[Help Thread] Skewb Discussion and Help

I (among other people) would like to see skewb progress more, and...

Since it's not a puzzle that's been highly explored yet, have this thread.

 

To people who use Sarah's method:

Do you have any tricks for transitioning between step 2 and L4C? Either predicting the L4C case or whatever. My worst transition stage is between those two steps and I always have to do something like... Recognize, do some ugly rotation, and then do the alg.

The best I've been able to do is maybe predict what center will end up on the front side, but that almost never helps me predict which case it will be. Even being able to predict whether you have to do a z or z' after the last sledge/hedge would be pretty useful.

 

It's pretty easy to get sub-10 quickly with intermediate Sarah's method. You only need to learn one 4-move alg (and its inverse) along with a few cases.

 

Scrambles:

Spoiler

R' B' L' U' L U' R B' U B U R L' U' L' U' B'
U' R L B U' B L' R B R' U' L B' L R U B
R B U' L' B R L' U B' L B U' L' U R' B' U
L' U' R B L R B' R U L' U' R' L R' L R' U'
L U' L U L' U' L B' R B R L R U B L R'
B L U B U B' L' R' B U' L' U' B U L B U'
R' B' R B R' L' U B' L U R L' U R' L' R U
L' B L R B R' L' B' U L R L' U' L B L R'
R' U' R U' L U R' U' R' B' U L B U' R U' L'
B' L B U' B' L' B' R' U B U' R' L' B U' L' R
L' U R U L' U' B' U R U L' R U' R U' L' B'
B' L R' B U B' U' R U L' R' L' U B U R L'

Move counts (S = Sarah's method, C = Chris' method):

S 20, C 32
S 25, C 36
S 23, C 31
S 25, C 33
S 14 (2nd step skip), C 38
S 18, C 37
S 18, C 30
S 21, C 29
S 21, C 33
S 13 (2nd step skip), C 13 (3rd step skip); These two solutions were exactly the same.
S 22, C 24
S 24, C 24 (3rd step skip)

Sarah's method mean movecount: 20.3
Chris' method mean movecount: 30.0

This isn't conclusive by any means, but it shows a pretty strong trend that Sarah's method is a lot more efficient than Chris', and that's why it's faster. It uses the same alg, but uses it in a more efficient way.

Keep in mind that this was using the pure versions of each method (intermediate in the case of Sarah's), so any tricks for avoiding bad cases weren't used. This could bring the mean movecount of Chris' method down (or vice versa). I just wanted to show that the general solutions were quite a bit longer in Chris' method.

That alg doesn't preserve the bottom face.

Edit: But now that I think about it, you could use that and just do L5C on the bottom 5 centers, but this would favor worse cases, I think. You're always going to get some adjacent case since the top (previously bottom) center will never be solved. Not sure if this is a good trade off for an alg that probably isn't much faster -- 2 gens aren't as good on skewb as they are on NxN puzzles, imo.

 

I can't do 2-gens without any regrips. I can do really fast regrips, but not regripless. How?

 

I'm not sure what you're asking? Are you asking if solving a face (center + 4 corners) + another center has been done?

Ranzha's method does this, but in two steps: 2 corners + center, then the other 2 corners + another adjacent center.