Speedcubing – exercise 2 – key and notes
1 For 4 hours a day for the past 3 months.
take sb on – phrasal verb 1) employ sb 2) compete against or fight someone:eg Mary took her uncle on at chess and beat him. The Government took on the unions and won.
2 The contest’s top places are decided by ….. fractions of a second.
on the planet – in the world
to do battle – to fight, argue or compete in a serious way: eg We just couldn’t agree about the manager’s decisions, and were all ready to do battle at a meeting with her.
3 That speedcubing is definitely ‘a male-dominated activity’.
few and far between – phrase – scarce, uncommon, rare
4 The Australian Jasmine Lee – who says she used to find cubing as interesting as shopping when she was young.
5 To limber up – The competitors were describing as limbering up before the Games began. The verb ‘warm up‘ is used later as a noun – (in warm-up) and means something very similar.
6 Local – Mátyás Kuti was described as a local prodigy.
Vocab: He is shown ‘setting his stall out‘.
to set your stall out or set out your stall – phrase – display or show off your abilities
7 That he got off to a dream start with a new personal best (often shortened to PB).
8 They were just milliseconds behind him.
9 They dragged down his average / They dragged his average down.
10 The one-handed version.
mind-boggling – adjective INFORMAL – extremely surprising and difficult to understand or imagine: He was paid the mind-boggling sum of £3 million to present the chat show.
11 To solve the puzzle blind-folded.
blind-fold – verb – cover eyes with a blindfold, so a person cannot see.
12 Whether he has succeeded.
13 When the blindfold comes off.
A blindfold – noun – a strip of cloth which covers someone’s eyes and stops them from seeing
14 5. (He cleaned up with 5 trophies, setting a new world record – clean up – SLANG phrasal verb usually used of money = win a lot.)
15 15 in a row, while blindfolded.
mind-bending – informal adjective – so overwhelmingly impressive that it alters / strains your brain or mind even to think of it
Note: Mátyás Kuti says ‘you just have to memorise it….'(Just! When he says not more he means ‘that’s it’ or ‘that’s all’!)