Cross + First C/E Pair Blindfolded Challenge

[Lofty]

Man, Unless its a nasty cross I can pretty much instantly see a < 8 move cross without even thinking but I can't for the life of me see the first pair. I'm going to keep practicing tho because this will be so good for my lookahead.

 

[Stefan]

I don't really know exactly how the pairs will turn out, I just "feel" it as I do the cross, much like when I do the F2L.

Does that mean you mentally follow the pair pieces while solving the cross? And how do you decide which pair to follow?

 

[Harris Chan]

I just look for the ones that are either close to each other (the corner and edges), or that won't be affected much by the solution of the cross.

It's the same feeling when I do the F2L, I "feel" the movement of the pair--so yes, mentally following the pair. I don't see it in my head, I just have this feeling/sense , it's hard to explain.

 

[fanwuq]

Harris, seems like you will be nice at speed BLD. Much of the time, I can't see the first pair. sub-10 memo everytime is crazy.

 

[Stefan]

It's the same feeling when I do the F2L, I "feel" the movement of the pair--so yes, mentally following the pair. I don't see it in my head, I just have this feeling/sense , it's hard to explain.

That sounds very interesting. And somewhat depressing, cause if it's hard for you to explain, it's probably hard for me to learn. Can you tell how you became able to do this? Did you practice certain stuff? I even have trouble executing just the cross blindly, but I never really practiced that. Did you?

 

[Harris Chan]

At the time, there was the drill of trying to do one F2L pair blindfolded, so that people won't need to look at the pair when they're solving it. What I ended up doing was tracking it in my head. I keep track of the white sticker on the F2L corner, and the orientation of the edge. But it's more of like when you hold something in your hand and then move it around, you can track where your hands are, but it's not like you visualize a hand in your head.

Since I do track and field, I've also tried to look where the board of take off (for long jump) is, and try to walk to it with my eyes closed, and step perfectly on the board. I have that feeling that the board is coming closer as I walk, much as I would know if I have seen it with my eyes open. You can also do it on those side walks that have blocks, trying to step your toe right on the line.

But what happened after that was that I solve 2 pairs with my eyes closed. But I'm not tracking 2 pairs. When I look at the first pair, it's for me to know which algorithms I am going to use to solve that first pair. Then I look for the second pair. As I execute the first pair's algorithms, I track if it's affecting the second pair or not, and in what ways. Of course I had to practice a lot tracking the second pair with my eyes open, but once there's a recurring cases, it's already stuck in my memory, so I don't even need to track it with my eyes, I track it with my head (which is much faster, I can almost tell right away what the next pair is when I do my current pair). So it's not just looking ahead, it's think ahead (or "feel" ahead?).

That's my 2 cents

 

[joey]

During F2L I can sometimes "see" what the next pair will be, but not during the cross. I should work on it.

 

[Stefan]

Thanks Harris, that's a very good explanation. I'll try those drills, too. Never did, so no wonder I can't do it. Hopefully I can learn it this way.

 

[Dene]

Oh wow Harris that must have taken a lot of practise?

 

[dChan]

Ha, everyday I wonder how people like Nakajima get so fast and now I know! Well, just a little bit at least.

I'm still not very consistent at doing this exercise but I think I'll soon be able to do it pretty well. I try to do what Harris does which is actually easier sometimes but also hard at other times, especially when you are trying to execute fast. I am not used to moving super fast in regular BLD solving so I doubt I'll be able to move super fast in a kind of speed blindfold solve exercise.