Spoilers for Friday 11th August 2023 (Series 88, Heat 31)

[Philip A]

Victory for Harry will not only make him an Octochamp, but do a Rubik’s Cube solve blindfolded. Come on!

[Gavin Chipper]

A bit outside the time but (100+7×(9-6))×8-4=964.

[Philip A]

He saved his best ‘til last.

Unreal speed cubing as well. Can’t wait for more Savage in December.

[Gavin Chipper]

Yeah great run. I don't know who's coming up but surely a contender for the series.

[Adam Dexter]

A bit outside the time but (100+7×(9-6))×8-4=964.

Similarly out of time, but happy with this:

(((8+7)*9)+6+100)*4

[Tracey Anne Mills]

Congratulations Harry on a great run, best of luck for the finals

[Toby McDonald]

Brilliant run Harry, congrats on octochampdom, and best of luck for the finals! Loved the cubing as well!

[Sam Cappleman-Lynes]

939 is a nice octototal

[Steve Hyde]

MALIRONED in R2 is the most "could plausibly already be a 9" letters selection I've seen in ages

[Harry Savage]

Thanks so much, everyone! Glad you enjoyed the cubing, and I'm glad I didn't mess up the blindfolded solve.
Very happy that I got to declare some fun words (especially palaeontology and biology ones). Looking forward to the finals now!

Ps. I got the tough numbers during the ad break, but Rachel didn't want to hear my solution (fair enough!).

[Ryan Lam]

Thanks so much, everyone! Glad you enjoyed the cubing, and I'm glad I didn't mess up the blindfolded solve.

That was exhilarating, I was like "What the actual f*ck??!!"

I've captured the blindfolded solve on another YouTube video for anyone else who's interested too: https://youtu.be/DZm7CQ23kCQ

Fantastic work, Christmas can't come soon enough and see you back on-screen in another four months!

[Howie Myers]

r4 alt: OCULIST
r12 alt: FOETUS

Harry is a brilliant player!

[David Williams]

Why does it take so much longer to do it blindfold?

Seriously. You must have to know exactly what moves you are going to make before the blindfold goes on. One wrong move and it doesn't work. So why go for a longer sequence? It's not as if you can do it in stages and check your progress.

I was also interested in Rachel not wanting to know the numbers solution - presumably she would see that as a spoiler. As someone who was on in Carol's day, she would come to contestants in the audience in an ad break and ask if anyone had got it. I remember her once showing a late solution and crediting the crew member who had got it. There's something almost endearing that Rachel is so much more competitive.

[Tom S]

I was also interested in Rachel not wanting to know the numbers solution - presumably she would see that as a spoiler. As someone who was on in Carol's day, she would come to contestants in the audience in an ad break and ask if anyone had got it. I remember her once showing a late solution and crediting the crew member who had got it. There's something almost endearing that Rachel is so much more competitive.

Same thing happened in one of my episodes. As Rachel often says re: the numbers, she "likes a challenge", and must set it as a personal challenge to ensure that she solves it.

[Sam Cappleman-Lynes]

Why does it take so much longer to do it blindfold?

Because in competitions, the time for a blindfolded solve includes the memorisation time. Blindfold methods are designed to optimise the combination of memorisation and execution.

It's possible to use the same execution method for a blind solve as a sighted one, and in that case it would work out quicker, but it would take a very long time to memorise such a method.

(For a typical blind method, you only need to memorise where each piece is at the start and then the solution is composed of 3-cycles of pieces that affect the state in a small and predictable way. For a sighted method you are solving a few pieces at a time and you don't care what happens to the others because you can see where they are in a little bit.)

[Harry Savage]

Sam's summarised it very well. I began memorising the cube as soon as Colin chucked it to me, and there wasn't much cut out of the final edit, so I would have been memorising for about a minute or so (making the total time closer to 1:30).

It was very cool to showcase blindfolded solving on TV! Especially as I didn't solve the cube particularly quickly in my first episode by my standards. Thanks for uploading, Ryan

[Thomas Carey]

see we know you can blind solve the cube but paul didn't throw you the cube on zd so I want to know if you caught the cube the first time

also ggwp