Is color neutral slowing you down?

[Swagrid]

I'm also a new cuber and supposedly a prime candidate for learning CN, and I did try, but I find that White/Yellow is easy and the other colours are 10 times harder, though still doable with great concentration and loss of speed. That is for the Beginner LBL methods. I am now learning Roux and find that CN is near impossible even at the block building stage. I think that is due to the directional requirements, e.g. looking for pieces with the right colours or colours that need to be in front or at the back (i.e. red and orange respectively when starting with Blue as first block, and that changes if another colour is attempted.)

For Roux, X2Y neutrality is often used. You say you find white/yellow easier so let's use that as an example for X2Y. If you were X2Y neutral you could solve either white or yellow on top, and any remaining colour on the front.

 

[Magmatic]

I will NEVER attempt to learn CN. And I don't think I would recommend it either, unless you are literally the top 1% of 1% of cubers. I am amazed at how much time I save not having to calculate which pieces to look for. I automatically know that when I'm done this step, I look for the Yellow/Blue edge, or the Red/Green edge. If I had to stop and calculate which colour to look for, it would take me ten to twenty times longer to solve a cube. It is such a time saver to skip the whole colour-calculation step.

 

[OreKehStrah]

I will NEVER attempt to learn CN. And I don't think I would recommend it either, unless you are literally the top 1% of 1% of cubers. I am amazed at how much time I save not having to calculate which pieces to look for. I automatically know that when I'm done this step, I look for the Yellow/Blue edge, or the Red/Green edge. If I had to stop and calculate which colour to look for, it would take me ten to twenty times longer to solve a cube. It is such a time saver to skip the whole colour-calculation step.

That’s just a personal issue. People (zzoomer and myself included) are even doing CN ZZ these days, which is something people used to think would never be done.

 

[Waffles]

I will NEVER attempt to learn CN. And I don't think I would recommend it either, unless you are literally the top 1% of 1% of cubers. I am amazed at how much time I save not having to calculate which pieces to look for. I automatically know that when I'm done this step, I look for the Yellow/Blue edge, or the Red/Green edge. If I had to stop and calculate which colour to look for, it would take me ten to twenty times longer to solve a cube. It is such a time saver to skip the whole colour-calculation step.

Me learning CN while my tps is down:

Spoiler: no klik

improved my average by 3 seconds instantly, still consistently averaging about 15 when i used to average 17

also its good if you get used to it.

If you're a fairly decent cuber you should already know what piece you are looking for, then you can leave it to your lookahead to find the piece, and if you have decent control of filters you should be fine.

 

[abunickabhi]

Color Neutrality in Roux has slowed me down quite a bit.

 

[Cubing Forever]

If full CN is hard, you could always do w/y/g/b neutral which is actually easy to get used to

 

[StrategySam]

That’s just a personal issue. People (zzoomer and myself included) are even doing CN ZZ these days, which is something people used to think would never be done.

Full CN on ZZ wow, That must be so hard because of EO at the beginning

 

[PetrusQuber]

I will NEVER attempt to learn CN. And I don't think I would recommend it either, unless you are literally the top 1% of 1% of cubers. I am amazed at how much time I save not having to calculate which pieces to look for. I automatically know that when I'm done this step, I look for the Yellow/Blue edge, or the Red/Green edge. If I had to stop and calculate which colour to look for, it would take me ten to twenty times longer to solve a cube. It is such a time saver to skip the whole colour-calculation step.

Your personal problem with CN doesn’t reflect the actual usefulness of it.
10-20 times longer to solve the cube sounds like a major exaggeration, and even then, CN only adds a few seconds to inspection for me, and saves time in the actual solve.

There is no actual problem with CN except for people having to adapt to it, and get used to the new colours.
Also, 1% of 1% is just 0.01%

 

[RainbowsAndStuff]

I’ve been practicing being CN for just over a month now and i already don’t see a difference between times of the different colours. I tried just using white and yellow but i found that wasn’t as useful as full CN and didn’t give me enough of a boost compared to just white cross

I definitely think if you have the time being CN is very useful, because it teaches you (or at least it taught me) to not look at the colours and instead patterns which has helped with my recognition too

 

[xyzzy]

Philipp and Sebastian Weyer are both White/Yellow

I thought the Weyers were white-only. Did they both switch to dual?

I am amazed at how much time I save not having to calculate which pieces to look for. I automatically know that when I'm done this step, I look for the Yellow/Blue edge, or the Red/Green edge. If I had to stop and calculate which colour to look for, it would take me ten to twenty times longer to solve a cube. It is such a time saver to skip the whole colour-calculation step.

All y'all dunking on this post but there's a grain of truth in this.

For context, I'm a long-time white/yellow solver, averaging 12.6-ish. Doing different F2L colours severely messes with my lookahead; normally, I can (partially) track all the F2L pairs' edges since they're just the ones that don't have white or yellow on them, but this goes down the drain when I do R/O/G/B F2L instead and I have to pause to figure out which colours to do next. I've done enough R/O/G/B solves that I'm not completely helpless, but I'm still substantially slower with those colours (by 2-3 seconds).

"Ten or twenty times longer" definitely sounds like an exaggeration, though.

---

Interpreting the poll as a question about how colour neutrality would affect me, personally, I voted "yes". I'm never going to put in the effort to switch to full colour neutrality – not because I find it worthless, but because I just can't bear it. That's my personal failing, not anyone else's, and especially not yours. if you're reading this and are on the fence about CN, just give it a shot, then decide afterwards if it's something you want to stick with.

(I've said it before, I'll say it again: colour neutrality proponents often way overstate its benefits, because hyperbolic rhetoric is more fun than nuanced argumentation or something. The benefit is tiny. The cost of switching is large. And despite these, the reason to switch is that the opportunity cost of not switching grows unboundedly.)

 

[Waffles]

I’m full CN CFOP, (took me some time) and have automatically improved white times by about a second, yellow by 2-3, and my average has gone down 2 seconds. (to 15) and it doesn’t affect my inspection usage that much, maybe 2-3 more seconds spent looking at each cross.

 

[the dnf master]

I'm like four seconds slower just on yellow, and I'm like 10 seconds slower on other colors. I'm probably not going to switch to CN anytime soon, because if I'm being honest, I'm kind of a procrastinator and also CN has never been one of my top priorities in cubing.

 

[DuckubingCuber347]

(I've said it before, I'll say it again: colour neutrality proponents often way overstate its benefits, because hyperbolic rhetoric is more fun than nuanced argumentation or something. The benefit is tiny. The cost of switching is large. And despite these, the reason to switch is that the opportunity cost of not switching grows unboundedly.)

I agree it can be exaggerated on I personally use it just because I find it more enjoyable and less restrictive.

 

[Dan the Beginner]

Just to add my experience, esp for beginners reading this, I'm a low beginner and I found White and Yellow fairly easy with Beginner LBL. I said earlier that I found White and Yellow hard with Beginner Roux. After a week, it is OK now, though still slower but not frustrating any more. I think it is a good thing for Beginners to try, as you get double the chance of a better scramble without a huge amount of effort. Doing Yellow for Roux is clearly slower, even with a better scramble, but I expect it will improve in time, as that's what happened with Beginner LBL, for me. And, with a good scramble with Yellow, I can get better time with LBL than just doing it in White. I therefore believe that it's worth trialling if you are starting out.

 

[One Wheel]

I don't care if CN makes me faster on 3x3 for 2 reasons:

1. I am not interested in solving 3x3 competitively.

2. CN gives me the option of 2 different cross colors to force a single unsolved edge to the top on 6x6, so I only do a single orientation parity alg. I am interested in solving 6x6 competitively.

 

[Dan the Beginner]

For Roux, X2Y neutrality is often used. You say you find white/yellow easier so let's use that as an example for X2Y. If you were X2Y neutral you could solve either white or yellow on top, and any remaining colour on the front.

Thanks for suggestion, I will look into that, but a bit later as I still need to find out what this X2Y neutrality is. Does it have something to do with flipping the cube and doing the same algorithms in another direction?

 

[Swagrid]

Thanks for suggestion, I will look into that, but a bit later as I still need to find out what this X2Y neutrality is. Does it have something to do with flipping the cube and doing the same algorithms in another direction?

X2Y neutrality is only using two opposite colours for top or bottom, and using any other colour for front. So any combination of white or yellow on bottom, and green, red, orange, blue on front.

 

[Cubing Forever]

but a bit later as I still need to find out what this X2Y neutrality is.

x2y neutrality is a restricted form of colour(not color) neutrality where you use either white or yellow as your bottom colour and any other colour as your front colour

 

[Dan the Beginner]

Thanks for the explanation. Seems like something that might be worth trying.

 

[Thom S.]

Objectively, CN doesn't maje you faster, it makes you less slow. A great white cross + first pair isn't going to be faster because you can also do green cross. When there is a bad white cross and good green one, obviously, cn made you less slow. I found myself not actually slowing down trying it, but I'm bad at 3x3 so what do I know.
For me, it's the knowledge what my bottom colour is. Is R/O my bottom, that's what I look corners for. So I only need to rule out my top edges and I'm good. I use EO +COLL and recognition is basically the same. Look for opposite and matching tiles and the case falls into place.

If course, this argument only goes for 3x3 where you have inspection.