It must've have been scary with that pop on the 7th one.
Oh, yeah - I completely forgot about that! But now that you mention it, that one scared me to death! At first I thought it was a real pop, and I was a little over halfway through an algorithm at the time - I was sure it was going to be another DNF. Fortunately, it was an easy algorithm, so I was able to execute the rest of it without too much trouble, and also fortunately, all it was was a cap that came off an edge piece. I was really afraid the whole thing was going to come apart until I realized it was just the cap. One of my square-1's has a single cap that comes off often. You'd think I would have been smart enough to glue it in or something, but NO.
Thanks everyone for the compliments.
And I really hate to take away from all the praise - I really appreciate it all, but I really wish someone else would try learning this so they can see just how fun and kind of easy it is once you learn it. There are several things that actually make this a much easier feat than 10 3x3x3s (once you know the method):
1. There's so much less to actually memorize - no more than 16 pieces, and those without having to worry about orientation. I don't even memorize the shape; I just feel the cube when I get to it. That's why it often takes me a while after a solve to remember what my shape case was for that solve - sometimes I have to rescramble to find out.
2. There are so many double-checks available - much more than with 3x3x3. It's like you can do a parity check several places along the way with every solve. If you have a mistake in your translation matrix memorization, unless it's images out of order, you can often work out what the mistake is and correct it on the spot by process of elimination. And if there are pieces left over after you've done the cycles (pieces already in place once you get to square), you can always double-check them and make sure they're there.
3. The middle slice often acts as a test to make sure you've done an algorithm correctly. I admit it's rare that you can actually take advantage of this other than knowing if you're right or wrong, but it at least gives you that much, and I have had a couple of cases where I realized I did it wrong and backtracked and fixed an algorithm.
I admit it was really hard developing and learning the method, but it's really amazingly easy and fun now that I've learned it. And it's so much more secure than cube solving, thanks to those things above that I've mentioned. I'm at least as accurate with square-1 BLD now as I am with 3x3x3 BLD, despite much less practice.
