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A Few Tricks to Help You Avoid Cube Rotations

jskyler91

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Title says it all. This will be a series covering Edge orientation and its manipulation, use of open slots, cube rotation saving inserts/algs, as well as some general tips and ways of looking at the cube that will help you to avoid as many unnecessary cube rotations as possible. The first few parts will be on edge orientation and its manipulation. I have parts 1-5 completed so far, more to come:

[video=youtube_share;_rtSJLujpWA]http://youtu.be/_rtSJLujpWA[/video]
[video=youtube_share;l9e8K7DpH3g]http://youtu.be/l9e8K7DpH3g[/video]
[video=youtube_share;zYTta6UhFDk]http://youtu.be/zYTta6UhFDk[/video]
[video=youtube_share;sOC3hZtTj0k]http://youtu.be/sOC3hZtTj0k[/video]
[video=youtube_share;cccZHIV9P8M]http://youtu.be/cccZHIV9P8M[/video]
[video=youtube_share;m_WbP0Lb9Ck]http://youtu.be/m_WbP0Lb9Ck[/video]
 
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jskyler91

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Sorry guys totally forgot about this vid lol I went off screen a couple of time so I am remaking it. Should be up tomorrow! I have been caught up with the 1LLL stuff.
 
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jskyler91

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I finally uploaded the first part for all who care, I decided to make this a series instead of just a longer vid as I realized there are many difficult concepts involved in this and each deserve their own proper attention.
 
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demontoe

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Man, these are awesome vids! Thanks from a cube noob w/o any lube :cool: ( Actually I bought some heavy duty silicon from walmart ) I just got the speed cubes I ordered from cube4you site today and am building my first DIY now. When I watched these vids it inspired me to start all over so I'm not even going to time my solves anymore for a while. (no one wants to see that crap :( ) but am just going to work on this edge control for a while and doing the F2L in all the slots instead of just the front right. I guess that was how all the algs I had were set up. I think I will just put the stickers on the bottom layer and two of the edge pieces in the middle layer. Then I'll just work on cross on bottom and first possibly 2nd F2L pair until I can do those from multiple slots and at some point w/ just one look. Thx again dude :tu
 

jskyler91

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Thanks everyone for the praise and just realize that these first few vids are only 1 small part of how I avoid cube rotations. Much more explanation and open slot cases, multislotting etc. to come.
 

Schmidt

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From part 2 "To avoid awkward F/F' moves you can use F/F' moves"
I know that SH can be done fast, but with practice F' U' F should not feel awkward. I rather do a rotation on 3x3, but I use F on 4x4 to pair edges.
 

jskyler91

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From part 2 "To avoid awkward F/F' moves you can use F/F' moves"
I know that SH can be done fast, but with practice F' U' F should not feel awkward. I rather do a rotation on 3x3, but I use F on 4x4 to pair edges.

Ya, one of the tips will be knowing when to use F's lol so I defintely am not against them, but if they can be voided easily then I try my best to do so. Mainly because they require a regrip the way I do them and any regrip down requires a regrip up so time is wasted unnecessarily.
 

Fede

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Thank you so much for this super-valuable information jskyler91! I am at about 22 secs averages, and thought I had reached my limit but with these techniques I clearly see theres much improvement to make. Thank you so much ;)
 

jskyler91

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Thank you so much for this super-valuable information jskyler91! I am at about 22 secs averages, and thought I had reached my limit but with these techniques I clearly see theres much improvement to make. Thank you so much ;)

No problems at all I am here to help. I will be making more vids asap, but I am really busy so my videos will likely come out in spurths as they have been doing so lately.
 

demontoe

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Take your time mon as there is plenty to go over in just these I'd say. I have watched most of them several times but you are moving pretty fast like watchin some street shuckster doin 3-card monty but as far as I can grok it provides a way to look at the cube from a variety of angles with your mind rather than twisting the cube which I thought was interesting.
From what I have gathered so far you introduced 5 algorithms in the vids: The sledgehammer (SH) = R' F R F'
The hedgeslammer (HS) = F R' F' R <-- inverse of SH, both of these are introduced in part 2

Then in part 3, you show two more algs which someone should come up w/ a name for I thought of reverse sledge and hedge hammer but when I looked at what the
alg was doing to the edge piece I realized it was pretty unique since it did a 4 cycle rather than a 3 cycle. So until someone names them I'll just call them alg3 and alg4

so we would have alg3 = Rw' U Rw U' Rw' U' Rw

and it's mirror = Lw U' Lw' U Lw U Lw'

to keep with the same naming convention as the SH/HS we would want to call alg4 = Rw' U Rw U Rw' U' Rw for the back right corner slot and edge

and the one that you actually show more of it's mirror = Lw U' Lw' U' Lw U Lw' for the back left slot and edge.

so maybe if we want to get technical there are only 3 algorithms if we don't include inverses or mirrors but we have to or we'd never get to say
hedgeslammer or even alg4 for that matter. Anyway alg5 would be the one in part 6 where the U2 move is thrown into the back slot alg. It seemed
that the U2 goes in the middle of the alg so I had for alg5 using the mirrored or leftside version of alg4 as alg5 = Lw U' Lw' U2 Lw U Lw' which will alter
the orientation of the upper back edge piece but leave all the front and right slots unchanged. None of the five algs should mess up more than one slot at a time
I think is one of their main assets. Hope this is mostly correct. Thx again dt :tu
 

Fede

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Hello jskyler91,

After a couple of weeks trying this (I am an around 20sec average guy, so not an expert definitely) I would like to ask you how much this no cube rotations techniques make a difference in your solves.

Is there any case where you would prefer to take a cube rotation rather than doing one of those algorithms? or on the other hand, you will take it no matter what in order to avoid the rotation? thanks a lot.
 

jskyler91

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Hello jskyler91,

After a couple of weeks trying this (I am an around 20sec average guy, so not an expert definitely) I would like to ask you how much this no cube rotations techniques make a difference in your solves.

Is there any case where you would prefer to take a cube rotation rather than doing one of those algorithms? or on the other hand, you will take it no matter what in order to avoid the rotation? thanks a lot.

There definitely are and you can see them in my f2l vids (not very recently updated but gives you the general idea). I will cube rotate if doing so puts a formed pair in the back two slots because that makes the last three or two way easier to recog and maneuver. Also, if I see that I will have to rotate later I will do it earlier to save time later and just get it done with.
 
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