Give up color neutrality?

[TheMachanga]

I've been speed cubing for a year. I have been color neutral the whole time. I avg about 26 seconds, but I don't seem to get any faster. I am learning more OLL's but i think my F2L is slow. Should i give up color neutrality to make my F2L faster?

 

[cmhardw]

No, color neutrality is not why your F2L is slower than other steps. Search on threads for how to get sub-20 or how to get faster in general. Being color neutral is not a problem, it's probably helping your times be even faster actually.

Chris

 

[Edward]

I put a black side on my black cubes, and it was screwing with my all powerfull color neutrality. So ive accidentally been converted to black cross, and Red LL
(replaced orange with black)


back on topic.
Giving up color neutrality can only help recognition and inspection time, which i guess might help look ahead in f2l.

 

[Johannes91]

I put a black side on my black cubes, and it was screwing with my all powerfull color neutrality.

Color neutrality, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

[JLarsen]

Stay color neutral, it is not the problem.

 

[Edward]

I put a black side on my black cubes, and it was screwing with my all powerfull color neutrality.

Color neutrality, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

What i mean, is that i wasnt able to solve the cross, and f2l on all sides, only black.

 

[Muesli]

I developed Colour neutrality purely because I was bored of the colour green.

 

[deadalnix]

Anyway, i don't think this is the problem.

But, I think color neutrality is pointless : you cannot explore 6 cross building in 15s and choose which one is the best (or other start step for others methods).

 

[Edward]

Anyway, i don't think this is the problem.

But, I think color neutrality is pointless : you cannot explore 6 cross building in 15s and choose which one is the best (or other start step for others methods).

If you were color neutral, you'd see how easy it is.

 

[Muesli]

Anyway, i don't think this is the problem.

But, I think color neutrality is pointless : you cannot explore 6 cross building in 15s and choose which one is the best (or other start step for others methods).

I can get a 4 second cross, 14 second F2L, 7 second LL on any colour. No colour is particulary fast. I look for easy edges, then plan my cross around that. It can't be any slower than finding your colour, then planning out how to orient all of the difficult edges then permuting them in the right places. If a side already has 2 cross-edges there, why use another side?

 

[deadalnix]

You don't get the point.

You are nto slower with color neutrality, you are just as fast as without color neutrality.

Because you cannont explore all the possibility for all the cross.

Opposite color neutral is enought to avoid crappy cross. That's not an interesting investisment.

But sure, you ca be fast as color neutral. You just cannot be faster.

 

[Johannes91]

But, I think color neutrality is pointless : you cannot explore 6 cross building in 15s and choose which one is the best (or other start step for others methods).

That would be pointless, yes. If all 6 look fairly equal, it's better to just pick one and spend the time planning more moves ahead.

But, at least for me, "always evaluate all options" is not what being color neutral means. You can pick the first cross you see and still be color neutral, if you picked it because it looked nice and not because it was white (or whatever is your chosen cross color).

The benefit is that if there's a 3-move or easier cross, you can use it every time. I'd also say that (almost) all CFOP cubers are color neutral when solving the ce-pairs. They don't solve them in a fixed order based on their colors, and all would probably agree that would be a bad idea.

Edit:

You are nto slower with color neutrality, you are just as fast as without color neutrality.

Because you cannont explore all the possibility for all the cross.

Yup, but you get more really easy cases and looking for those takes just a couple of seconds.

 

[deadalnix]

Except the fact that you win almost nothing on being color neutral with cross. 3 moves cross or stuff like that are really rare.

I don't know about probabilities on other start (like 2x2x2 bloc) and it's maybe interesting for these cases. But for cross, it's almots the same. It can improve your single time with a really easy cross one time, but it will not count in you avg.

 

[Muesli]

Except the fact that you win almost nothing on being color neutral with cross. 3 moves cross or stuff like that are really rare.

I don't know about probabilities on other start (like 2x2x2 bloc) and it's maybe interesting for these cases. But for cross, it's almots the same. It can improve your single time with a really easy cross one time, but it will not count in you avg.

Possibly, but if you are colour neutral you have a 6x chance of getting a lucky cross than if you just use, say, white. Imagine if you had an entire cross on blue, but you were green-coloured and so couldn't use it.

 

[Johannes91]

I agree that it's not a big gain for cross. But it's still something, and if you ever try other methods or puzzles, being color neutral can help a lot. I also can't see any disadvantage to it, but feel free to disagree about that.

For 2x2x2 block the difference is also fairly small, 1-2 moves for me. But it also helps in steps 2 and 4 in Petrus, and combined it's quite significant for the whole solve.

 

[Dene]

I think deadalinx is completely missing the point of being colour neutral. It's not that you look through every cross and decide which is the best - that would be silly. You just glimpse at the puzzle and something will stand out. (Of course, if Mr(s). deadalinx took the time to think about it, that would have been obvious to him).
And there is still no evidence (as far as I am aware) that giving up colour neutrality and sticking to one cross will make one any faster.
There is also no evidence that being colour neutral cannot be as fast as single/opp colour cross. I think the reason that there isn't a super-contender for the 3x3 speed WR from the colour neutral group is because we don't care for 3x3 as much as some of those hardcore single cross guys.

 

[Johannes91]

There is also no evidence that being colour neutral cannot be as fast as single/opp colour cross.

To be fair, that's a pointless statement and you know it.

 

[teller]

I'd call Feliks Zemdegs a super-contender, and he's fully neutral.

Single cross is faster for intermediate types who cannot deal with recognizing alien F2L colors. But assuming that color neutral means *mastery* of neutrality, then of course there is no speed hit, it's pure gain--and all of those gains are in the cross. It's irrelevant to the rest of the cube.

 

[Pedro]

I think the reason that there isn't a super-contender for the 3x3 speed WR from the colour neutral group is because we don't care for 3x3 as much as some of those hardcore single cross guys.

Maybe Rowe Hessler?

 

[Johannes91]

Single cross is faster for intermediate types who cannot deal with recognizing alien F2L colors.

...

When you first saw a cube and a white edge sticker, did you're instict say: "That's a cross edge!"? No. You could've started using any cross and it wouldn't have made any difference. The connection only develops after you've deliberately done thousands of solves using exclusively one cross. Once you've seen thousands of LLs and they've all been yellow, of course other colors start to feel weird. But if you don't do that and instead keep using all colors without arbitrary preference, there wouldn't *be* any "alien F2L colors". On the contrary, that concept would seem alien to you. Color neutrality would be the obvious and natural way. Claims that you're losing recognition time because what you're doing is super difficult would sound ridiculous. But they'd keep coming and coming from people who don't get it.