Letter-pairs are good, m'kay?

[kralik]

Hello everyone!

The FAQ by Noah says:

Always use letter pairs always. Seriously.

I find a little hard to believe that one particular memo method should be The Best for everyone.

Just to give a little background: I've been blindsolving for a couple of months now, I'm still a beginner though, plus I only do it as a hobby when I have time, which is not terribly often. My BLD PB is about 3:20 as of now. I use 3-cycles for edges and OP for corners (still haven't got the hang of corner 3-cycles enough to replace OP).

I tried to use memo similar to letter-pairs in the beginning but it was very bad, I had a hard time recalling the list. I've never been very good at remembering lists, words, sentences, etc, I'm much more visual/space/topography -oriented if you know what I mean. When I need to navigate somewhere accoring to a map, I don't remember "Turn right here, turn left there", I remember the shape of the route (visually) instead. I use the same method to memorize the targets on the cube. For each pair I picture a shape - kind of like a stripe of tape or paper - on the surface of the cube (or in a few cases going through the cube). There's a limited number of these shapes for both edges and corners, I know them all and I have a name for each, but I really only remember the shape.

So far this has worked quite well for me, but then I go online and see people claiming the letter-pairs is the only good choice and everything else is inferior. Is it really like that? Am I going in a wrong direction? I thought there'd be differences between people in terms of what memorization works for them since not everyone has strong verbal memory, for instance... Does this mean that if my verbal memory isn't too good I'm not cut out to be a blindsolver?

 

[Mollerz]

I think it's definitely the most superior way to memorise. Just because it is bad now does not mean it will be bad in the future does it? You can train it, just like anything. When you started solving the cube did you use fingertricks like you do now, of course not, you trained it.

 

[Hssandwich]

I use letter pairs, but really wierd ones. For example, QW is QuoW and XA is XA... followed by the next letter pair combined into that.

My point is, you don't need to have good letter pairs, you can just use wierd ones before you maybe learn some for tricky pairs.

 

[tseitsei]

Letter pairs (or something similar that forms stories and images (like maskows method I think)) is really the superior way to go... At least for everything bigger than 3bld. For 3bld you could use something like quick audio memo but for anything bigger there is just too much info to use full audio or full visual or something like that quickly enough to compete with letter pairs. That's why all good memorysports athletes use letterpairs/images. It just is the best method there currently is...

 

[SpeedCubeReview]

What would be a good video to describe this? I have not yet gone into the world of blind solving.

 

[TDM]

I use letter pairs, but really wierd ones. For example, QW is QuoW and XA is XA... followed by the next letter pair combined into that.

My point is, you don't need to have good letter pairs, you can just use wierd ones before you maybe learn some for tricky pairs.

Or you could not use Q or X

 

[Tao Yu]

A few pages into the BLD FAQ thread:

Damn it, I didn't know that, maybe with letter pairs instead of my numbers and random images I will be faster xD
I my opinion letter pairs aren't optimal at all. Maybe it's not bad but it isn't the only one way to be very fast.

So yeah, letter pairs aren't the only way to go. I'm not sure about a method like yours though. I feel that with a visual method you are more likely to make mistakes and confuse things, and as a consequence of this, you're probably going to need to review more. Maskow's system and letter pairs do have one important thing in common. They both encode two targets into one image. This drastically reduces the information that you have to remember per solve, and I think any method that doesn't do this should be avoided.

 

[Randomno]

So yeah, letter pairs aren't the only way to go. I'm not sure about a method like yours though. I feel that with a visual method you are more likely to make mistakes and confuse things, and as a consequence of this, you're probably going to need to review more. Maskow's system and letter pairs do have one important thing in common. They both encode two targets into one image. This drastically reduces the information that you have to remember per solve, and I think any method that doesn't do this should be avoided.

Doesn't Maskow's system use a single image for each 3 cycle?

 

[Tao Yu]

Doesn't Maskows system use a single image for each 3 cycle?

A 3-cycle solves 2 targets - the third piece goes to the buffer. So same thing.

 

[kralik]

I think it's definitely the most superior way to memorise. Just because it is bad now does not mean it will be bad in the future does it? You can train it, just like anything. When you started solving the cube did you use fingertricks like you do now, of course not, you trained it.

That's a good point, maybe I could give letter pairs another chance...

They both encode two targets into one image. This drastically reduces the information that you have to remember per solve, and I think any method that doesn't do this should be avoided.

I encode two targets (one 3-cycle) into one image as well. Here's an example of how I remember two targets:



I call this one "the foot", there's about 10 cases like this for corners. Somehow it's easy for me to remember these and I don't even have to remember the direction, somehow it's automatic. I do seem to have to review quite a bit, though, but I have to do that with letter-pairs too as far as I now...

 

[Tao Yu]

View attachment 5015

I call this one "the foot", there's about 10 cases like this for corners. Somehow it's easy for me to remember these and I don't even have to remember the direction, somehow it's automatic.

Fair enough. I still feel that there's a lot of ambiguity with it though. MBLD would be really hard. Do you get many DNFs by forgetting where your shapes are or which way they go?

I do seem to have to review quite a bit, though, but I have to do that with letter-pairs too as far as I now...

With a lot of practice, you won't need to review your letter pairs, I can assure you of that. I don't know if this it the case with visual, as I don't know of anyone who has gotten to that level with it. Maybe it's possible, I don't know.

 

[kralik]

Fair enough. I still feel that there's a lot of ambiguity with it though. MBLD would be really hard. Do you get many DNFs by forgetting where your shapes are or which way they go?

I don't think I've ever gotten a DNF because of confused direction, I don't know why, maybe because I also associate the shapes with motion. Sometimes I get DNF because I accidentally skip a pair, not too often though. Also, there is one edge shape that ocasionally causes me trouble because it's easily flipped (for exmaple I might confuse BL→LD with LB→DL). However, most of my DNFs are because of reading the cube wrong, doing the commutator/algorithm wrong or doing setup/unsetup moves wrong.

Regarding MBLD, I can see myself putting the shapes into Loci, I guess, I've never tried it though. I solved two cubes the other day (which is not much of a MBLD I suppose) and it wasn't a problem, except it took a lot of time - some 13 minutes.

I'd like to thank everyone for opinions. One thing's for certain: I need practice regardless of the memo method

 

[Smiles]

letter pairs are good because they're super quick and never really ambiguous or jumbled. plus you can go visual or audio with memorizing them, so u can go super quick audio on 3bld then go visual on mbld or big bld

 

[rybaby]

As Riley Woo says, "Just use letters for now."

 

[CuberM]

You can memorize letter pairs visually... For example, if I had "QE MW" I can imagine a QuEstion mark MoWing. You may ask how I know that every time and what happens if I mix up QE and QU, but that comes along with practice. If you give me a letter pair, I automatically think whatever it is that I do in a blindsolve.

 

[Tim Major]

You don't need to make a list of all your letter pairs. Just come up with them on the spot. Lots of people are sub 1 without having a predetermined word for every slot.

Semi related question, has anyone got a predetermined person, object and action for every letter pair? I assume that'd help multi a lot

 

[cmhardw]

Semi related question, has anyone got a predetermined person, object and action for every letter pair? I assume that'd help multi a lot

Ian Winokur does. I'm interested in developing such a list as well but haven't gotten very far yet.

 

[Ranzha]

I use a similar method to OP's when I memo CP. It's pretty fast, but I would never try incorporating CO into such a system. I'd be prone to making mistakes.

A lot of people use letter pairs because it works for them and they're used to it already. Like Mollerz said, getting good at a memo system requires practice, so coming out of a purely visual system and switching to a much less familiar letter-pair system will take time. It's the price of being well-rounded in your memorisation.

 

[Berd]

Ian Winokur does. I'm interested in developing such a list as well but haven't gotten very far yet.

I'm working on it!

 

[cmhardw]

I'm working on it!

Ian has convinced me of how efficient and fun it is to memorize with a letter pair PAO. Coming from him it sounds like it is definitely worth the effort. He prefers it over regular letter pairs by a lot. I say stick with it if you're learning it.