• 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!

[Help Thread] Colour Neutral Discussion and Help

cmhardw

Premium Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2006
Messages
4,115
Location
Orlando, Florida
WCA
2003HARD01
YouTube
Visit Channel
I am very excited to make this post. Yesterday I broke my pb average of 5, pb average of 12, and today I broke my competition pb average of 5. My pb average of 12 is now 13.29 improved from 13.71. average of 5 is 12.82 improved from something definitely not sub-13. Competition pb average of 5 is now 14.05 improved from 14.15.

I think it is safe to say that I am no longer transitioning to color neutral, I am now color neutral. I started seriously trying to switch to color neutral in January of 2011, so it took me 4 years 8 months to beat my pb averages, but I am very happy to say that I am now faster solving color neutral than I was solving single cross or dual/cross neutral.

Yay! :D
 

NeilH

Member
Joined
Mar 3, 2015
Messages
418
Location
Tatooine
WCA
2015HEMN01
YouTube
Visit Channel
I am very excited to make this post. Yesterday I broke my pb average of 5, pb average of 12, and today I broke my competition pb average of 5. My pb average of 12 is now 13.29 improved from 13.71. average of 5 is 12.82 improved from something definitely not sub-13. Competition pb average of 5 is now 14.05 improved from 14.15.

I think it is safe to say that I am no longer transitioning to color neutral, I am now color neutral. I started seriously trying to switch to color neutral in January of 2011, so it took me 4 years 8 months to beat my pb averages, but I am very happy to say that I am now faster solving color neutral than I was solving single cross or dual/cross neutral.

Yay! :D

wow that's awesome! gj!
 
Joined
Apr 21, 2015
Messages
144
Location
UK
I feel that I am pretty close to being CN, although my red/orange cross is not at quite the same standard as my others. Originally, I was blue/green neutral, and I always end up doing these cross colours more frequently, probably because my brain defaults to these. Another thing, I have difficulty seeing selecting the best cross out of all 6 possible in 15 seconds, are these issues something that will get better with raw solves?

I also found that to transition from dual neutral to where I am today, I did nothing more than regular solves and just choosing whatever looked nice. I feel that this technique could help you to scan the cube in inspection and pick out good cases more easily as well. I am not a huge believer in targeted practice, simply because if you goal is to get yourself to do something 'subconsciously', then you might as well start doing it without too much thought. This only really applies to something like becoming CN, where you already have all the existing skills, you just need to get used to applying them to different colours.
Of course, for something like improving your F2L, you need to do some really slow analytical solves otherwise you will only ever stick to what you know, but never overthink it because you will just end up with some really impractical approach to solving cases. For example, learning all the multi-slotting algs on absolutef2l would not be a good approach, because you are restricting yourself to solving cases in one specific way which you have learnt in alg form, reducing your ability to exploit other naturally occuring luckly cases and hindering your understanding of the cube.
 

Phinagin

Member
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
181
Location
Canada
WCA
2015PATT04
I feel that I am pretty close to being CN, although my red/orange cross is not at quite the same standard as my others. Originally, I was blue/green neutral, and I always end up doing these cross colours more frequently, probably because my brain defaults to these. Another thing, I have difficulty seeing selecting the best cross out of all 6 possible in 15 seconds, are these issues something that will get better with raw solves?

If you are having trouble with red and orange cross then keep on practicing only red/orange until you are as good with them as white, yellow, blue, green. Also of you are having a hard time getting cross planned out in 15 secs, the ditch the inspection, take as long as you need to plan out the best cross you can. It is better to practice efficient crosses than to get used to doing less efficient crosses because you were rushed.

I also found that to transition from dual neutral to where I am today, I did nothing more than regular solves and just choosing whatever looked nice. I feel that this technique could help you to scan the cube in inspection and pick out good cases more easily as well. I am not a huge believer in targeted practice, simply because if you goal is to get yourself to do something 'subconsciously', then you might as well start doing it without too much thought. This only really applies to something like becoming CN, where you already have all the existing skills, you just need to get used to applying them to different colours.
Of course, for something like improving your F2L, you need to do some really slow analytical solves otherwise you will only ever stick to what you know, but never overthink it because you will just end up with some really impractical approach to solving cases. For example, learning all the multi-slotting algs on absolutef2l would not be a good approach, because you are restricting yourself to solving cases in one specific way which you have learnt in alg form, reducing your ability to exploit other naturally occuring luckly cases and hindering your understanding of the cube.
This is exactly what I did when I became CN, just a bunch of solves, on each cross, until I was comfortable doing them all.
 

cmhardw

Premium Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2006
Messages
4,115
Location
Orlando, Florida
WCA
2003HARD01
YouTube
Visit Channel
wow that's awesome! gj!

Thanks!

---------------

TLDR; switching to color neutral is really hard, but totally worth it

I just got a really great average for me again, not a new pb, but good enough to convince me that changing to color neutral was worth it!
13.64, (12.28), 12.91, (15.94), 13.07, 13.88, 13.58, 13.74, 12.78, 15.01, 14.24, 14.91 = 13.78

That's only 0.07 slower than my previous dual-neutral pb average of 12 that stood since 2009. Now that I have the color neutral switch down, I think I'm going to start working on my regular solving technique again. I'd like to go through my OLL and PLL algs and change to the more modern versions of cases I've been using since I first learned CFOP. I'm starting to think that sub-13 average is not too far away. That has been my "long term" goal since about 2009 lol!

I'd like to still hang out in this thread in case I might be able to help any others who are seriously working on the switch and hitting any snags. Good luck to those who are still working on it! Persevere, it will be worth it in the end.
 

youSurname

Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2015
Messages
112
Finally took the initiative of transitioning to CN. Practised green yesterday. Seeing a lot of improvement already.
 

cmhardw

Premium Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2006
Messages
4,115
Location
Orlando, Florida
WCA
2003HARD01
YouTube
Visit Channel
Is it generally agreed that the best way to transition is to practice one color only for a bit then repeat, or pick the best looking cross and just do whatever color that is over an over?

I started by practicing individual colors one at a time, but eventually switched to just doing the best color cross and accepting that I was now slower. This gave me the ability to celebrate a new string of pb singles and averages as I set them. Eventually my "color neutral" pb times became my actual pb times, it just takes time.

Doing one color at a time, untimed, is a good way to get used to a color that you're really not used to yet. However, I found doing timed averages like this to be a waste of my time. The point of being color neutral is to choose the best cross for your scramble. Why practice timing with each color individually when that's the same as solving one color cross all the time, you're just periodically changing that one color? Yes you get better at solving each cross color individually that way, but when you do that you're not training how to be color neutral. Being color neutral means you stop thinking in terms of cross color and instead think in terms of patterns of how to pair up the pieces. I heard Rowe say that when I first started my switch, and it ended up being true for me, too.

That's what worked for me, but I don't think that will be the right approach for everybody.
 

Praetorian

Member
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
496
Location
California
YouTube
Visit Channel
Is it generally agreed that the best way to transition is to practice one color only for a bit then repeat, or pick the best looking cross and just do whatever color that is over an over?

you don't have to always pick a different color cross, like say if you always do white, but you see a very easy blue cross, do the blue cross

or if you're a little more advanced the cross that you can see your first pair in/lookahead is better

I just pick the easiest cross there is to make, I used to be biased towards white, but I am now just good with any cross at all, I realize some people only do white and have difficulty doing other cross colors because maybe they're used to the same colored pieces that a white cross F2L has, but the way I see them is just F2L pairs with colors being a guide to which slot it goes into
 

youSurname

Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2015
Messages
112
I think the idea of picking a color for me at least is to train F2L recognition. Before transitioning, I would take forever to realise what pieces made pairs and where they went. Now when I solve green the pairs are beginning to jump out at me, just as they would with white.
 

hkpnkp

Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2013
Messages
231
Location
india
from reddit

Someone - "Also, as you're colour-neutral, what do you look for in a cross? 15 seconds to me doesn't seem like enough time to look at 6 different sides to find the easiest one."

Faz - "I basically scan the cube for 1 second, and look for edge pieces connected to the center. There's no way I'm choosing the easiest cross every time."
 

Hammer

Member
Joined
Feb 28, 2016
Messages
41
Right now I'm trying to become color neutral and I have an interesting story to tell. I started on white cross and stayed on white for a long time but then i tried becoming color neutral. I started doing green cross. It took like 3 days but then I finally became as good on green as I was on white. The trick was to memorize the color scheme (like when green is on bottom and white is on front i know red is on the right). So then i began doing red cross and on the first day i got a scramble on cstimer which was a pretty good green cross and i could track an f2l pair so i did it. It was a 4-5 move cross and then the pair was attached so i inserted it right away and then another pair formed so i inserted that and then i saw another pair (it was a bad case but i saw it immediately) so i cube rotated and did that pair and i finished of f2l with a L' U' L U2 L' U L pair. Then it was just a sune OLL followed by a clockwise U perm (i locked up so much on that U perm it could have been sub 16) and it was a 16.22 single, beating my previous record of 18.16 by almost 2 seconds. BECOME COLOR NEUTRAL!!! And track the first pair, because that is a big advantage of color neutrality.
 

Dash Lambda

Member
Joined
Jun 23, 2016
Messages
392
Location
Ambiguaville
WCA
2016SCHU05
I'll read through the rest of this thread soon, but until that time, I have not actually read past the first page. As such, I'm not sure if this is original or not, but oh well~

Anyway, I'm currently practicing by doing slow solves starting on the side with the easiest cross. I don't want to focus on any color for any period of time because I want to get used to using every color, rather than getting used to each color then getting used to switching between them. Not sure if that's how it works, but it seems to be going smoothly.

I average about 19s, my CN times are a little erratic but they seem to fall around 21-22s, some outliers hitting ~27s. This is after a couple days of practicing.
 

Smiles

Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
573
YouTube
Visit Channel
from reddit

Someone - "Also, as you're colour-neutral, what do you look for in a cross? 15 seconds to me doesn't seem like enough time to look at 6 different sides to find the easiest one."

Faz - "I basically scan the cube for 1 second, and look for edge pieces connected to the center. There's no way I'm choosing the easiest cross every time."

I do the same thing. What you really want is not a move-optimal cross, but one where it's really easy to look ahead into your first pair. The first pair just tends to be easier to predict or track if you have your cross partially done from the start.

I'll read through the rest of this thread soon, but until that time, I have not actually read past the first page. As such, I'm not sure if this is original or not, but oh well~

Anyway, I'm currently practicing by doing slow solves starting on the side with the easiest cross. I don't want to focus on any color for any period of time because I want to get used to using every color, rather than getting used to each color then getting used to switching between them. Not sure if that's how it works, but it seems to be going smoothly.

I average about 19s, my CN times are a little erratic but they seem to fall around 21-22s, some outliers hitting ~27s. This is after a couple days of practicing.

I did the route of practicing each colour alone for maybe 5 days or so, or until I improved quite a bit on that colour. I did white -> green -> orange -> yellow -> blue -> red but there are many ways you could do it. Your way should be fine, and another way I can imagine is doing 2-side colour neutrality for each colour pair (white-yellow, etc.)
 

Dash Lambda

Member
Joined
Jun 23, 2016
Messages
392
Location
Ambiguaville
WCA
2016SCHU05
As somebody who averages about 15 seconds on 3x3, would it be worth it for me to switch from white/yellow neutral to fully color neutral?
That heavily depends on your definition of "worth it."
In terms of average times, no, probably not. The advantage of color neutrality is primarily just easy starts, and if you're neutral to two colors, full CN would make you three times more likely to find a good start. In that respect, it's kind'a like learning ~20 ZBLL's: They'll be faster than OLL/PLL to execute, but they're not an advantage all the time and the actual difference they make when you use them is small.
That is not to say CN isn't better, it just isn't going to take that much off of your average.

In terms of familiarity with the cube and general fun, I'd say it's worth it. Full CN forces you to ignore the colors on a recognition level and instead focus on relation and patterns (which also helps with lookahead), and the variety makes solving feel a little less repetitive.
 
Top