Mehta, APB, and other EO + RB systems: An analysis on speedsolving use and classification

[Cubing Forever]

If you want to talk more in-depth about classification in general, we could do that in the Method Debate and Development Server or I can make a classification channel in my development server. We can get the discussion going to potentially create something presentable to the community.

I'd love to, but I'm not on discord atm.

 

[PapaSmurf]

Fantastic work as always from Athefre. Always a treat to see a new Athefre post, be it on speedsolving or on discord.

Cool to see that the metrics for alg count, movecount, and mcc are dominated by Petrus and APB, which is by all means Petrus with a spicy RB. Viva la Petrus method.

Also:

This is hilarious to me. Mehta was sold on ergonomic alg spam. It had the worst MCC. You love to see it.

3:43 AM Swagrid posts are also always a treat.

On the thing as a whole, I'm still on the side of vanilla Petrus>APB>everything else. While APB is very cool and is definitely better than the rest, it doesn't have the advantage of the simplicity and ergonomics of Petrus, which allows for a higher TPS. I do think that all these methods, at the end of the day, are Petrus. For what it's worth, LEOR is kinda different and when I solve with it, it certainly feels like a different method, but when I've used Mehta it's felt like a (slower) variant of Petrus. This may be because I haven't learnt any algs (EOLE etc.) for it.

Having all these 2x2x3->EOF2L methods shows how elegant and just straight up good Petrus' approach was when he came up with his method and I reckon that they should definitely be classified as Petrus, with a minimum of the similarities being acknowledged.

 

[Athefre]

3:43 AM Swagrid posts are also always a treat.

On the thing as a whole, I'm still on the side of vanilla Petrus>APB>everything else. While APB is very cool and is definitely better than the rest, it doesn't have the advantage of the simplicity and ergonomics of Petrus, which allows for a higher TPS. I do think that all these methods, at the end of the day, are Petrus. For what it's worth, LEOR is kinda different and when I solve with it, it certainly feels like a different method, but when I've used Mehta it's felt like a (slower) variant of Petrus. This may be because I haven't learnt any algs (EOLE etc.) for it.

Having all these 2x2x3->EOF2L methods shows how elegant and just straight up good Petrus' approach was when he came up with his method and I reckon that they should definitely be classified as Petrus, with a minimum of the similarities being acknowledged.

What would you say gives Petrus EO + RB better ergonomics and higher TPS? In an intuitive solve, the user isn't always going to be able to choose the most ergonomic solution for RB. Even if they've practiced it a hundred thousand times, could it ever compare to the person that knows the most ergonomic alg to place a pair and the most ergonomic alg to solve the final square? Especially since that person has drilled the 116 ergonomic algs to a high TPS. Combine this with lookahead during the previous steps and there shouldn't really be any pause for recognition. The only pause, at an advanced level, could come in the EOPair step which would be a little better than Petrus EO's recognition pause.

 

[PapaSmurf]

I would argue that RB has few enough cases that you can always find something good. You can also become so good that, except for only a couple of fringe cases, it is always very very fast. The EO is slightly problematic, but not to the extent where it's a "problem". You also don't have the disadvantage of recall and can always fluidly recognise from the previous step due to not using algs. I know it's not as big of a problem for APB than for OLL into PLL, but it's still more of a problem than with normal Petrus. Essentially, I think RB is extremely OP and you've got to have something very special to beat it.