• Welcome to the Speedsolving.com, home of the web's largest puzzle community!
    You are currently viewing our forum as a guest which gives you limited access to join discussions and access our other features.

    Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community of 40,000+ people from around the world today!

    If you are already a member, simply login to hide this message and begin participating in the community!

[Member Intro] Hi! My name is Claudio Garanzini, from Venice Italy

Joined
May 14, 2018
Messages
42
Hi all! My name is Claudio Garanzini, from Venice, Italy! I'm 40 years old and I'm totally blind. I bought my first ever Rubics cube on december of 2017. I love this game, really! I would like to learn a good method for lowering my solving times; now I can solve my cube in about 4 or 5 minutes using the layer by layer method. I hope to learn many things in this forum and I'll try to compete in some forum events. Thanks for this site and its forums. See you soon!
 
Joined
May 14, 2018
Messages
42
Hi, nice to meet you! I really would like to do a competition but I know all of you are too fast for me, being a blind player is not as easy. I'll try just for fun. I don't think there will be a competition for blind people here in this site!
 

Duncan Bannon

Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2017
Messages
1,817
Location
Here
Wait, how can you type/read comments if your blind? Also how can you even solve the cube? I apologize for the questions, I'm just intrigued.

The competitions are for people of all speed, some world class people compete and some very new beginners.

Feel free to join the race thread (https://www.speedsolving.com/forum/threads/race-to-sub-x-on-a-3x3-35.64734 this would probably be the best one for you :) ) Choose a goal, and then get it 3 times in a row, you would then graduate!
 

Mike Hughey

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
11,304
Location
Indianapolis
WCA
2007HUGH01
SS Competition Results
YouTube
Visit Channel
Hi, Claudio; it's great to have you here! I hope you continue to enjoy this and decide to go to official competitions someday. We do have a specific rule to accommodate blind competitors in competitions:
3d1a) Blind competitors may use textured puzzles with different textures on different faces. Each face should have a distinct color, to aid in scrambling and judging.
So we are set up to accommodate fully blind solvers in competition - I hope you will compete someday!

Also, there is a pretty active discussion among us older cubers (generally 40+, so you'll fit right in, but sometimes somewhat younger people also participate) here:
https://www.speedsolving.com/forum/threads/older-cubers-discussions.37405/
I hope we'll see you there!
 

cubeshepherd

Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2018
Messages
2,258
WCA
2016STEE01
Hi all! My name is Claudio Garanzini, from Venice, Italy! I'm 40 years old and I'm totally blind. I bought my first ever Rubics cube on december of 2017. I love this game, really! I would like to learn a good method for lowering my solving times; now I can solve my cube in about 4 or 5 minutes using the layer by layer method. I hope to learn many things in this forum and I'll try to compete in some forum events. Thanks for this site and its forums. See you soon!
Welcome @Claudio Garanzini to the forums. It is great to have you here and I hope that you enjoy your time here.
 
Joined
May 14, 2018
Messages
42
Hi! No problem for your question. For reading and writting in the forum as well as using a normal PC, there are screen readers, they are program that read aloud what you see in the screen! Reguarding the cube, thanks for the suggestion; I'll try! This is the only site I've visited that has something for all people who want to enjoy thiese puzles. Bye for now! Claudio
 
Joined
May 14, 2018
Messages
42
sorry for the double post: the cube is a Rubics Touch cube; every face has a distinct shaped embossed in it so that a blind can touch and "see" and solve the cube as it is for "normal" people; you have the colours, we have the shapes. Thanks for your questions! Bye for now! Claudio
 
Joined
May 14, 2018
Messages
42
Ok guys, sorry but it seems I can't edit my past posts, so I'm writting again! I've visited the race thread; it seems I'm not at those level of speed solving! :) I'm still in between four and five minutes or more. I don't know how to fix a goal. Could you help me, please? Thanks a lot!
 

Duncan Bannon

Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2017
Messages
1,817
Location
Here
You would make forum post in that thread. You would state your goal then. For example:

Round 1 (it would depend on the current round)
Sub 4 min (what ever your goal might be)
Ao12- 3:45 (What ever your Ao12 for the listed scrambles, you can probably use your own if that is better)
1. Time for 1st scramble
2. Time for 2nd scramble
3. So on
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

If you don't already know an Ao12 is calculated by elimination of the fastest and slowest solve and adding other 10 solves up and division by 10.

CFOP would probably be the best method to improve with. Being blind, I would assume the blockbuilding in methods like ZZ and Roux would be really hard.
 
Joined
May 14, 2018
Messages
42
Hi all, thanks for your suggestions! I really would like to find a good tutorial on the CHOP method but... Searching youtube and the net, there are plenty of those guides but they are specifically ment for people who can see the cube; i haven't found a gide in html or plain text without images that can explain the method step by step! I'm asking suggestions, again; sorry for that! Thanks for your help! It's a pleasure being in a comunity like this, guys! Thank you very much!
 

Duncan Bannon

Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2017
Messages
1,817
Location
Here
That's tough! I'm not fully sure how you would learn. Ill do my best to find a video. At least on youtube you don't get clickbaited :)
 

Mike Hughey

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
11,304
Location
Indianapolis
WCA
2007HUGH01
SS Competition Results
YouTube
Visit Channel
One suggestion I'd like to make: have you tried solving the mirror blocks puzzle? A very common unofficial event is to solve mirror blocks "blind, no inspection". A number of official competitions have had this as an unofficial side event. The beauty of this is that everyone competes in this event the same way a fully blind person would.

I also think it might be helpful for learning CFOP on a normal cube. Mirror blocks is a regular cube in which the pieces are effectively cut off center, so that different pieces are different sizes, causing the cube to have "bumps" when it is unsolved. I would think it would be much easier to learn how to pair a corner and edge to insert it in the CFOP method with mirror blocks than it would be to learn how to do it with a normal textured cube.
 
Joined
May 14, 2018
Messages
42
Thanks for the suggestions, guys! I haven't a mirror cube. It's the first time a hear of it. So, how does it work? I'll do a research also for buying it. Thanks again.
 

Mike Hughey

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
11,304
Location
Indianapolis
WCA
2007HUGH01
SS Competition Results
YouTube
Visit Channel
The mirror blocks cube is just like a regular Rubik's cube, except that it is cut off-center - some pieces are much larger than others. It's hard to describe in words, but the result is that you can feel the difference between the pieces. You know it's solved when it's back to a fully cubic shape.

It's only called "mirror blocks" because it was first made with all sides shiny and reflective (because colors don't matter for such a cube - it's all about the shape). But the mirror surface has no impact on the solving of the puzzle - the surface could be any color and it wouldn't matter.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_blocks
 
Last edited:
Joined
May 14, 2018
Messages
42
ok, Mike, thanks! Next Monday i'll have my first Mirror Cube. I've ordered it last night. I think i'll love it; I listened to some videos and it's just for me. Thanks a lot!
 

Mike Hughey

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
11,304
Location
Indianapolis
WCA
2007HUGH01
SS Competition Results
YouTube
Visit Channel
here it is! My new Mirror cube; i new i could love it and in fact I love it as well as my touch cube. Thank you all for the suggestions, guys, again!
So glad you love it! I really think it could be helpful to you learning how to solve CFOP. The biggest change in switching from layer-by-layer to CFOP is, after solving the cross, learning how to insert a corner-edge pair into a slot. The idea is that you first place the edge pieces for one face in the form of a cross. That leaves 4 corner-edge "slots" to fill - you fill those next, one at a time, and then proceed to do the last layer, which you can at first do much as you do now with layer by layer.

For each slot, you find a corner piece that belongs on the same layer as the cross, and rather than inserting just that corner, you find the matching edge, and line them up so that they are together. If you hold the cube with the cross on the bottom (which is the way most sighted people do it, since it gives greater visibility of the top pieces so they can recognize the other pieces faster, but I guess isn't that important for a blind solver), you would pair the corner and edge piece on the top layer. Once you have them paired like that on the top layer, you then perform what should be a fairly obvious 3 or 4 move operation to insert that pair intact into the slot.

That's the easiest way to do it, but there's also a second common way to insert a pair. If you can have the corner directly over the slot you're inserting into, and the corresponding edge in the correct orientation across from the corner, the move R U R' (or its mirror L' U' L) can insert the pair as it is built. The best way to experience this is to start with a solved cube and perform the inverse of this move: R U' R'. You'll be able to feel that a corner has come out of the bottom cross, with the corner now sitting directly above the slot and the edge in a particular location and direction opposite that corner. And by performing R U R', you'll "see" it go back in.

The idea for F2L (first two layers - the second step in CFOP) is to get where you can quickly recognize all possible cases of a corner and edge pair that need inserting, and learn to hopefully intuitively insert each case quickly. Most cases fit one of the two examples I described above, but for some harder cases you might want to eventually learn more optimized algorithms to make it faster. But for now, I would just try practicing creating a cross, then inserting corner-edge pairs together until you're down to the last layer. As a blind solver, I'd think you could go fairly far just by experimenting. You could also find websites that give algorithms for corner-edge pair insertions for various cases, and perform the inverse of those algorithms to see where the pieces finish, so you can learn from that what case each algorithm actually solves (so you won't have to worry about looking at the pictures that are typically on such sites). I often do that anyway - seeing it on an actual cube is much easier to understand than looking at the pictures.

I would think mirror blocks might be easier to work with learning to do corner-edge pairs, but I could be wrong about that. It is certainly true that with mirror blocks, if a corner-edge pair is properly lined up, you'll very easily be able to tell the pieces fit together properly.

After you learn to insert corner-edge pairs, then you can do the O and P parts of "CFOP" - orienting and permuting the last layer. For those you can do much as I suggested with the learning of algorithms for corner-edge pairs - take a PLL (permute last layer algorithm) and perform its inverse on a solved cube, and from that you'll know what case that particular algorithm solves, and can look for that when trying to recognize what algorithm you need. But I would say learn how to insert corner-edge pairs first, then start looking into the last layer algorithms after you get somewhat good at the corner-edge pairs.

It's so very hard to give descriptions of how to solve a cube in pure text. I have no doubt that some of what I wrote here is probably terribly confusing - please feel free to ask questions and I'll try to clarify, or maybe someone else will help. Maybe we can eventually get you where you're knowledgeable enough about solving CFOP that you might someday be able to create a proper tutorial for fully blind solvers, since you'll understand better how to explain it all in text than we do. I would really love to see a text tutorial made availaible for blind solvers someday.
 
Joined
May 14, 2018
Messages
42
Hi Mike! Thank you very much for your last great post. I'll try your suggestion for sure; you have in some lines simplified what i tryed to understand in many researches and youtube videos. I solved my first scramble with the mirror cube justfew hours ago; for me it's a bit harder than solving a normal cube but it's just because for me it's the first time with the mirror cube.
Thank you again!
And I want to thank all of you trying to help me become a cube solver! :))
 
Top