It seems the hookshot disables geometry collision.

Well, I was able to replicate this, but I'm not sure what to do with this information.

Anytime I've ever needed to practice a trick, I would just work on it in whatever level the trick is in — sometimes in story mode to skip the previous rooms. Otherwise, it shouldn't be difficult to recreate an obstacle yourself in the level editor, especially if it's static. If you mean the wall spikes, you can just make a wall, place some spikes on it, then put a checkpoint below for quick healing.

If you want a practice map for other tech, Bghty has a discord link in a video description, but it's more of an obstacle course than something for practice drills.

If you were messing with the level editor at all, it was the exact same glitch. I made a follow-up video on it, but in short it only removes abilities and changes the theme to World 1.

I can understand the logic behind making sub-categories, but doing so to create a separate leaderboard for one single run is, in my opinion, a little silly. Not to mention this glitch has already been reported and will likely be patched out in the future. Even if it's not, this wouldn't be the first instance where a version difference could have split the leaderboard but didn't. There's also the option of downloading an older version of the game and running that in the meantime (the IL rule of needing to play on the latest release is an artifact from before speedrun mode that could potentially be removed). Suffice to say it's far too soon for discussion on complicating the leaderboard.

I've confirmed the glitch was introduced in version 1.2.12 and is not present in 1.2.11 (or at least is not so easily encountered). Looking over the patch notes again I found "Fixed minor visual glitch related to the Companion" which may or may not be relevant. There are of course the unspecified "Other improvements/fixes." Still unsure how to avoid it.

The run on the leaderboard was performed on an older version of the game: 1.2.11. I believe the relevant patch note afterwards is "Fixed cat being able to take damage during a room transition" for 1.2.12. This fixed a related issue we had in World 3 but may have inadvertently created a worse problem in 8. As for why that world specifically, I would assume it's because of the Companion. I'll look into it more later.

After some testing, this glitch no longer works to the extent it did and therefore cannot be used to save time.

Awhile back, I discovered a glitch wherein I removed the cloud ability from 2-3 using the level editor (). I've since come to the realization this could potentially be used to give or take abilities in any room in the game, potentially multiple rooms at once. I wanted to get some feedback on whether this would be too game-breaking to be allowed, especially since it involves manipulating the game outside of normal play. Of course this assumes it saves time like I think it will. My personal take is to allow it since everything is done in-game, and it's not unlike other games' menu strats like Portal 2's SLA or title screen RNG manip in SMB1 (and many others I'm forgetting or unaware of) that are allowed. However, I wanted to get others' opinions first before trying to implement it.

Are there any tools or resources that can be used to learn more about this game and how it works? I think it would be beneficial for discovering new strats and better understanding old ones, but don't have the means myself.