• 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] Pyraminx Discussion

Rubix Noob

Member
Joined
May 24, 2018
Messages
30
Location
Illinois
Is LBL a good fast method? I average a bit over 11 secs with LBL, but idk if I should learn a different method.
 

emilia84

Member
Joined
Oct 5, 2018
Messages
6
Location
Georgia, U.S.A
WCA
2018DEIN02
I am currently sub-15 on the pyraminx with intuitive L4E, but I would like to improve. I can’t really find any good resources over pyraminx improvement and practice methods. Most videos just say to “practice a lot” to “easily” achieve sub 6-7 times. I have used this method for about three weeks and barely had any lower times. So, does anyone have any good practice methods to help improve on pyraminx, specifically with L4E? I suffer from bad use of inspection time and pauses throughout my solves. *I have a comp in one week so hoping to improve quickly
 

DGCubes

Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2014
Messages
1,823
Location
Over there
WCA
2013GOOD01
YouTube
Visit Channel
L4E should be 2-looks for the entire solve, at most.
Look 1 (done in inspection): Blockbuild a V. If you can't see your entire V in inspection, your solutions are most likely quite inefficient. Instead of solving the centers and then 2 edges, try to solve them simultaneously. Generally in inspection, I follow this procedure: look for any edges connected to their respective centers, and then plan out how to blockbuild a V with that edge as a starting point. If there are no already "solved" edges, there's almost always a way to do one move to solve one, and then proceed to make a V with that one.
Look 2 (try to do this in inspection, otherwise look ahead while blockbuilding your V): Intuitive L4E. You should know all the cases in a single look, even if you go about them by solving one edge and then doing L3E. As far as looking ahead into L4E, here's what I do: look at the unsolved piece on your V-layer. The color on the V-layer should be the center you put in front on the top layer when you start L4E. (e.g. If you have a blue-yellow edge as the unsolved piece, with the blue sticker facing down when you start L4E, for most cases you'll have to turn the top layer so the blue center is facing you. Then you'll be able to solve the blue-yellow edge and reduce to an L3E case.)

Another major problem most people have at some point is solving tips efficiently. Whatever you do, DO NOT save more than 1 tip (or 2 in very rare cases) for the end. You should solve the tips while you solve other pieces, so they add the least amount of time to your solve as possible.

If you do all this well, there should be 1 pause, maximum, in your solves. If you can solve a V in 3 seconds, pause for 1 to recognize L4E, and do L4E in 3 seconds, you're already averaging 7, with quite a few clear places for improvement. :)
 

Hazel

Premium Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2017
Messages
1,681
Location
in your walls :3
L4E should be 2-looks for the entire solve, at most.
Look 1 (done in inspection): Blockbuild a V. If you can't see your entire V in inspection, your solutions are most likely quite inefficient. Instead of solving the centers and then 2 edges, try to solve them simultaneously. Generally in inspection, I follow this procedure: look for any edges connected to their respective centers, and then plan out how to blockbuild a V with that edge as a starting point. If there are no already "solved" edges, there's almost always a way to do one move to solve one, and then proceed to make a V with that one.
Look 2 (try to do this in inspection, otherwise look ahead while blockbuilding your V): Intuitive L4E. You should know all the cases in a single look, even if you go about them by solving one edge and then doing L3E. As far as looking ahead into L4E, here's what I do: look at the unsolved piece on your V-layer. The color on the V-layer should be the center you put in front on the top layer when you start L4E. (e.g. If you have a blue-yellow edge as the unsolved piece, with the blue sticker facing down when you start L4E, for most cases you'll have to turn the top layer so the blue center is facing you. Then you'll be able to solve the blue-yellow edge and reduce to an L3E case.)

Another major problem most people have at some point is solving tips efficiently. Whatever you do, DO NOT save more than 1 tip (or 2 in very rare cases) for the end. You should solve the tips while you solve other pieces, so they add the least amount of time to your solve as possible.

If you do all this well, there should be 1 pause, maximum, in your solves. If you can solve a V in 3 seconds, pause for 1 to recognize L4E, and do L4E in 3 seconds, you're already averaging 7, with quite a few clear places for improvement. :)
This is all great! How does one go about solving L4E without solving one edge -> L3E?
 

emilia84

Member
Joined
Oct 5, 2018
Messages
6
Location
Georgia, U.S.A
WCA
2018DEIN02
L4E should be 2-looks for the entire solve, at most.
Look 1 (done in inspection): Blockbuild a V. If you can't see your entire V in inspection, your solutions are most likely quite inefficient. Instead of solving the centers and then 2 edges, try to solve them simultaneously. Generally in inspection, I follow this procedure: look for any edges connected to their respective centers, and then plan out how to blockbuild a V with that edge as a starting point. If there are no already "solved" edges, there's almost always a way to do one move to solve one, and then proceed to make a V with that one.
Look 2 (try to do this in inspection, otherwise look ahead while blockbuilding your V): Intuitive L4E. You should know all the cases in a single look, even if you go about them by solving one edge and then doing L3E. As far as looking ahead into L4E, here's what I do: look at the unsolved piece on your V-layer. The color on the V-layer should be the center you put in front on the top layer when you start L4E. (e.g. If you have a blue-yellow edge as the unsolved piece, with the blue sticker facing down when you start L4E, for most cases you'll have to turn the top layer so the blue center is facing you. Then you'll be able to solve the blue-yellow edge and reduce to an L3E case.)

Another major problem most people have at some point is solving tips efficiently. Whatever you do, DO NOT save more than 1 tip (or 2 in very rare cases) for the end. You should solve the tips while you solve other pieces, so they add the least amount of time to your solve as possible.

If you do all this well, there should be 1 pause, maximum, in your solves. If you can solve a V in 3 seconds, pause for 1 to recognize L4E, and do L4E in 3 seconds, you're already averaging 7, with quite a few clear places for improvement. :)

The part I pause on the most is tips(not knowing which way to turn them) and especially when figuring out how to turn the top so that I can correctly insert my unsolved piece that is in the V-layer. Thanks for this explanation! I will try to practice these steps.
 

TJardigradHe

Member
Joined
Sep 10, 2018
Messages
122
Location
Earth
WCA
2017HONG17
The part I pause on the most is tips(not knowing which way to turn them) and especially when figuring out how to turn the top so that I can correctly insert my unsolved piece that is in the V-layer. Thanks for this explanation! I will try to practice these steps.


Same, I often had trouble with tips when I started really practicing pyraminx. Unfortunately, at Lsc this year, I got a 2.28+2=4.28 because I decided to turn a tip at the end of my solve, but I forgot to.
 

DGCubes

Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2014
Messages
1,823
Location
Over there
WCA
2013GOOD01
YouTube
Visit Channel
The part I pause on the most is tips(not knowing which way to turn them) and especially when figuring out how to turn the top so that I can correctly insert my unsolved piece that is in the V-layer. Thanks for this explanation! I will try to practice these steps.

Glad I was able to help! For this issue, I'd definitely recommend knowing your color scheme well! I'm not sure if other Pyraminxers do this, but I personally have one orientation I consider my "home orientation," which is green in front, blue on bottom. I always start my inspection process by finding this orientation so I can get my bearings. (I rarely actually start my solves in this home orientation and generally have to do some rotations in inspection after I get there, but it always helps me know which side is which since that's not always so obvious on Pyraminx.)

This is all great! How does one go about solving L4E without solving one edge -> L3E?

Thanks! And oops, maybe I didn't phrase that part well. I generally do reduce to L3E, but I recognize everything I have to do from the initial L4E case so it remains pauseless. Essentially, make your L4E solutions a single fluid motion regardless of how they actually break down into steps.
 
Joined
Mar 10, 2019
Messages
56
Location
kfc
Okay, I've been cubing since February. Pyraminx was my first twisty puzzle to try. For some reason my very first fews attempts, (And I hadn't even watched tutorials or anything), was really easy. I was instantly hooked, and I just kind of been solving it intuitively lbl with muscle memory. My PB is 4.76, and the past few ao5 have been around 10.5 seconds, and I haven't even looked at algorithms. What would be a good, more advanced method to start?
 
Joined
Dec 26, 2017
Messages
133
Location
Class
YouTube
Visit Channel
Okay, I've been cubing since February. Pyraminx was my first twisty puzzle to try. For some reason my very first fews attempts, (And I hadn't even watched tutorials or anything), was really easy. I was instantly hooked, and I just kind of been solving it intuitively lbl with muscle memory. My PB is 4.76, and the past few ao5 have been around 10.5 seconds, and I haven't even looked at algorithms. What would be a good, more advanced method to start?

That was me two years ago so I know where you are at. Now you must choose whether you want to top first methods, or V-first methods in the future of your speed solving. If you didn’t know, V-first is where you solve a layer but without an edge piece. The most advanced method using this is L4E. However, I would not recommend going straight to that method an I would recommend you use layer-by-layer, with algorithms for the last step. There are plenty of tutorials on Youtube for this. Some people have got sub 5 second averages with this method so it is extremely good for your next step. I personally, did not do this and went straight to top-first. I would suggest you use the Oka, or Keyhole method, and again there are plenty of tutorials on Youtube, if you want to use top first and those methods. I personally learnt them both and got 6-7 second averages before I learnt a variety of top first methods. Hoped this helped:)
 
Top