beating the WR average; like, regularly getting ao12s at home faster than the WR ao5. For these few people, the WR average was practically up for grabs given a few fair chances, and they could pretty much expect to get WR at each competition. Now, there are 0 people, including Max, who could even dream about beating it for the foreseeable future. The Max Siauw era of Square-1 has begun, and I expect it will last for years :)


I'm super happy for Max, and am so proud to see him use OBL and PBL and prove that it's the best method. However, I feel like there's an elephant in the room that should be addressed: for some, it's more than a little bit discouraging. In my eyes, Max's 5.82 was exactly what we've been waiting for for months; he had finally broken the sub-6 barrier for the world, but there was still plenty of room to be shaved off in following competitions. But a 5.02 average... that's an insane average even for the best of the best (my PB average is 5.03), and we aren't used to that. Since Sunday's events, I have seen much discussion by the formerly relevant Squanners expressing discouraged remarks and plans to stop practicing Square-1 as much or at all. For me and some other top solvers, as we put more and more time into the event, our motivations for doing so shifted away from having fun and more towards getting the world record; and now that it feels unbeatable, it just seems futile for us to continue practicing or even competing. In fact, part of me wants to use the 5.02 as an opportunity to focus on teaching more people about OBL and PBL, but another part of me feels bad for helping people improve at an event whose record is practically unbeatable. It might not be the healthiest outlook on this competition, but that's just how I and some others feel. That's how good Max's average is.

On an optimistic note, the one chance we might have at reaching the point where 5.02 is reasonably beatable is through partially or fully predicting OBL in inspection. You, Sam, have dipped into it a little with PCOP, which is going in the right direction. But full OBL Prediction would eliminate the pause between cubeshape and OBL, and would allow the best of the best to average sub-6 globally. However, we have yet to find a method for predicting OBL that can be learned in a reasonable time frame or traced with CSP in 15 seconds. But who knows, maybe we'll find some genius way of simplifying the process in the future!

[darrenthecuber]

Unbelievable video! Great to see you in person getting some great results. And congrats on being NE champ!


and I got last in finals so I also contributed to the square-1 greatness of the comp

[TERRORSPEED]

I was scrambling for the last 2 rounds, was so crazy to see all of that happen back to back. Congrats on the 4.45 and hopefully you can get a WR soon!

[DDHDTV]

Reading the news about all the crazy events at this comp was so exciting. So happy that you put it all together in this amazing video. People all around the world have their eyes in you guys!

[jonathanpermutation]

4:59 is it just me or does his square 1 sound like hes building something in a lego star wars game

[Riccowed]

This was such a great vid! Awesome style of commentary!

[aaronr]

This video is soo amazing! Even today I still am mind blowned from what the comp had to offer for squan. I’ve been recently doing a bit of squan and I also got the mgc. Idk what to say these square 1 wrs are just AMAZING!

[Cubes]

2:54 this is a nice way to show what times would be like with that kind of drop, but because Fewest Moves solutions are always a whole number, and Fewest Moves is by mo3, the only possible mo3s are xx.00, xx.33, and xx.67. So 17.39 is impossible, but 17.33 (which is very close to 17.39) is.

[cubernyc]

Great video!! This really brings the craziness of the experience to the people who were not competing at the comp, thanks :)

[noahswor]

An amazing video Sam, I’m so proud of your results seeing you come so far. Not just your solving, but your video skills have gotten so much better too. I’m cheering you on for that sub6 average bro!

[JudeStradtner]

great video! really nice graphics and data. this comp was insane!

[AedanBryant]

This competition was insane, so much fun to watch and see all the WRs, and on top of that I am super happy with my 9.18 average, and being able to compete in the first ever square-1 round 4! I remember talking about how crazy the tied NAR was only to turn around and see the 4.37. I can't wait to see what the future of square-1 holds.

[JTiger]

What an incredible video for an incredible competition! And your presentation of the statistics was genius, it really put all the results from this comp into perspective! No doubt this will go down in cubing history!

[evanyao]

Those records were crazy to witness, great vid and congrats