Its been several months since I discovered the CuckHold and I still have to regularly explain the combo to people in Discord and at tournaments. I figured it was about time that someone made a comprehensive CuckHold explanation I can redirect people to.

For the purpose of this guide, "Popo" refers to the player-controlled Climber and "Nana" refers to his CPU companion.

What is the CuckHold?

The CuckHold (also known as the "corner carry") is essentially the endgame of Ice Climber's grab punish game. The CuckHold is a guaranteed midstage handoff with universal timing across the entire cast. It also sets up for ledge handoff infinites ending in a stock-ending forward air spike. There is a substantial amount of footage of me performing the maneuver in tournaments, proving that it is tournament viable. In this clip, Popo forward-throws to Nana and Nana regrabs and forward-throws back to Popo. The Nana regrab and fthrow back to Popo is what distinguishes the CuckHold from other Ice Climbers combos out of forward throw.

Variants

• Backdoor Sluts 9. When performing the CuckHold close enough to the ledge, even if you miss the timing to have Nana throw back to you she will be close enough to the ledge that when you dash forward she'll backthrow. Since you expect to dash forward even if you hit the window, you have enough time to react to the fthrow/bthrow and land the regrab out of either throw to set up for ledge handoffs.

• Serbian Platform Ballet. A bit of a work in progress, optimally this "platform CuckHold" would allow us to infinite opponents in positions where we can't set up for the platform dash grab infinite. Also superior to the platform dash grab infinite because the timing is universal.

• Platform handoff conversion on miss. Even if you miss the fthrow window you can react to your flub and often convert into platform handoffs, which are a guaranteed kill.

• Upthrow-Upsmash Even in the case of a flub, you can Upsmash out of Nana's upthrow to kill people at relevant percents

What are the inputs?

After landing a grab with synced Climbers, press and hold forward on the control stick. Popo will forward throw and Nana will run forward. At the correct timing, input a pivot grab. Nana will regrab the opponent as soon as they exit Popo's throw, and she will then forward throw them back towards you. You can then run forward and have Popo grab the opponent as they exit Nana's throw. Repeat as necessary until you reach the ledge and can perform the standard downthrow/forward throw ledge handoffs.

If Nana misses the regrab entirely, you mistimed the grab or inputted the grab before the pivot.

If Nana grabs the opponent and upthrows them, you didn't correctly input the pivot or you mistimed the grab.

If Nana grabs the opponent and holds them (a Nanaquin) you inputted the pivot too late and she ran outside the zone you can control her.

Why is this useful?

Ice Climbers in both Melee and Brawl had powerful grab infinites that worked anywhere onstage. The Project M Dev Team felt that universal infinites were too centralizing, and decided to retain Ice Climbers' powerful grab game but force them to mix up their opponent's DI and SDI to extend grab combos. Ice Climbers players agreed that this was a more sensible game design choice, and promptly spent the next 2 years seeking ways to break the game and create an infinite that worked across the cast.

The first breakthrough was OGE's Footstool Pseudo-Infinite. Though "ogeling" allows Ice Climbers to continually regrab their opponents, its technical difficulty, timing differences from character to character and based on damage, and its susceptibility to mashing made it very difficult to utilize in tournament sets. The search continued.

The next two discoveries came from Smashboards, where OverlordZelos discovered both a universal ledge infinite exploiting Popo's dash grab and a method of controlling Nana's throw directions. Unfortunately, Zelos' proposed infinite of alternating fthrow/bthrow handoffs required numerous one frame windows and had different timings on every character based on weight. Though Zelos' infinite proved too difficult for anyone to use in tournament, his dash grab infinite is now a staple of many Climbers' play and his discovery of a method to influence Nana's throw directions (and SerbianFilm's subsequent research on timing Nana F-throws) laid the groundwork for a true midstage infinite.

The CuckHold represents the pinnacle of all this research. The CuckHold is superior to regrab methods such as d-throw dair or fthrow reverse nair because it ignores DI, SDI, and %, meaning it is always a viable regrab option resistant to opponent counterplay. Whereas ogeling requires practice on every character because dthrow timing is weight dependent, the CuckHold uses only f-throws, meaning that the optimal timing is the exact same on every character. Unlike Zelos' midstage infinite, which required multiple frame perfects per repetition, the CuckHold usually requires only one and will set up into the easier ledge infinite after one or two repetitions. Finally, the CuckHold has several failure states that still allow the player to continue the combo even after missing a window, unlike other infinites where a mistiming results in a dropped combo entirely (even though I miss the CuckHold in the second combo, I still can force my opponent into a tech chase situation). Though people were understandably skeptical that a one-frame window could ever be a staple of a character's punish game, the inputs for the CuckHold make this window a natural part of the execution and thus allow Ice Climbers to have the devastating punish game they have always deserved.

Why does this work?

Though we knew that the CuckHold was essentially an abuse of the 1-frame Nana throw direction, it took the Discord a while to work out why the Cuck seemed substantially easier than hitting the raw 1 frame to make Nana dthrow. The answer, it turns out, lay in the method I used to execute the pivots.

Those of you who followed Zelos' research on Smashboards or have read my Misc. Guide to ICs Advanced Tech know that by inputting a Nana grab, and then inputting a control stick direction on the subsequent frame, you can force Nana to throw in the direction you inputted. It turns out that the CuckHold simplifies this mechanic by incorporating this control stick motion into the motion for the pivot grab. By holding forward for Nana's dash and then inputting a pivot grab, you are already snapping the stick across neutral and returning it to the direction facing Popo. If you input the grab while the stick is in neutral, the stick will then continue in its motion and enter the reverse direction on the next frame. The input for the pivot grab doubles as the control stick motion for the one-frame Nana throw.

Why "the CuckHold?"

I'm Cuck Fucking Money. Next question.