Bad habits and non-optimal ways to blindsolve worth preempting?

[IRNjuggle28]

Most speedsolvers seem to have regrets about how they have learned and at some level wish they could go back and tell their past selves to learn differently. There are others, but a few of the most frequent examples are wishing you'd learned a different main method, wishing you had started out color neutral, or wishing your finger trick habits were different i.e. ring vs pinky in OH. In each case, solvers who have become fast consider it impractical to make these changes because of how long it would take them to get back to their current speed. So, they don't change and just have to live with the fact that they are, and will continue to be, slower than if they had practiced differently from the start.

This brings me to my question. I'm in the privileged position of being an experienced, reasonably fast sighted solver who has invested no time in BLD yet despite having been cubing for years. I have no skill to sacrifice by going back and learning differently and no reason that I shouldn't learn the optimal methods for getting fast from the start. So, my question is what wrong ways to learn should I actively avoid? Are their particular buffers that are better/worse? Particular types of words for letter pairs that are hard to remember? Cons to learning OP/OP or OP/M2 in terms of becoming fast later at 3 style? I don't know what, if anything, those sort of pitfalls for beginners would be. I just know that they exist in sighted solving and that it makes for them to exist here as well. I regret only solving white/yellow instead of all six colors. I kind of regret picking CFOP over Roux. I would love to avoid any such regrets regarding BLD solving. So, experienced blindsolvers, I would appreciate some advice on what not to do in learning BLD. Thanks.

 

[cubing master]

Well, for your main method, do OP/M2 If you want to do 4 and 5 bld you will need to know M2 and it is good to be comfortable with it.

 

[TheGrayCuber]

There are quite a few things that I have learned in my time blindsolving. I have no issue with OP or M2, both are good methods, but if you switch to 3-style, don’t carry those buffers with you. There are better buffers than the common M2/OP ones. If you do decide to learn 3-style, take the time to go through comms, and learn great ones the first time. I learned 3-style intuitively, and later had to revamp my comms, which took a long time.

Regarding letter pairs: I would advise to avoid having a lot of people. There is not a big difference between two people/characters compared to the difference between two objects/actions. I have often had an image where I knew there was a person in it, but completely forgot who. I since have altered my images to contain less people/characters.

Another couple things I regret are my choice of lettering and orientation. I wish I used speffz, because then I could more easily interact with other blindsolvers. Also, I wish I had chosen WCA orientation: green front and white top. These are minor things though, as they don’t change anything about the blindsolving.

 

[Keroma12]

Make letter pairs based on sound, not spelling. For example, rice is much better than ring for RI, and weigh(t) (like a scale for weighing something) could work for WA, despite not having an A in it.
Also consider replacing Q with St and C with Sh (so for example cat can be for KT because it has the K sound, and shirt can be for ShR). This also helps for audio memo; I used to frequently mix up Q, C, and K.

 

[Fábio De'Rose]

- Learn M2/OP from the start. This pairing gives you plenty of room for improvement, as well as solid bases for when you're ready to jump into advanced territory;

- Take note of your letter pair list since day one and make sure you use strong images as well. Good images are easy to visualize, can interact with each other easily and preferably also have sounds, actions, smells and extra "buzz" to them, which makes them stronger;

- Work on your fingertricks and get your execution down very solid. Good execution not only makes up for average memorization, but it also allows you to relax and memorize more calm and solidly;

- Make peace with the fact that you will DNF. A lot. Really, the earlier you accept this as an inherent fact of BLD, the less frustrating it will be to improve;

- Make a habit out of reconstructing solves. This teaches you a lot and will show what you did wrong when you miss a success;

- Relax and have fun!

 

[Thom S.]

Many Blindsolvers struggle to find good pairs with a X in it so switching X with Z is something to consider as many regret not doing it

 

[Fábio De'Rose]

Many Blindsolvers struggle to find good pairs with a X in it so switching X with Z is something to consider as many regret not doing it

Depends on your language's letter frequency. I use U V X Z because those appear more frequently in my native, main language for image creation.

 

[sqAree]

From experience I can say exchanging letters with others doesn't take any effort or thinking.
I replaced V by the German "Ö" quite late, to avoid mixing it up with F/W and to have more vowels for audio.
It took me exactly 0 solves to get back to my normal speed. I guess as long as you don't change your whole letter scheme but only a small part of it at once you'll be fine and can adjust even after years of practice.

 

[CyanSandwich]

Buffers: Use UF/UFR (Most top BLDers would agree). There are beginner/intermediate methods for these too.

Orientation: White top green front solves the "scramble in orientation or in WCA orientation?" dilemma. Also the more people using the same orientation the easier it is to interact etc.

Try to not use too many people for your letter pairs, and use lots of actions/adjectives.
In terms of making words from your letter pairs, I don't think it matters how you construct them. It does make it easier to learn if they're more phonetic, but whatever your letter pair/word is will be an automatic association after a bit.

When you learn 3-style, learn the best comms straight away rather than easy to learn ones.

 

[theawesomecuber]

Switch to orozco after you get used to memo with OP.

Orozco is great because it uses fantastic buffers (UF/UFR) and is easily expandable to full 3style. I am the only person I know who uses it as a main method, so HMU if you want help.

I made a letter pair list and put all my cards into anki, a flashcard program that uses spaced repetition to memorize a lot of things long term. I feel like that has helped the consistency of my memo.

For audio memo, make sure every sound is unique, you don't want ambiguity. Also, I vary some sounds if they're at the end of a syllable. For example, I turn "W" into "Th", so TW would be "toth" or something.

Your letter scheme, your color scheme, all of that doesn't matter. Speffz is nice to use because you can talk with other people who use Speffz more easily.

I decided to get into BLD in a similar situation to you. Your attitude and mentality, combined with a lot of hard work, is what it takes to get world class at BLD. Good luck!

 

[Thom S.]

From experience I can say exchanging letters with others doesn't take any effort or thinking.
I replaced V by the German "Ö" quite late, to avoid mixing it up with F/W and to have more vowels for audio.
It took me exactly 0 solves to get back to my normal speed. I guess as long as you don't change your whole letter scheme but only a small part of it at once you'll be fine and can adjust even after years of practice.

I heard from many that they regret not doing it, so I thought, I'd give him the Idea.
Changing to Ö is a nice thing, I personally mix German and English to avoid mixing something up