• Welcome to SpeedSolving.com — the world’s largest puzzle community!

    You’re currently browsing as a guest, which means you have limited access to discussions, resources, member profiles, and community features.

    Join 50,000+ cubers and puzzle enthusiasts from around the world to ask questions, share solves, improve faster, and be part of the community.

    Registration is free, fast, and easy — create your account today.

    Already a member? Log in here to hide this message and start participating.

Arnaud's 5x5x5 Edge-Pairing method: Examples

a friend told me about this forum. he said it was a different method by van galen. he's doing sub-2:30 now because of this method. and omg, i tried it myself, this method is really fast, the recognition, the consistency. i can now do the tredges without pausing. you also eliminate the annoying last 4 tredges usually encountered from the bigcubes.com method.
 
At Dutch Open 2006 I actually beat Erik on 5x5x5. It took a couple of months, but after that he started doing my method and his times went down like crazy. Now he is the WR-holder :)

same thing happened to me. Neil Ortega (a fellow filipino cuber) was the one who told me about his forum. i was always faster than him with the 5x5. then, all of a sudden, he became really fast, and i couldn't beat his times! he kept gettin a lot of 2:4x.xx solves, i remained sub-4 back then. it was like, woah! what happened.? he also improved in the 4x4! And that was like an exponential improvement. then, he told me he was using this method for the tredges.

ei, why don't you make a site for this and publish this? I mean, you created this method. this method ought to be officially called the Van Galen Method or something... lolz. great help really. thanks a lot. now, i'm excited to join another competition and change my 5x5 times. ;p
 
Last edited:
I just wonder... what are the alternatives to pairing edges like this? I can't think of any? It's all fairly similar anyway isn't it? I guess I don't quite do it like this at the moment, I do more of a freestyle, by looking for edges where there are already two connected if possible, and finding the third, and I don't fix centers until later. I'm not that fast, but that's only because I don't have the best lookahead, I've been working on centers though, best time sub70!! (yea, I'm so fast, woo :P ).
 
I consider my method to be the alternative to the method everyone seems to use: bigcubes.com

That method adds 2 wings to a center and puts the completed tredge outside the workarea. After doing that 8 times the centers of the workarea are restored and algs are used to complete the final 4 tredges.

I consider my method better because the look-ahead is better. It uses just slightly more moves on average if you have parity at the end and slightly less moves if you don't. There is only on alg to learn to fix the parity and it is short and fast.
 
Arnaud, your analysis of the bigcubes.com method is only if you follow the instructions exactly. I personally don't do that exact method, but I use the freeslice to my advantage. I actually just end up pairing a bunch of semi-pairs in the slice, and pair up w/e I see. It allows me to look for multiple pieces, granted that I keep track of the pieces in the working slice. My lookahead could actually be better, because your looking for multiple pieces, instead of just 1/12. Mines more like 4/24.
 
I don't know enough about the bigcubes method (I never tried it) and your variation makes it even more difficult to compare.

But saying that 4/24 is better than 1/12 for look-ahead is simply not true. I could easily have changed my method to not include a fixed semi-pair in the buffer which would give it a 2/12, but that doesn't work as well.

The look-ahead with my method is so good because you typically know which 1/12 (actually that is more like 1/10) is going to be the next piece at least 5 moves (like d RUR' d') ahead. There is almost never a point during the solve where you don't know what you are going to do next.
 
Well I don't know about the bugcubes.com method *goes and looks it up*, I taught myself how to do the 5x5x5 (easy if you know 4x4x4) and have done it freestyle from the start. I did try my alternative method that I use for 4x4x4 (2 centers, 8 edges, 4 centers 4 edges) but it didn't work out with all the U/U' turns when doing the 4 centers. I just look for any 2 that are already paired and look for the third. I'm still working on it, and it's slow. The hard part is that it's hard to practise, because you really need the centers setup, and scrambling with that is a prick. I just continue to work on centers and am letting that loosen up my cube nicely, and help my fingers get used to the size (I got a 59.56 centers yesterday!!).
 
depends on your 4x4 style, I would say use the same on both cubes, that'll help getting used to it.
In my opinion r slice is better, if you have got a really good look-ahead and never have to glance at the piece in the buffer position, cause you cannot see that when using r-slice and have to make quite strange moves with your hands to see it.
I, myself, use the d-slice as Arnaud does and I'm quite happy with that, cause I use it for the 4x4, never practiced 5x5 that much, but it feels exactly the same. It is a litte bit easier with a less perfect look ahead.

Well, okay, Erik uses the r-slice, maybe I will switch to that, too, because I'm a bit unhappy with shooting from D while using d-slice. r-slice-technique is more symmetric, but as long as my look-ahead isn't good enough there is no need to switch.
 
It's my first post so... Hello guys!! ;)

Anyway. I've tried this method and i'm dissapointed !

Up to me the "bigcubes" or Erik's method is faster. I have no idea how it's happening, When I solve using arnaud's method my times are about 30 sec worse than normal (My avg is sub 3 min, pairing about 80 sec) . The strangest thing is how it happens. I execute moves just as at bigcubes' method (i mean as slow and smooth as i can). The number of moves are similar.

Was your start the same as mine?

Sorry for my language ;)
 
You're right ! :D I was wrong;P
I've watched erik's tutorial but i didn't see that's your method. I thought that's usual 2-at time.
Anyway ,I've got a video but propably you won't see antyhing on it ;P

Here you are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5iBcJhNHrY

I'm using usual 2-at time.

After few tries i've realized my mistake. i wasn't consistent. when i got one of the special cases i was starting pairing using my old method.
I'll record how i'm doing your method when i achieve some good times.
 
So AvG, (this might be a stupid question, please forgive me) What about if your going to replace the semi-pair with a center edge, but the center edge is in that E-ring? do you bring down a "trash edge" or what?
 
So AvG, (this might be a stupid question, please forgive me) What about if your going to replace the semi-pair with a center edge, but the center edge is in that E-ring? do you bring down a "trash edge" or what?
I don't understand completely what you want, but I guess you are talking about the cases I call "parity before the end" in this topic
 
I think i understand what he was meaning. Leviticus, you have to make sure that the piece that you are replacing isnt' in the layer you are slicing in. You just need to bring that edge into the U or D layer, or just move the other pieces out of that slice. It doesn't matter what type of edge you bring done, just bring another one down...
 
Back
Top