Intuitive Square 1?

[ChickenWrap]

Is there any way to do a square 1 without learning algs? I can get all the way to a square shape with 4 corners solved. I don't care about speed, I just want to be able to solve the puzzle without memorizing any algs, since I suck at that

 

[Owen]

Probably not. I guess if you are really good, you could figure out commutators, but you would still need the parity alg.

 

[brandbest1]

I haven't seen an intuitive method for Square-1 as of now.

 

[ChickenWrap]

I haven't seen an intuitive method for Square-1 as of now.

Sorry, I meant commutators, or even a couple simple algs. I know I still have to memorize the parity alg and that is fine.

My problem is that I can't figure out how to do a "2 look pll" type thing on SQ1 (ie. only needing a couple algorithms that you repeat many times).

 

[blade740]

It's doable. Assuming you can "play around" and find an alg like J/J, you can use that with commutators to solve any non-parity case. You can "intuitively" determine a parity algorithm too: you need to get the cube into a state where you can swap an odd number of pairs of pieces with a single twist. The simplest way to do this is to get to the scallop/scallop shape (3 twists), swap 3 sets of corners with a / move, then undo.

 

[Lucas Garron]

Probably not. I guess if you are really good, you could figure out commutators, but you would still need the parity alg.

There are some very intuitive parity algs. For example: get 6 corners on one side, cycle them 1 slot over, get back to cube shape by undoing the first step.

 

[Czery]

I found the most intuitive part of square 1 to be cubeshape.
You can trace every single cube shape into a tree and make optimal cubeshapes this way. This is why I enjoy solving cube shape the most.
Of course, you could also be lazy and look up this awesome tree by Jaasp.
You can use this tree to verify optimal path.

 

[stoic]

Jaap's Method 6 (follow above link) is pretty straightforward. It's based around one alg plus parity once you have cubeshape

 

[Stefan]

You can use R2 D' R2 D R2 D' R2 D R2 for PLL:
http://www.stefan-pochmann.info/spocc/speedsolving/square1/
(let me know if you can't play the video, I guess I should finally put my vids on youtube...)

 

[EMI]

The normal Lars method, just less algs:
- You need to learn a cube shape method, which requires one mini alg.
- An other "alg" you should know is the "M2", which is just ( 1,0 / -1,-1 / 0,1 ) done on a Square-1 in cube shape.
- To seperate (orient) the yellow from the white method, just do what you would do on a 4x4 at the last two centers.
- If you do R2 U R2 U M2 U' R2 U' R2 (always "missaligning" the top layer by an edge so you stay in cube shape), you swap the bottom back edge with the top right edge (for edge seperation).
- For PLL on both sides, if you have two normal PLLs or two unnormal PLLs, do M2. If one is normal and one is not, do something like / (3,3) / (1,0) / (4,-2) / (-4, 2) / (-1,0) / (-3, -3) /
(parity) and check again.
For normal PLL cases you can use Stefan's method.

 

[Kirjava]

There's always barrel-barrel -> edge pairing + parity -> cancel into PBL

 

[Aceofspades2345]

SuperAntonioVivaldi has a reasonably intuitive walkthrough here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv7E_eMxdrk

However, if you don't care about speed, it seems strange to ask speed solvers how to solve it. For non-speedsolving puzzles, www.twistypuzzles.com is really good.