Did you "figure it out" ?

[badmephisto]

wasn't sure where to put this thread, because its not off-topic and its not for beginners, but anyway: just out of curiosity, how many of you guys actually figured out the solution to Rubik's cube, without looking up the algorithms for it?

I figured out F2L and portion of OLL before I got impatient and looked up the solutions I wish I could go back and give myself a little more time so that I could boast I figured the whole thing out though

how about you guys?

 

[clincher]

I wish I could go back now that I realize it's so simple I use Fridrich very intuitive the only algs I know are sune anti-sune, u perm, A perms

 

[TimMc]

I figured it out!

I had seen someone solve it in about a minute on average a few times though. And they told me to solve the cross then the next two layers....

If you tell someone who's never solved a Rubik's Cube before that they'll look at you like you're a bit of a weirdo and say "Yeah ok, I gotch ya!"

So with that brief intro to how to solve it I came up with my own method:

My method took at least 200 moves:
- Cross
- F2L
Messy bit:
- Make the top face Blue (see if it magically solved itself)
- Orient the corners by destroying F with something like R'F'U'FURU then R2U2R2U2R2UR2U2R2U2R2
- Make the Blue face again with R'F'U'FUR*n and then Sune
- Rotate edges with R2U2 etc splitting in Sune

I did manage to get my solve time to under 1min30 with that method

I had a problem with that method where if the LL had a corner pair then I couldn't figure out how to solve it, so I ended up destroying the LL and redoing some algs until another case presented itself (this generally wasted a good 30 seconds).

I could always figure out how to solve it when there were no corner pairs with that method...

Anyway, after that I decided I wanted to get faster and hated the fact that I was destroying the LL when there was a case I didn't know how to solve, so I Googled the cube and found lar5 :-D

Tim.

 

[hait2]

yeah
i dont remember what my method was, but it took quite a while (a few minutes at least). i don't remember it too well except for my corner and edge cycling algs. they were really funky intuitive algs, and what i used to solve the last part (not last layer.. i wasn't even thinking of layers when i was solving) of the cube

anyway quite literally a few minutes after i solved it 2-3 times taking up like 15-20minutes, i thought "hell there must be a better way" and googled it

 

[Mike Hughey]

I figured it out back in 1981, with a little help. The one big advantage I had was that I had read the Scientific American article on it before I bought my cube. I definitely didn't remember any of the algorithms that were printed there, so I didn't have an advantage in that regard, but it had some general tips on how to go about coming up with algorithms that really helped me. Actually, the biggest help I got was knowing that coming up with algorithms would help.

If I recall correctly, my way of solving it was to make a cross (although I don't remember ever noticing it was a cross at the time), and then add all the bottom corners. Then I put in all the top corners next (so it was basically a "corners-first" solution), but I don't remember the algorithms I used to do it. Then I used the algorithm I still remember from those days to fix all the 8 remaining edge pieces: R U R U R U R' U' R' U' R2 (and its inverse). It generally took me about 3 minutes to solve the cube that way when I was at my fastest with that method.

When I first bought the cube, I spent a whole week being very careful to remember every move I made so I could backtrack and keep it solved, to look for algorithms to solve it with. Then after one week I scrambled it, and it took me another week to solve it for the first time.

My big advantage at the time was that there was no way to "google" the solution, so I had to figure it out myself. I suppose I could have gone back and gotten a copy of the Scientific American article, but that would have been a lot of hassle, which is convenient because it forced me to solve it on my own.

 

[Todd]

I semi figured it out. I remember reading about different methods which described solving the first two layers and then the last layer, took me a while before I was able to do the F2L easily and through a OLL skip I only needed to switch some edges... at which point i just looked it up.

 

[AvGalen]

I also semi figured it out. All the algs are my own, but the layer-by-layer concept was an idea I learned from a newspaper article

Method:
1. Cross
2. Corners with (RUR'U')*n
3. Middle layer with (RUR'U')(F'U'FU) at first I just did that 3 times if the orientation was incorrect. Later I found out that (F'U'FU)(RUR'U') worked.
4) Edge Orientation with a variation of the Rubiks Alg (MU)*3 U (M'U)*3
5) Edge Permuation with sunes
6) Corner Permuation with (RUR'U') L' (URU'R') L
7) Corner Orientation with (RUR'U')*n D, repeat

A lot of this method is actually used in 3-Cycle blindfolded