How Common is Colour Neutrality?

Are you colour neutral?

  • Yes

    Votes: 64 31.8%
  • No

    Votes: 80 39.8%
  • Partially

    Votes: 57 28.4%

  • Total voters
    201
Benefits:
1.easier cross
2.better look-ahead
3.better times
I am color neutral for 6 months and I suggest you when you start cubing to be CN,because it's harder to switch when you are used to only white cross(like me)!At the beginning my times were awful,but with practise I see the pairs much easier.Now my times are around 11 seconds and I am pleased with them.I really recommend you to switch CN,if you are not!
 
When I started cubing, I didn't even know that there are people who only solve the cross on one colour, so I'm colour neutral. However, some days I can't do a special colour e.g. blue...
 
I switched to being colour neutral only after cubing for 5 years, and as I stated in my first post, it only took 2 weeks for me to master it and be as fast on any colour as white. So it's definitely possible to switch!
 
when i teach people i try to get them to be colour neutral, and with the beginner method it really isn't any difference.
but once i start teaching real F2L, the colour patterns start to mix up in their minds and it becomes a lot harder to learn than regular F2L.

plus being colour neutral is not that big of an advantage, unless you get really really good to the point where any time saved doing the cross helps. i converted when my average was 20s and it really didn't take that long, plus i lacked a bit of motivation. discipline and time were the most important factors.

i never really watched youtube cubers, i just chose white at first because it was the only one there that was really different from the others (the others are rainbow colours and white is not). when i found out everyone used white i was actually a little surprised, honestly.
 
I am definately not color neutral, nor do i see myself trying to be. It does set yourself up for a faster cross but at the same time, you can be equally as fast as someone who is color neutral.

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I think there was a lot of hype about it because Feliks Zemdegs is CN. But right now Mats Valk holds the WR single and I believe he does blue cross only. And there are plenty of people who are very very fast who are not CN.

It really depends on the person whether CN is good for them or not or if they are able to do it. Some people are able to switch to CN much faster than others even after cubing for quite some time. Maybe their minds are predisposed to colour neutrality. So yes, it's possible for some. Those who are CN or switched are usually happy about it. Those who make a firm decision for single colour only are happy about it too. If you're not sure, try it and see how it fits you. I did the one month thing outlined by jsklyer91 without doing white crosses for a whole month. I decided I wouldn't be CN but I stuck with W/Y neutral even though I was white only before and I'm happy with that now.
 
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I'd say I'm dual CN.
I do white cross in about 60-70% of my solves and yellow on the rest. I also do a CN solve about 1 out of 200-300 solves whenever I find something super easy like a 2-move cross on a non-W/Y colour.

Very easy CN solves are around the same speed as normal W/Y.
 
How can you be under the impression that being colour neutral is a normal thing when you didn't start CN yourself?

Well, I knew that not all cubers were colour neutral, but I was under the impression that most of the best speedcubers were, I'm not sure why. Another thing I thought I'd mention is that I first learnt the cube on the green cross, and after a year or so I switched to white because it felt more normal.
 
Same here. I decided that I would probably gain more speed benefit from having easier recognition through using a consistent white-cross color scheme.

I think that it might save one move in reality, but the biggest advantage is that you have more options to easy crosses. And that not always means less moves. For me an easy cross is about seeing the 4 pieces in a manageble situation. I have been studying X-crosses and have seen people make 4 - 5 move X-crosses. But then the 4 - 5 moves are so very complex (for a noob like me) that I can do it a lot faster in normal 6 moves cross plus do a F2L pair after. I can solve F2L on white cross propably faster than on other colors. But when I solve white only I get slowere averages because I also have to do hard crosses. When solving CN I can almost always find an easy cross.
 
Wow, I'm surprised how popular CN is now. In the past it hasn't even been close to this common (as based on the poll results so far).
 
I've been CN for 3x3 ever since I started getting serious about cubing because it felt like a logical thing to do. I'm not sure if being CN on 3x3 is as big of a deal as people make it out to be, but I'm glad I am anyway. One thing I kind of regret though is being CN on 4x4 with Yau. Half the time when I start doing the first 3 cross edges I have no idea what colour I'm gonna go for and it usually screws me up. If I could do my 4x4 solving style over, I would've chosen just single cross Yau. But it's too late to switch imo because I have absolutely no colour bias on 4x4 at all.
 
Wow, I'm surprised how popular CN is now. In the past it hasn't even been close to this common (as based on the poll results so far).
I think that's largely due to Feliks and other fast cubers being CN. It seems to me people often look to emulate whoever's on top at a given time, so when Erik had the WR, colour neutrality probably wasn't as common as a lot of people thought 'the world record holder isn't CN so it's obviously not as fast.' Since Feliks broke the WR, people may well have started thinking that this proves CN is faster and switching to it.
 
Wow, I'm surprised how popular CN is now. In the past it hasn't even been close to this common (as based on the poll results so far).

But are you sure they all use the same definition of CN and that it's one you agree with? Already the topic starter said "it seems to me that most people can only start on white" and I certainly *can* start on let's say orange (I just suck at it).
 
i really don't think the poll results are accurate, because someone who is colour neutral is way more likely to click on this thread than someone who's not.

and anyway i think a lot of people convert to colour neutrality not 100% sure what the effect will be; sure it's really cool that you can solve on any side but it only saves time on the cross (in CFOP). after that it really doesn't matter which colour you're on, so if you have a super duper fast cross it doesn't make much of a difference. even with a slow cross it's a small difference anyway.

spending a month practicing all the colours and then more months becoming actually "neutral" with all the colours is probably more work than it's worth to improve times by such a little bit. i'm not saying it's bad or you shouldn't do it, 'cause i did it, but in general i'd agree it isn't worth it to convert.

partial colour neutrality takes almost no work and gives you another option for the cross right away. i think that's definitely worth it. for example i learned roux with a fixed colour scheme just to get the hang of it (B=white, R=red) then i switched to U/D being white/yellow interchangeably, while L/R could be any of the other colours. it didn't take much time cause it's just partial colour neutrality.
 
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partial colour neutrality takes almost no work and gives you another option for the cross right away. i think that's definitely worth it. for example i learned roux with a fixed colour scheme just to get the hang of it (B=white, R=red) then i switched to U/D being white/yellow interchangeably, while L/R could be any of the other colours. it didn't take much time cause it's just partial colour neutrality.

It's taken me years to attain another degree of neutrility with roux, and I'm still not fully there.

It took me almost no time to switch from nonCN to full CN with CFOP.

It's not so much which method you're using as to how ingrained the colours you're using are.
 
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