• 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!

4x4x4 'K4' Method

DDRKirby(ISQ)

Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2006
Messages
16
besides RUR'U'RwR'URU'r' and RwUR'U'Rw'URU'R'

the two algs

RUR'U'RwwRw'URU'Rww'RwR'
and its inverse,
RwwRw'RUR'U'Rww'RwURU'R'
are also useful for 3-edge commuters for the last layer (i use columns first)

(where Rw is a double layer turn, and Rww is a "triple" layer turn)
 

Kirjava

Colourful
Joined
Mar 26, 2006
Messages
6,121
WCA
2006BARL01
YouTube
Visit Channel
wow, you're right, they are really good. don't think much of the notation though :p

could you gimmie a little more info about the method? I don't know how columns first works...

~Thom

Oh, I found some great 2-cycle algs today

lrD2l'r'UlrD2l'r'U' was the basis for most of them..
 

DDRKirby(ISQ)

Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2006
Messages
16
The only major columns-first cuber that I know of is Akimoto--

his overview of the solution is here.

my method uses his as a starting point, then...changes some stuff. (first part and last part are different)

essentially, you first get the columns (akimoto does four white corners followed by insterting edge pairs...I instead match edge pairs, then do an F2L-like thing...), then you do white center pieces, followed by 3 pairs of white edges, then all other centers (using the free white edge pair), then complete the final white edge pair, then dooo last layer.

it's quite fun to do, actually. works on 5x5x5 kinda but it's...ugly. or maybe i just dont know enough to apply it there.

in any case, centers first -seems- like it's in general faster, looking at all the fastest times on speedcubing.com. however, you can't really make that good of a judgement because no one really uses columns first. except akimoto, and he got an average of 1:18.96, which is....pretty great. so i know the method has potential.

i dont know exactly how to get there though...there's not much documentation...watching akimoto's solving vids helped.

right now i'm struggling around the 2 min barrier. used to be able to break 2 mins fairly often but then i started experimenting with other things so i need to figure it all out.

for last layer (i use some of these for inserting the 4th edge pair too), i use 8 different algs, which are all based on RUR'U'rR'URU'r'...

1) RUR'U'rR'URU'r'
2) inverse of #1
3) R'U'RUr'RU'R'Ur ("reverse" of #1)
4) inverse of #3
5) RUR'U'RwwRw'URU'Rww'RwR' (this notation sucks but i dont really know how else to describe it accurately--its basically #1, but...moving a different slice)
6) inverse of #6
7) R'U'RURww'RwU'R'URwwRw'R ("reverse" of #5)
8) inverse of #7

so i use those, plus set-up moves if necessary.

in most cases I can pair up one pair of last layer edges while inserting the last white edge pair. then i usually do COLL->3x3x3 edge permute->1 or 2 of the above algs->fix parity if necessary.
 

Athefre

Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2006
Messages
1,248
This is pretty similar to the way I solve the 5x5.

1. Solve left block
2. Make a line with all of the centers on the left and right, leaving the M center pieces unsolved
3. Solve right block.
4. Solve M except for the stuff in U
5. Solve U.
 

Kirjava

Colourful
Joined
Mar 26, 2006
Messages
6,121
WCA
2006BARL01
YouTube
Visit Channel
Hmm. Akimoto's method looks very interesting. I did a few practise solves with it before and I think it has potentional to get better. At the moment, with my method I'm averaging about 1:40.

~Thom
 

pjk

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Mar 13, 2006
Messages
6,686
WCA
2007KELL02
SS Competition Results
Me: Erik mentioned above: "By the way, I can solve 5x5 with this too..."

My guess would be yes. I may try this method out. 5x5 is really slow for me now, and 4x4 average is at 2:20, so maybe I can get faster with this method.
 

MooseSSU

Member
Joined
Sep 17, 2007
Messages
4
about the site

For some reason I can't connect to the website. I want to learn k4 really badly but I just can't find a good place for Commutators yet. Does anyone have suggestions.
 

MooseSSU

Member
Joined
Sep 17, 2007
Messages
4
Yea I have watched Fallofshadows videos but he dosen't have his parity video up fo some reason. I need a parity tutorial on comutators.
 
Top