square one

[vegascuber]

looking for a good beginners tutorial for the square one. thnkx

[Kenneth]

Look for the "poor mans solution" at Speedcubing.com

[AvGalen]

This one is even easier: http://www.nerdparadise.com/puzzles/square1/

Basic idea:

1. Get all 8 edges connected on the same layer than distribute them to return to "Square-1". (basically intuitive)
2. Put corners in the correct layer (intuitive)
3. Put edges in the correct layer (using 2 very short algs as the basic moves)
4. Permute corners (using the same 2 very short algs)
5. Permute edges (using the same 2 very short algs)
6. Fix parity (very bad, but easy way), middle layer and slice-state (basically intuitive)

I use this method on a really bad Square-1 and got it down to 2 minutes on average after 50 solves. I learned a better way to fix parity though!

[gillesvdp]

Arnaud, you forgot to tell him about the orientation steps !!!

It is important to first orient edges and corners.

However, on average, this step takes 0 moves

[Kenneth]

An easy to learn alg for parity is: if you know how to get from "star shape" to Cube shape"?

Then you probably also know how to do cube->star?

Ok, here is my alg:

cube->star : turn star one step : star->cube

In the end, when forming the cube, you can add a few, easy to find turns and also preserve layers, it only affects edges in one layer then (at least my version does =)

[doubleyou]

AvG, thats one heck of a Square-1 site!!
I think I'll finally be able to learn this stuff.. all other sites (at least a couple) use funny notation. I like this visual way of showing the moves

thanks!!

[Toojdwin]

If you wanna get fast really quickly, then go straight to cubezone.be and start learning those algs. That's what I did, and I got a sub-50 average in less than a week.

[Dennis]

Is there a 'secret trick' going from scrambled state to cube state without turning one layer into a star first? I always have to do this and have learnt those 5 algs for the different shapes, but I find it time-consuming and unnecessary. Looking on some videos, say from Lars v, he turns it into a cube in 4-5 moves always.

[AvGalen]

If you have played with a Magic / Master Magic for a while you might have noticed that you started to recognize certain shapes and know how to get it flat from there. Lars (and others) can do the same for Square-1. He just recognises the shape and has the experience to turn it back into cube-shape. I think that will only come from.............................................. .................................................. ................... practice, practice, practice.

Arnaud, you forgot to tell him about the orientation steps !!!

It is important to first orient edges and corners.

However, on average, this step takes 0 moves

And I thought I had some special technique (luck) that always made me skip the orientation phases. Now I know better

[Karthik]

I recently bought a square one and can finally solve it now.
But I have a few questions,
1.Can parity be identified early in the solve?
2.What are the different ways of dealing with parity?
3.What are the algs to be learnt to get decent times like say 1min30secs-2.00 mins?I dont' mind getting even faster