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Big Cube BLD Discussion

drewsopchak

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I use:

- Sentences without specific structure for 3BLD
- Recently switched to journey for 4 and 5 BLD, though several journeys start from a location inside my house.

I typically use three Letter pairs per location
EV KW PR would be: In the hallway I use a bottle of EVian with Kiewen (Dutch for gills)) to smash a PeaR
Depending on the situation I may make a more detailled story or try to envision smaller details of it to make it more memorable.

And I agree, memo typically sticks very well.

To illustrate; still know my story from my 5 bld attempt at N8WB last Sunday:
Instead of translating all words or adding the correct letter pair in brackets I have just CapitaliseD myLetter pair images.
So due to translation Dutch-English some letters are different from my actual memo.

x-centers
In the hallway ViDi uses a SocK during a BJ
Toilet: I notice a HoLe in my PC, gnawed in by FiKkie
Doorstep: NeW QujO (the dog…) of Roque (X-men), she doesn’t like it and throws it into the wall (MU)

+-centers
Playhouse: BrA with FiVe images of KetelBinkie
Hedge: trough the hedge appears a TraiN pulling a Sit-on-Top with my DAd on it
Cabin: on the cabin an ULtralight plane covers in DeWdrops lands, pilot informs me he was actualy trying to fly to the MooN
Path: A bottle of nasty Oxo broth
Here I actually missed the last cycle during memo…

wings
Field: LioN from URuzgan holding a Sign with “IJ”
Driveway: there’s vacuum (VQ) packaged FeTa cheese in a BucKet
Garage: Chris Hardwick playing with a BadGer while listing to music from the PiXies
Garden: a PiG running around

Midges
Driveway: GoD using a bottle of EVian to squash a BeetLe
Parking space: something WaLHalla
This one I could not recall AT ALL during the attempt, still missing a bit…

Corners
Garden: Quark (DS9) spraying Deet N on IWein (indicates U /D sticker of flipped corners are on on I and W)
It's annoying how if you check to see if you've cleared your route, you just restrengthen your memo stored on it. :D
 

Mike Hughey

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Just like Cubenovice, I use 3 letter pairs per location. So I would put EV KW PR in a single location. If I do it right, I would tie it directly to the location. For me, EV is a microphone (ElectroVoice), KW is Dene Beardsley (a KiWi, get it? I knew revealing my letter pairs would get me in trouble), and PR is PRaying hands, unless it's more convenient for me to make someone else pray. So I would undoubtedly set up an EV microphone, and have Dene praying into it, which is quite a funny image if you know Dene. It's very rare to get a set of images that work this nicely in a competition solve - I wish I got them more often. :)

In my room number one, my first location is a stack of keyboards, so if it were at that location, I'd put the mic hanging off the stand as a rock musician's setup; maybe Dene would be accompanying his prayer with gospel organ. :) My second location is a toy horse, so I'd have the mic attached to the saddle somehow, with Dene riding the horse. The third location is a bookcase, so I'd probably have some sort of tabletop mic sitting on a shelf with Dene standing beside it. Etc.
 

kinch2002

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I see no reason why you can't get world records with it.
In fact, it's happened fairly recently :p
I find that roman rooms and journey are extremely similar but I'd say
- Roman rooms tend to be more flexible in terms of using more/less locations in one room from solve to solve (I used 1 room for all edges and 1 room for all centres) hence why I used that for bigbld.
- Journey locations are more spaced out and therefore the chance of mix ups is reduced hence why I preferred that for multibld.
 

tim

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In fact, it's happened fairly recently :p
I find that roman rooms and journey are extremely similar but I'd say
- Roman rooms tend to be more flexible in terms of using more/less locations in one room from solve to solve (I used 1 room for all edges and 1 room for all centres) hence why I used that for bigbld.
- Journey locations are more spaced out and therefore the chance of mix ups is reduced hence why I preferred that for multibld.

For me, roman rooms have always been a strict subset of journeys. Nothing prevents you from pretending to be a mouse and traveling through your room. ;) And the spacing between locations is imho just a matter of taste/whatever works best.
 

Ickathu

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I've always viewed Journeys as just a bunch of Roman Rooms.
For example, my 4BLD memo:
Centers: I start in the hallway, right inside the front door of my house. I've got 7 loci in that hallway (paintings, closets, tables, etc). I usually use 2 letter pair images interacting per location, so that's 28 spots for centers.
Edges: I continue through the hallway into the living room. I have 8 loci in that room, so, with 2 letter pair images per locus, 32 edges in that room.
Corners: I walk up the stairs and into my bedroom. In my bedroom I've got 7 loci, but I rarely need more than 2.

So for me at least, my journeys are journeys between connected Roman Rooms. I know you can do journey differently, jumping from location to location. I did this to memorize the poem All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter by JRR Tolkien. I travelled up the east coast and then across to the west coast, using each major city as a single locus, and also a line. (Miami - Beach, DC - white house, Philly - liberty bell, NYC - times square, Boston - harbor, [going W now] Chicago - Sears tower, Denver - mountain, LA - Lombard Street).
 

drewsopchak

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I'm not sure whether to use DFr or UFr as my buffer. I use UF on 3bld, but some cases are strange (E.g. l slice). With DFr, I can use m2 for awkward cases. Is there an explanation of BH wings anywhere? Maybe all have to develop a 2cycle method with UFr to solve those awkward cases.
 

DrKorbin

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Week ago I started to use UFl as by buffer, because I use UF for 3x3 edges, and most algs work almost without changes for 4x4. The only thing you need to think about is weither you need to do l or r' instead of M. Unfortunately I already have a bunch of DNFs because of this.
Why UFl and not UFr? Because you don't need to change stickers on each wing.
If you're interested, I'll try to share my algs in a couple of days.
 

drewsopchak

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Week ago I started to use UFl as by buffer, because I use UF for 3x3 edges, and most algs work almost without changes for 4x4. The only thing you need to think about is weither you need to do l or r' instead of M. Unfortunately I already have a bunch of DNFs because of this.
Why UFl and not UFr? Because you don't need to change stickers on each wing.
If you're interested, I'll try to share my algs in a couple of days.

I thought about this, but don't you end up using a lot of l moves? All have to try :)
 

Ollie

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5BLD specifically, but the only thing holding me back from sub-10 at the moment is turning speed.

I use commutators for everything but execution is still ~6:00 even after eliminating most of my pauses while recalling. I realise that I'm slowest in center execution and that I probably have a lot of bad habits.

I quite like the styles of Zane Carney and Daniel Sheppard so I was hoping that they (or anyone with a decent eye) could explain their finger tricks. And of course anyone else to offer their own.

Comments like "practise." and "turn faster." will be ignored. (you know who you are.)

EDIT: my fastest solve to date. Please point out any bad habits if you have the patience. :)
 
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Zane_C

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5BLD specifically, but the only thing holding me back from sub-10 at the moment is turning speed.

I use commutators for everything but execution is still ~6:00 even after eliminating most of my pauses while recalling. I realise that I'm slowest in center execution and that I probably have a lot of bad habits.

I quite like the styles of Zane Carney and Daniel Sheppard so I was hoping that they (or anyone with a decent eye) could explain their finger tricks. And of course anyone else to offer their own.

Comments like "practise." and "turn faster." will be ignored. (you know who you are.)

EDIT: my fastest solve to date. Please point out any bad habits if you have the patience. :)
I found it difficult to point out negatives in your video, it's quite a smooth solve. There aren't a lot of pauses, but unfortunately it only takes a small pauses here and there to add up to quite a bit of time, especially with 5x5 BLD. It's evident that you're already thinking ahead to your next images, so I can't really comment on that, just stick to it :).

Since you're already using commutators, I doubt efficiency is an issue with your solves, so maybe all you need to do is eliminate those pauses further and work on your turning speed. One thing I've done when I haven't been satisfied with my execution is practise execution-only solves, I don't know if it helped much, but I'm just throwing it out there.

As for finger tricks, I don't think there's anything special with my 5x5 turning style.
- I treat outer layers as if I'm solving a 3x3 (so I never use my thumb for turning U and D faces).
- I usually turn slices individually: (u=right middle finger, u'=left index, d=left index, d'=right ring, r=right ring, r'=right index, r2=ring followed by middle)
- However, when solving the centers, I always make r turns with 2 separate turns - eg. r=Rw R'. And I never execute l slice turns with a single slice move.
 

Ollie

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- I treat outer layers as if I'm solving a 3x3 (so I never use my thumb for turning U and D faces).
- I usually turn slices individually: (u=right middle finger, u'=left index, d=left index, d'=right ring, r=right ring, r'=right index, r2=ring followed by middle)
- However, when solving the centers, I always make r turns with 2 separate turns - eg. r=Rw R'. And I never execute l slice turns with a single slice move.

Thank you for your comments :) I think I already use 2 separate turns in center solving like you do, and I may experiment with d=left index, d'=right ring, r=right ring, r'=right index, r2=ring followed by middle.
 

kinch2002

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5BLD specifically, but the only thing holding me back from sub-10 at the moment is turning speed.

I use commutators for everything but execution is still ~6:00 even after eliminating most of my pauses while recalling. I realise that I'm slowest in center execution and that I probably have a lot of bad habits.

I quite like the styles of Zane Carney and Daniel Sheppard so I was hoping that they (or anyone with a decent eye) could explain their finger tricks. And of course anyone else to offer their own.

Comments like "practise." and "turn faster." will be ignored. (you know who you are.)

EDIT: my fastest solve to date. Please point out any bad habits if you have the patience. :)

My centre style is quite inefficient but it's designed so that all comms are as similar to each other as possible, ensuring that I can think ahead more and never get confused during a comm. I say 'designed', but really it just happened and those are the reasons it works well!

Basically I almost always rotate so that my interchange is on the u/d slice and the other 3 moves are l' or r then a U move then l or r'. If I would have to do y2 before starting the comm then I would usually just do it from the back e.g. I wouldn't rotate to solve Ubl Bur Rfu but rather just do <r' U2 r, u'>.

I never actually use slice moves - it's always executed as 2 moves. Double turn slice moves are done as a wrist turn e.g. u2 would not be done as (double trigger Uw2, double trigger U2) but rather grip the top 2 layers with right thumb on F and other fingers on B to do Uw2 and then wrist back to U2'. I don't think this is fast - it just seems less risky than to do double triggers and not be sure whether the U layer spun round a bit more than it was meant to during the Uw2.

Hope that helps!

p.s. that's the first time anybody said anything positive about my centre solving style :p
 

Ollie

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Basically I almost always rotate....

...double trigger Uw2, double trigger U2...

p.s. that's the first time anybody said anything positive about my centre solving style :p

Thanks! I need to practice using rotations to find better center comms so that's on the to-do list. I didn't know that u2 was even done that way - it seems a bit slow to me! I've always used the wrist action as well, so I'll have to try out Zane's ring/middle finger trick and the wrist action to see what works best.

And your execution style is probably my favourite to watch! You're welcome ;)
 

DrKorbin

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Just want to share some research concerning centers.

Times ago somewhere in this forum (but I can't find now where it was) I heard of a trick of solving centers in 4x4.
The idea is that at the beginning of the solve you make a slice so more centers are solved. Therefore 1) you must memorize centers on this slice as if they are already moved; 2) you must memorize wings as if they are moved, or you do something like (U2 r)*5 U2 to restore wings to their original position (if you did r-slice before solving; btw, what alg must you apply if you did r2-slice? I.e. what alg swaps FUr<->BDr and UBr<->DFr?).

Recently I remembered this idea and it interested me. So I wrote a script that calculates how many centers in 4x4 are solved in the best orientation and how many centers will be solved after you do a best slice (and maybe reorient it). And here are the results:
1) 7.92 centers are solved in the best orientation (on the average)
2) 7.92 + 1.33 = 9.25 centers are solved if you do the best quarter slice (i.e. r, u, l', d'...) and choose the best orientation.
3) 7.92 + 1.53 = 9.45 centers are solved if you do the best slice (r, r2, r'...) and choose the best orientation.

Furthermore, if you continue to make slices, each quarter slice gives you ~1.3 solved centers and arbitrary slice gives you ~1.5 solved centers.
So in my opinion, this trick is not worth. 1.5 solved centers are not worthy of awkward memorization of centers and additional alg for wings.
 
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