The 4x4x4 Help Thread

[JasonK]

Thanks all, I will keep working on it.... Not sure why I am having such difficulty with this lol.. Great forum, thanks for not flaming me about such a newbie question

We're all new at some point Good luck with 4x4!

[Jypo]

That looks like a sune OLL with an edge parity, put the upside down edge to the back and try:

Rw2 B2 U2 Lw U2 Rw' U2 Rw U2 F2 Rw F2 Lw' B2 Rw2

followed by:

R U R' U R U2 R' (sune)

hope this helps.

[uberCuber]

That looks like a sune OLL with an edge parity, put the upside down edge to the back and try:

Rw2 B2 U2 Lw U2 Rw' U2 Rw U2 F2 Rw F2 Lw' B2 Rw2

followed by:

R U R' U R U2 R' (sune)

hope this helps.

If you put the bad edge in back, doing that parity alg will result in having two flipped edges, so a Sune will definitely not solve OLL.

This particular OLL case would be solved like this: Put the bad edge in front. Do L F' L' F, followed by that parity alg in the above quote, followed by L' U L.

But OP shouldn't be worrying about 1-look parityOLL, so I'm not sure why I just posted this...

@OP, here's a brief explanation of what you need to know. On a 3x3, it is not possible to have an odd number of edges misoriented. Every single OLL case will always have an even number of misoriented edges. On bigcubes, due to the fact that each "edge" is made up of more than one piece, funny things can happen. At this point, you shouldn't bother trying to understand why, just understand this: On the 4x4, it is possible to get to the last layer and have an odd number of edges misoriented (as in the picture you posted). You must memorize a special "parity" algorithm to deal with this. All the algorithms people have posted in this thread are examples of such. Experiment with different ones and see which one you like the feel of the most, and memorize it. Whenever you get a last layer with an odd number of edges misoriented, use that algorithm. Most common algorithms will flip the edge on the F face, so it is best to turn the U layer to put one of the misoriented edges on F before executing the algorithm, in order to have an easier OLL (especially since you use 2-look OLL, you can "skip" the usual first look this way sometimes)

[Fengson]

Hello everyone, I'm new here :)
I've been doing 3x3 for 2 months now and I got 2x2 and 4x4 as well.
The problem is, I cannot do last layer in 4x4. I always get problems during OOL, not to mention PLL where I have been luckily once..

(1) I get a dot or line, and every YT tutorial says to do it just like 3x3, but neither FRUR'U'F' (dot) nor fRUR'U'f' (line) works.
(2) I sometimes get simple parity problem - block 2x3 so i change it with 1 alg and get a line, but then again, back to piont (1)..

And, sometimes I happen to get past that, but I get some wierd cases which I have no idea how to solve, such as those attached to this post.

Sample Case 1 (2 sides) :
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/54830465/oolcase1.JPG
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/54830465/oolcase2.JPG
Sample Case 2 :
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/54830465/whatdoido.JPG

Please, help me get past this, I am thorned... ;)

[Username]

You haven't paired your edges? (i'm not really sure)

[Brest]

If you are using a reduction method, then you need to finish pairing edges before starting to solve the 3x3x3 stage.

[Username]

If you are using a reduction method, then you need to finish pairing edges before starting to solve the 3x3x3 stage.

Same goes for Yau, i guess

[Fengson]

I am using a method from YouTube user "MeMyselfAndPi" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJRGmNvlCps
I don't really know what method is it.

Also, what and when do I have to pair edges? It all looks ok, I can do cross and F2L smoothly.
It's when I try to do OOL/PLL when the problems are.. :/

[hcfong]

For the first case hold the cube with Yellow as your F-face and either red or orange as U (doesn't matter which one. Then perform the following algorithm: Dw R F U R' F' Dw'. This will swap two edge wings and pair the final two edge pairs. From here on, you can continue solving it as a 3x3, but there is a chance you'll get parity.

[piece popper]

From your problem, I suggest doing FRUR'U'F two layers deep and fRUR'U'f' three layers deep.