Color Neutral Debate

+1 for opposite color neutral. When did people start calling it Bi-CN lol. I love cubers and their excessive acronyms.

anyway. So naturally I tend to think in terms of the method I'm most familiar with and here's my argument for "bi-cn" vs. full color neutral at least as far as Petrus goes.

In Petrus, if you can only solve with Yellow up at the end then you have 4 possible 2x2 blocks. If you can solve with both white and yellow as base you have all 8 possible 2x2 blocks.

If you aren't CN then for 2x2x3 you have 2 options because they must contain your base color. The only way to get that last 3rd possible expansion would be to go full CN, but that's entirely not worth it.



TLDR; Full CN in Petrus only gives you an additional choice for expanding to 2x2x3. Not worth it.
 
like emolover said. colour neutrality is only worth it if you start out that way. i am colour neutral because i was always colour neutral. i've done a couple of white cross only averages today and i got around 17-18s. which is only 1 second off of what i usually average (16-17s). interesting :)
 
CN is driving me insane. I really don't know if I should do it or not. I avg 13-14 seconds and I am opposite color neutral.
I am seeing really good arguments from both sides. But the one that caught my attention was that there is no point in learning it if you don't start off that way.
Am I too late to be CN? Please no "It's never to late!" cliche bs
 
OK, so I'd just like to throw in my personal anecdotal evidence (what else is there, really?)

I think...probably last year, or a little earlier, I averaged around 22-ish with a white cross. Pretty standard.
As of now, I average around 20-21 (but gradually going over that wall to sub-20, just haven't quite broken it yet), colour neutral.

This, so far, shows that it is definitely *possible* for an intermediate cuber to switch to colour neutral in a year. However, something that both helped, and hindered me, was the fact that I was not interested in cubing at all throughout that year.

If you'll imagine that I had been actively into cubing for that year, I believe that I would have been frustrated with my CN times, and given up. I would probably be averaging something like 15 seconds with a white cross. This of course, is purely speculation, except for the fact that this very thing happened to me switching to ZZ, and I think it's likely that the outcome would be similar.

However, with the MOTIVATION to switch to CN remaining constant, I think that I would definitely have been able to switch to CN in a month or two. Here's why:

Throughout my colour-neutral / non-motivated transition period, I was timing extremely few solves. I may even go as far as to say I was timing NO solves. I would simply take a Rubik's cube somewhere to entertain myself, or just pick one up in my room out of boredom. Speedcubing, I had no interest in whatsoever. Due not caring about my times, I both did not see my horrible times with other colours, and did not care that I seemed to be struggling with finding the right pieces.

When I returned to "speedcubing" a few months ago, I found little difference in time when solving with a fixed cross colour, in fact I did an average for all of them, which worked out to be 22-23ish across the board (a couple seconds slower than my normal average, showing that fixed-cross definitely is a disadvantage for me now). I can say now that I am fully colour-neutral, and definitely faster than I ever was with fixed-cross.

My recommendation for a training scheme is therefore: A strict ban on timers. You shall take a Rubik's cube wherever you go, and endeavour to solve it whenever you become idle. You can solve it on whatever colour you feel like, but avoid only doing the one that you used to do. Do this for an arbitrary (undecided) total number of hours. (I have no idea how much I actually did. Maybe 24 total should suffice?)

Any thoughts on whether this is actually feasible? What do you think the minimum time is for becoming CN? This could help us decide whether colour-neutrality is valuable enough to consider switching, or whether time could be better spent elsewhere. I definitely think that colour-neutrality opens up a WORLD of possibilities, that go far beyond just an easier cross. The problem is, how hard is it to kick the habit of a white cross, especially for the veterans among us?
 
Kirjava said:
Because they're not CN and it's something different for them. Of course you don't notice this if you're CN, because you're used to it.
Click to expand...

Naturally, naturally. But if they became CN solvers that novelty would disappear. Doesn't seem like any reason to attempt to become CN to me. Just my opinion though.
 
Hi. Everyone already underlined the points I was going to talk about, but yes. As others already have said (like Dan and co.), after years of fixed cross color, it's just not worth it to spend time trying to switch to CN. The time spent doing that can be used to polish up other aspects of cubing.

Also, Idk about you CN guys, but if you're CN, then say- you 'glance' at each cross to see which is good or at least decent. Say you spend 0.5s * 6 sides = 3s. Then you decide which cross to do and plan it. Say for 2s. 3+2=5s. So you have used up 5 seconds (these are pretty optimistic times IMHO). I doubt the main benefit of CN is for an easy cross, as many have demonstrated that they can do lightning-fast crosses with a single fixed color. So obviously you have to track the first F2L pair/ plan an x-cross or something that would allow smooth transition into F2L. Here is where the um natural 'orientation' of the cube comes into play. Assume you do cross on D, and do white cross. It's green-orange-blue-red. I guess many of us nonCN-ers already are so used to the orientation that we can plan crosses/x-crosses or whatnot simply by just locating the pieces and a little bit of tracking. (I'm speaking on behalf for the fast people, of course.)

However, if you're CN, I don't know if you can 'remember' the orientation of the cube, as you're doing it differently every time. So you'd have to spend time doing that as well. Most of the time, CN people only plan their cross and give up doing other things as they lack time. (Of course unless it's a 5-move easy Xcross for example, THEN you would greatly reap the benefits.) To be honest, overall I don't think it's worth switching to CN. If you look at some of Faz's solves, they too have long crosses, and he fails crosses sometimes. (if I remember correctly.) The reason he's fast is not because he's CN, IMHO, but is because of his F2L, its really smooth flow and of course gofazod TPS always helps. I guess he would be averaging almost the same as he is now if he wasn't CN, maybe merely opp-CN would be good.

I don't know, just my 2 cents, I've stopped trying to be CN. All of you would probably ignore this long-winded rambling anyway, as my opinion obviously doesn't matter, I'm not one of the fast people here :P, but barely, BARELY mediocre >_>. So, those who still want to be CN, go ahead, eye wish you luck, and those who don't want to, FOCUS ON OTHER ASPECTS THAT YOU'RE WEAK AT, you'll improve trust me :P. Tata
 
Last edited:
I finally see the wonderfulness of having a fixed color. All throughout the day I have been messing with Roux and early I decided to only go for Red/Orange blocks. This helped me so much with recognition and ability to form blocks and recognize stuff with L6E. My times went from low 40's to high 20's with roux all because I have fixed bi-color sides.

I still will being doing color-neutral for CFOP and Petrus but I know see that it is crucial for Roux.
 
emolover said:
I finally see the wonderfulness of having a fixed color. All throughout the day I have been messing with Roux and early I decided to only go for Red/Orange blocks. This helped me so much with recognition and ability to form blocks and recognize stuff with L6E. My times went from low 40's to high 20's with roux all because I have fixed bi-color sides.

I still will being doing color-neutral for CFOP and Petrus but I know see that it is crucial for Roux.
Click to expand...

Being Color fixed helps you to learn, but it is kind of like training wheels, you can go faster and farther if you take them off. I think that for learning a method it helps to be color fixed, but once you have the method down you should switch back to CN.
 
jskyler91 said:
Being Color fixed helps you to learn, but it is kind of like training wheels, you can go faster and farther if you take them off. I think that for learning a method it helps to be color fixed, but once you have the method down you should switch back to CN.
Click to expand...

I had been trying roux for months. It's not like I am trying this out for the first time. I truely think it is fine to have a fixed color for roux and ZZ.

Have you tried roux or ZZ.
 
jskyler91 said:
Being Color fixed helps you to learn, but it is kind of like training wheels, you can go faster and farther if you take them off.
Click to expand...

Yet again, you insist on spouting conjecture.

jskyler91 said:
I think that for learning a method it helps to be color fixed, but once you have the method down you should switch back to CN.
Click to expand...

This is simply terrible advice.
 
emolover said:
I had been trying roux for months. It's not like I am trying this out for the first time. I truely think it is fine to have a fixed color for roux and ZZ.

Have you tried roux or ZZ.
Click to expand...

Was so hard for me. I gave up.

I wanna say...learning CN is like learning a new language. You cant learn it in a month. It takes years.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Hiori_Fembysolver
[Method Proposal] Zeta-Bp8: A color-neutral approach using Zeta Slotting, CMLL, and 1-Look L8E
Replies
0
Views
385
Hiori_Fembysolver
Hiori_Fembysolver
L4NC3_D4_AS14N
when should you learn to be dual color neutral
2
Replies
21
Views
2,537
finger go brr
finger go brr
Z
[Member Intro] Learning 4BLD and getting color neutral on 3x3
Replies
4
Views
744
fes_77
fes_77
Discomantis
How would I become color neutral for ZZ EO
Replies
5
Views
881
Swagrid
Swagrid
randomness...
How Did You Become Color Neutral?
Replies
16
Views
1,779
OldSwiss
OldSwiss
Back
Top