SATURDAY, MAY 27, 2006
I left home around 7:30 AM for the Trumbull competition.  The drive was only about an hour and a half so I arrived a little after 9AM.  The stores in the mall were closed, but the mall itself was open.  It was sweet because I got a parking spot right in front of the mall entrance.  I saw Chris Szlatenyi and he helped me carry the stackmats and displays inside.

Before the competition began, I saw some familiar faces (and some new ones) and I did some practice solves on the Magic.  Craig Bouchard and I both were having difficulties with our puzzles and did some bad things to the strings that Stefan Pochmann must never hear about.

I was a judge/scrambler for the first round of the 3x3x3 event, so I did all of my solves before the competition was supposed to begin.  I did not do very well, but my 22.63 average was my best ever in a competition and also enough to advance me to the finals.  I was excited about that because I hadn't practiced the 3-cube since November.

The next event was the 3x3x3 One-handed finals.  I got my best ever one-handed average in a competition of 44.15 seconds and it was good enough to give me 4th place overall.  I had not practiced this either, so I had no reason to complain.  Cory Loviglio won the event with a 36.34 second average.

In the 4-cube Finals, I also competed before the others so that I could judge and scramble.  I had a best solve of 1:40 and averaged 2:00 to give me 7th place.  Since my previous best in competition was 2:30 single and 3:57 average, I was happy with my improvement.  The 1:40 solve was actually my fastest solve ever on a 4x4x4.  Matt Walter won the event with a 1:16 average.

Afterwards, we took a short break for lunch.  The Magic events were to begin towards the end of lunch.  In the past, I would stand but I decided I might be more relaxed if I sat during the competition for Magic.  Indeed, sitting helped as I set the World Record for the Rubik's Magic Average (1.40 seconds).  That was of course good enough for first place.  My 3.78 average on the Master Magic put me in 2nd place behind Craig by 0.03 second.

Next was the 3x3x3 Blindfolded event.  I failed my first two attempts, but both were very close.  In both solves, the corners were solved.  In one of them, 4 edges were flipped and in the other a few edges were in the wrong places.  In any case, I got my first successful blindfolded solve in competition on my 3rd attempt with a time of 6:21 to give me 3rd place.  Craig won the event with a time of 4:19.96.

The next event was the 5x5x5 Finals.  Again, I set a personal best for myself with a time of 4:47 (my previous best ever was 4:57) and a 5:30 average (my best average in competition was 9:46).  This got me 7th place.  Cory won with a 2:27 average.

The last event before the finals was the 2x2x2 cube event.  I did okay on my first two solves (both were 9s) but I got a DNF (somehow off by 3 moves), an 11, and then a 26 (brain fart), giving me a 16 second average and 6th place in the competition.  Anthony Hsu set the World record at 3.55 seconds and an American Record with a 6.59 second average.

In the 3x3x3 finals, I got my best ever 3x3x3 competition average of 21.25 seconds, giving me 7th place.  My times ranged from 19.94 to 22.66 so I was very consistent.  I was pleased with my results from the competition.  Matt Walter won the 3x3x3 event with a 14.81 second average.

Overall, the competition was very fun and I saw a dramatic improvement in my performance all around.  I was pleased to set a World Record in the Rubik's Magic and I had a lot of fun.  I am looking forward to US Nationals so that I can improve even further!