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NxN Nonsense NC 2026
I don’t think I’ve updated the blog on what’s happened with US Nationals 2026 since the last time I talked about it back in July. It’s now become North American Championships! I’ve only ever been to NC State Champs and US Nationals, so I’m super excited to add NAC to that list. I already registered and have a spot, so if anyone reading this is going then I’ll see you there!
The issue with larger comps now that they’re getting to be huge spectator events means that they have to limit the amount of people and they’re doing qualification times. It’s not a hard concept, but I just didn’t understand how the WCA handled it for World Championships last year in Seattle, otherwise I would’ve gone. I didn’t realize that the first sets of cutoffs were going to be eased up because they want the faster people to for sure have a spot. This time I did understand them and I got registered fine. Up until this past weekend I was only registered for 3x3, 4x4, skewb and OH because that’s all I qualified for (no qualifying times for any of those lol). To qualify to compete in NAC for 5x5 you’d have to have an average that was sub 1:08, for 6x6 a mean of sub 2, and 7x7 a mean of sub 3:20. I had none of these officially. However, 5x5 I can get sub 1:08 singles and averages at home pretty easily. It was just a matter of doing it in competition.
In comes NxN Nonsense. NxN Nonsense was a really fun competition that I went to this past weekend on Feb 22nd. It had 2 rounds of all the NxN puzzles except for 2x2 (a near perfect competition, needed 3 rounds of everything but then it’d have to be a 2 day). Leading up to the competition I planned to do a ton of big cube solves to hopefully get to where I could qualify for 5x5-7x7, or have a better chance of getting fluke times that got me the necessary averages (haha).
Unfortunately leading up to this competition I was particularly busy. My birthday was in the middle of February, we were finishing this large project at work, I started “Attack On Titan”, I had several instances I watched my nephews for my sisters. So I think the week of the competition I did a total of 0 combined solves for 6x6 and 7x7. I was super unprepared.
I actually kicked so much ass though! First event of the day was 3x3 and I got my first sub 10 average finally! Right off rip. I’ve been close a few times, and I’ve been able to get sub 10 averages for years now. I’m so glad to finally have gotten it. The WCA exports their database once a week and people have come up with a ton of statistics. I saw a page like a year ago that was “longest time between first competition and first sub 10 average”, and I went and found the sql for it again, and I am now the 25th longest time to get a sub 10 average at 13.5 years (haha). That’s a really funny stat I think. The number 1 spot was someone who got it after 19 years, which is really awesome to see, I bet he was super happy.
On top of that I got a sub 1:08 average (it was actually 1:06.23) for 5x5 AND a sub 1 single (59.84)! I was so excited for this. This was my biggest reaction out of any competition I’ve been to I think (it was still calm though cuz I don’t like drawing attention to myself lol). 5x5 has been my favorite event ever since I first competed in it, and this was a huge barrier to finally break in competition. Next is a sub 1 average, maybe possibly by/at NAC, who knows. I did alright in 6x6 and 7x7, not well enough to qualify though. I didn’t break any PBs for 6x6 this time. I did initially make it into 6x6 finals, but they were running behind so everyone after 16th place got cut and I was 19th. I broke my single and average for 7x7, and I made it to finals so I got 6 solves total which was a lot. I got a 3:17 single, so it proves that I can probably qualify if I work a little harder. I just have to practice more. I bought a 6x6 and 7x7 earlier last year when I was getting back into competing and they’re good, so I think it’s mostly just practice and reducing pauses.
It’s really silly, but I haven’t really watched any tips videos in probably 5 years or more, so I’m trying to watch more. Most of my practice for that time has been working on fluidity and the occasional stint of learning an alg set like ZBLL (still only know 3.5 of the 2GLL cases haha). Which isn’t the worst thing in the world. However, some of the cases I do aren’t the most optimal so I’m just reinforcing bad habits that I’m having to break now. I watched a video on Yau for 4x4 today and realized how inefficient my solves really are. So I’m gonna dive into a bunch of info in the coming weeks.
Talk to you guys next month!