Hey Andy,
Square 1 has been my favourite puzzle for the past few months. It was a real pain to get going with, but now I love it. Here are some thoughts (although I'm not super-fast, of course, so there are many better people to get advice from!):
- Cube Shape. I struggle with the intuitive edge-pairing part of this. I spend a lot of time trying to slice in positions where the corners are blocking the slice movement, often both on the U and D face. The algorithm part to form the Cube Shape is working its way into muscle memory for a couple of cases. Guess this will come with a bit more practice.
Definitely the hardest and most inconsistent bit for me. However, from just doing lots of practice solves (>2000) I've reached the point where 99% of the time I can figure out how to do cube shape. I did get one in the recent comp that really stumped me, but that's pretty rare now. So I think the answer is, predictably, just practice, and memorise the easy cases...
- Moving corners to correct layers. Fairly easy. Seems like something that TPS could be beneficial for, but I'm not confident enough with the puzzle to try anything flash here yet.
Took me a weirdly long time to get confident with this phase, but yes, it's definitely the simplest bit.
- Moving edges to correct layers. Getting there, need more practice.
Yep -- it's helpful to learn a few algs for this (adj-adj, adj-opp in particular as well as the case where you just have one edge to swap from top to bottom and the one where you have three edges to swap. And opp-opp is trivial but useful).
- Corner permutation. For now I'm only planning on permuting one layer at a time so I guess I can say that I know 50% of the algs so far!
Oh no! You should definitely do this the easy way! I.e., both layers at the same time. Seriously, the best alg to learn is the adj-adj one which comes up way more than 50% of solves and is the easiest alg to finger trick... it's this one:
/3,0/-3,-3/0,3/
You recognise it because you have a bar on the top and bottom, but corners are not solved on either layer. I.e., ignoring edges it's like two t-perms. The algs for doing one layer at a time are way longer and harder to learn.
It's also the alg I use for adj-adj EO. (It turns it into the really easy opp-opp case)
- Edge permutation. I know a couple of basic cases including most of the long Parity algorithm that I'm considering one of these cases for now. Need more practice here. I mess up so often before this that I spend most of my time doing Cube Shape anyway.
Probably the slowest and second most inconsistent part of my solve. I'd recommend learning the opp-parity alg as it's a lot easier than the adj one and it's possible about 80% of the time to force it. Best to know both, probably.
- Flip Middle layer. In muscle memory.
- Swap top and bottom layer. In muscle memory. I don't know how to do both this and Flip Middle Layer at the same time but that looks a fairly simple alg to learn.
Ah yes. Doing both at once is just:
/6,0/0,6/
Oh, and one overall tip to avoid the mistake I've made: I notice that everyone fast turns the right side up then down, then up then down. For me, I just go round and round in the same direction, which I guess is slower. I've retrained myself to do some of my algs the faster way and it's definitely helpful (no regrips). So if possible, I suggest you try to do that.
Have fun with it!
