Does sighted 3BLD execution help in memorization visualization?

[abunickabhi]

With 3BLD getting at the point where the memo should last only <10 seconds (4-6s for advanced BLDers), visual memo and snapshot memo techniques hold more relevance compared to audio and letter pairs.

I have found in practice that sighted 3BLD execution does help me think about the commutator better and improve my thinkahead in an actual solve. Sometimes my memorization is just a mental note that I have to execute comm X, rather than visual , snapshot, audio or mnemonic.

What do you guys think about this form of practice to gain more thinkahead and ultimately make 3BLD memo just a string of mental notes without mnemonics?

Disclaimers:
This is not the first time I am thinking about this topic, I have thought about it on and off since a decade, but I feel it deserves a revisit since the WR is 12s now and we have rapid development in 3BLD knowledge.

If you think this topic is unnecessary or irrelevant or you do not have anything to add to the discussion, please avoid responding to the topic.

I am at an intermediate level of blindsolving and have tried to create a topic well beyond my level, I hope such forward thinking is accepted and my mistakes are pointed out.

 

[RprimeUprimeF]

If you are intermediate then I have to invent a new word to denote my level

Although I’m a shade over a noob, I have a thought here. I think sighted solves will take away your time from blind solves. You could maybe use this technique to the extent how much you would practice slow solve to help you improve lookahead. It will help for sure.

I think snapshot memo would be awesome if you can get good at it. I’m nowhere close to it. One thing that I personally need to improve on is to identify a sticker , say in B or D layer without looking at it ( is it yellow or white .. or is it blue or green… basically getting down to knowing the color schemes well enough to be able do this). If you are tracing during memo I think this is one area a top solver would be good at.

Another is thing that may help is to practice one pass memos .. tracing or snapshot or whatever ..in under 10 seconds. Practice just that. And don’t execute .. just try to recall or execute in your mind. Now this will also depend on whether you see memoing letter pairs / quads / tracing or just memoing the comm to execute. You tweak your approach accordingly. I think this drill will help improve memo.

I think it makes sense that a top solver mostly doesn’t memo letters but rather memos the commms to execute. That could be the best way.

 

[bldcuber314]

I'm glad to see these kinds of topics being posted, as personally I feel memo in BLD isn't discussed enough despite being a huge area of blindsolving.

I am not an advanced blindsolver, I average around 40s with M2/OP. However, my memo is fairly fast for my speed(around 10 seconds on average, with several 8 seconds and below)

My memo system is actually images for edges and audio for corners, then executing corners first. This system seems like it would be very slow, as the longer part of memo is done with images. However, I ran a test which I think is valid to see how much this was actually slowing me down.

I basically did some timed "solves" where all I did was take off the cube cover, trace through the cube without converting the targets into letters or trying to remember them at all. I found that my average time for doing this was only about 1-2 seconds faster than my average memo time in a solve.

This means I am converting the memo into images at the same time as tracing, instead of pausing after each letter pair to think of an image/connect the pair to my image. However, I do know that this 1-2 seconds is a valuable difference, and I would eventually like to utilise more short-term techniques to the point where my memo time is purely how long it takes me to trace through the cube.

As for general visual memo, I currently only use this for flips, twists and small cycles where the pieces are already oriented(e.g. instead of memoing A B A in Speffz). However, visual memo does provide a sort of backup for me during general memo, and I think it is the reason that I rarely experience issues with conflicting pairs despite never creating a sheet and having multiple words for some letter pairs. While executing, I have a general idea of where my targets were, so never get stuck on (for example) whether a bow is BO or BW.

I have also often thought about 3BLD memo as a string of mental notes rather than mnemonics, and while I can't provide much insight to this as an intermediate solver I am interested to see how this progresses in the future.

Note- I didn't write anything specifically about sighted solves because I don't really use them.