Author: hargunsinghtikku May 30, 2018 0 Comments

This last weekend, I was at IIT Bombay for Indian National Championship 2018, it is an annual championship held every year in different cities throughout the country. As the name suggests, the winner of each event is declared the National Champion for the year.

There are 18 official WCA events, 2×2 through 7×7, 3×3 One-Handed, 3×3 With Feet, 3×3 Fewest Moves, 3×3 Blindfolded, Megaminx, Pyraminx, Skewb, Square-1, Clock, 3×3 Multiple Blindfolded, 4×4 Blindfolded and 5×5 Blindfolded. Championships of all sorts usually have all of these events, just so a champion could be made. I participated in all 18 events at this competition, just to increase my overall rankings. Actually, I didn’t even know how to solve a 4×4 and 5×5 blindfolded at the time, but still participated as I was planning to learn them just before the first day of the competition, but couldn’t grasp the concepts and ended up skipping them altogether.

My flight was on the day before the competition, my mother had to go to Aerocity that day and dropped me at the airport along the way, I met 3 people I had planned to stay with, in the hotel, 3 of us had the same flight, whereas the 4th one has a different flight with roughly the same timings. I put my Magnetic cubes into someone else’s check-in bag at the last moment, as I forgot magnetic material wasn’t allowed in the cabin, and all I had was a backpack and no check-in baggage too.

We met up at Mumbai Airport after both the flights had landed, took a cab to the hotel and made ourselves comfortable. 6 people were staying together, 2 had already checked in which just made our task easier.

After that, we all just practiced the whole day and a friend came to our hotel in the evening to meet us.

The next day, we left IIT at 7:15 in 2 cabs, 3 people in each.

The first event was FMC, which started at 8, we reached the venue at 7:30, but lost our way, the people in the other cab had no such problem, as one of them had been to the venue the previous day too for the staff rounds, we reached the main hall where it was supposed to be done with barely 5 minutes to spare.

It went okay-ish, the next event was Megaminx, which is my main event, hence I was really nervous during it.

The only thing worth mentioning was that I got a 53.27 second solve, which is my official best time, but messed up the average.

In 6×6, I got a 2:36 solve, which is actually my best ever solve by 13 seconds.

Nothing eventful happened that day, except for a few National Records.

 

All the mainstream events were on the second day, my first event was 3×3 Blindfolded, my first two attempts were unsolved, so I went safe on the last one, and got a 3:27 success, which got me into second round too.

A big letdown that day was in 2×2, I had done a lot of 2×2 solves the previous 2 days just to improve as it’s my worst event by far in terms of rankings, however I didn’t break any official best time, neither did I make it to the second round so I could get another chance.

I performed sub-par in Skewb too, I got a 6 average when I actually average 3.9 seconds, and was placed 22nd, when I was hoping for top 5.

The 2×2 Asian Record average was also broken that day.

The next day, we almost missed FMC Attempt 3 and reached 2 minutes before it was originally meant to start, but something extremely weird happened, we had started the attempt, but they stopped us in between as someone had gotten the scramble of attempt 3 in attempt 2, FMC had to be restarted all over again, and around 30 minutes were wasted due to this, we got an extra scramble and redid the whole attempt. I still DNFed the attempt, due to writing a move wrong in the final solution, causing me not to get a mean, I have been hoping to get an FMC mean since 4 competitions.

Next were the round 2s of Pyraminx and 2×2, and after that Skewb round 2, I got a decent-ish average but missed out going to the finals by 2 ranks, 12 people went to the finals, I was 14th.

After a few events, there was lunch, but as I was doing MBLD, I had to miss it, but had other events I wasn’t competing in, as free time, after MBLD, there were Megaminx Finals, in which I came 3rd, it really was an amazing feeling for me, podiuming at my first ever championship.

I didn’t have any event after that, so I went to eat after that, and came back at the time of the final few events, as for prizes, I got 2 puzzles, cash and a few coupons.

Even though it was organised horribly, the competition still was a lot of fun!

It was a whole new experience for me, A mix of excitement and fear, meeting a lot of new people, and travelling alone.